Read On Hallowed Ground Online
Authors: Robert M Poole
On Hallowed Ground (48 page)
30
. Col. George Ruhlen, assistant quartermaster, to Jacob M. Dickinson, secretary of war, Nov. 16, 1910, NARA RG 92, Office
of the Quartermaster General.
31
. Butler, 299–300.
32
. Butler, 301–303.
33
. Ruhlen to Dickinson, Nov. 16, 1910.
34
. Ibid.
35
. “Honor to L’Enfant,” The
Washington Post,
May 23, 1911.
36
. Butler, 300. In his ill-fated design, submitted in March 1909, William Welles Bosworth correctly listed L’Enfant’s birth
year as 1754; this was changed to 1755 during the process of review and revision.
37
. Butler, 305.
38
. “American Revolutionary War Veterans Interred at Arlington National Cemetery,” Arlington National Cemetery,
www.arlingtoncemetery.org;
see also “Interim Special Report: Revolutionary War Veteran Gravesites in Virginia,” Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission
of the Virginia General Assembly, House Document 91, Feb. 15, 2000.
39
. Although the War of 1812 occurred long before the creation of Arlington National Cemetery, it provided new burials for
the nation’s graveyard. Working at the Marine Barracks in Washington in 1905, a construction crew discovered a mass grave containing the remains of fourteen unidentified sailors and marines
from the War of 1812. All were reburied under a stone tablet in Section 1.
40
. Ella Loraine Dorsey, “A Biographical Sketch of James McCubbin Lingan, one of the Original Proprietors,”
Records of the Columbia Historical Society of
Washington, D.C., 13 (1910): 1–48; Johnson and Malone, eds.,
Dictionary of American Biography,
11: 107–8; Anthony S. Pitch,
The Burning of
Washington
: The British Invasion of 1814
(Annapolis: The Naval Institute Press, 1998), 1–12.
41
. Ibid.; James Edward Peters,
Arlington National Cemetery: Shrine to America’s Heroes
(Bethesda, MD: Woodbine House, 2000) 126–28.
42
. Ibid.
43
. Ibid.
44
. “Honors to Peary,”
National Geographic
, January 1907.
45
. Edmund Morris,
Theodore Rex
(New York: Random House, 2001), 8.
46
. Peary’s North Pole claim, controversial in his own time, has since been questioned by scholars who suggest that he came
very close to his goal but provided insufficient proof to validate his claim.
47
. Johnson and Malone, eds.,
Dictionary of American Biography,
10:183–88. Some mystery still hovers over the remains General Porter recovered in 1905. Following a documentary trail to
a tiny Protestant cemetery outside of Paris, Porter cracked open three lead-lined coffins before he found one with no identifying
plaque. He was convinced that Jones, preserved in alcohol, was in this coffin. Using a forensic technique familiar to modern
scientists, Porter compared the high cheekbones, arched eye, and other features of the corpse to contemporary likenesses of
Jones and pronounced a match. Subsequent investigators are less confident of Jones’s identity. Joseph E. Callo, “Sea Power
Visionary,”
Military History,
July/Aug. 2008.
48
. Robert M. Poole,
Explorers House: National Geographic and the World It Made
(New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), 65–66.
49
. “Removal of the Remains of Pierre Charles L’Enfant,” House of Representatives Document No. 214, Jan. 11, 1905, 58th Congress,
3rd Session;
Congressional Record
—
Senate
, Feb. 8, 1905, 58th Congress, 3rd Session, 2060.
50
. Rhodes to Matteson, June 10, 1930; see also Jennifer Hanna,
Cultural Landscape Report: Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Mansion
(Washington, D.C.: National Park Service, 2001), 120–22.
51
. “History of Government Furnished Headstones and Markers,” Department of Veterans Affairs, July 9, 2008,
www.cem.va.gov/cem/hist/hmhist.asp.
52
. 1st Lt. Frank P. Lahm, Chief Signal Officer, U.S. Army, “Proceedings of the Aeronautical Board for the Purpose of Investigating
and Reporting on the Cause of the Accident to the Wright Aeroplane Which Resulted in the Death of First Lieutenant Thomas
E. Selfridge, First Field Artillery,” Sept. 18, 1908; Dr. George A. Spratt, “Proceedings of the Aeronautical Board,” Appendix
1, Sept. 18, 1908; “Fatal Fall of Wright Airship,” The
New York Times
, Sept. 18, 1908; “Airship Falls: Lieut. Selfridge Killed, Wright Hurt,” The Washington Post, Sept. 18, 1908; “Aviation: From Sand Dunes to Sonic Booms: Fort Myer Historic District,” The National Park Service,
July 28, 2008,
www.nps.gov/history/nR/travel/aviation/ftm.htm.
53
. Ibid.
54
. Ibid.
55
. Ibid.
56
. Ibid.
57
. Ibid.
58
. Ibid.
59
. Ibid.
60
. Ibid.
8: KNOWN BUT TO GOD
1
. John Keegan,
A History of Warfare
(New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 362; Keegan,
The Second World War
(New York: Penguin Books, 2005) 17–18; Barbara Tuchman,
The Proud Tower
(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1996), 235–236.
2
. Caroline Alexander, “Faces of War,”
Smithsonian
, February 2007.
3
. Tuchman, 235–236.
4
. Keegan,
A History of Warfare
, 360–361.
5
. Woodrow Wilson, “Abraham Lincoln: A Man of the People,” in
Abraham Lincoln: The Tribute of a Century 1809–1909,
Nathan William MacChesney, ed. (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1910), 14.
6
. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds.,
Dictionary of American Biography,
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1933), 20:353.
7
. “Address of President Wilson at Arlington,” May 30, 1914, WWL.
8
. Davis’s birthday was actually June 3, so the Confederates celebrated a day late.
9
. Laura Wheeler, “Confederate Dead Are Still Remembered at Arlington,” The
Washington Post,
June 14, 2007.
10
. “Gray and Blue Join,” The
Washington Post
, June 5, 1914; “Address of President Wilson Accepting the Monument in Memory of the Confederate Dead at Arlington National
Cemetery,” June 4, 1914, WWL.
11
. Barbara Tuchman,
The Guns of August
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1988), 174.
12
. Geoffrey Barraclough, ed.,
The Times Atlas of World History
(Maplewood, NJ: Hammond Incorporated, 1979), 252–53.
13
. Edward J. Renehan Jr.,
The Lion’s Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 97; Barbara Tuchman,
The Zimmermann Telegram
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1966) 118–19.
14
. John Keegan,
The First World War
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 136.
15
. John Laffin, ed.,
Letters from the Front
1914–1918 (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1973), 8.
16
. Renehan, 97–98.
17
. Letters, 24–25.
18
. Ibid., 31–32. Chapin’s letter was written on September 24, 1915, two days before he died in battle.
19
. “United States Must Act at Once on
Lusitania
, Says Colonel Roosevelt,” The
New York Times
, May 10, 1915.
20
. Renehan, 104.
21
. Even though Wilson pulled back from war after the
Lusitania
sank, the stern tone of his diplomatic note to the Germans was too much for Vice President Bryan, who felt that it threatened
the nation’s neutral stance. He resigned.
22
. “Address of President Wilson at Philadelphia,” May 10, 1915, WWL. Germany rationalized its attack by saying
Lusitania
had been armed, which made it a warship. In addition, it was later established that the ship had been carrying contraband—4,200
cases of Remington rifle cartridges, 1,250 cases of shrapnel shells, and 50 cases of explosive powder.
23
. Edgar E. Robinson and Victor J. West,
The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, 1913–1917
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1918), 329–330.
24
. Tuchman,
Zimmermann,
195–97.
25
. “Address of the President of the United States, Delivered at a Joint Session of the two houses of Congress,” April 2,
1917, WWL.
26
. Keegan,
First World War,
372.
27
. Donald Smythe,
Pershing: General of the Armies
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 33–34. Colonel Stanton’s quote, “Lafayette, we are here!” is often misattributed
to Pershing.
28
. Ibid.
29
. Keegan,
First World War, 372–77
.
30
. Ibid., 373.
31
. All of Roosevelt’s sons felt duty-bound to enter the war. Ted junior became a major of infantry, Archie served as an infantry
captain, and Kermit as an artillery captain. Both Ted junior and Archie were severely wounded in the fighting.
32
. Paul Duggan, “World War I Soldier Repatriated at Long Last,” The
Washington Post,
Sept. 25, 2006.
33
. Combat deaths were staggering, with Germany losing 1.95 million men; France, 1.8 million; Russia, 1.7 million; Austria-Hungary,
1.05 million; Britain, 1 million; Italy, 533,000; the Ottoman Empire, 325,000; Belgium, 41,000; Serbia, 322,000; and others
some 200,000. Most of the 116,516 American combatants who died were victims of the great influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919,
which claimed some 60,000 U.S. troops and killed 20 million to 40 million worldwide.
34
. Michelle May, “He Died Fighting,”
Aviation History,
January 2008; Renehan, 193–94; Andrew E. Woods, “World War I Soldier Repatriated After 88 Years,” Cantigny First Division
Foundation, Wheaton, IL.
35
. Jeremiah M. Evarts,
Cantigny: A Corner of the War
(New York: The Scribner Press, 1938), 85–96.
36
. Woods; Duggan.
37
. Duggan; “A Doughboy Killed in Action is Home at Last,” The
New York Times
, Sept. 24, 2006.
38
. Florence Cannon, “Our Honored Dead,”
Quartermaster Review,
May-June 1952.
39
. “Lieut. Roosevelt Falls in Air Fight; Believed Killed,” The
New York Times
, July 18, 1918.
40
. Renehan, 198.
41
. Ibid., 5–6.
42
. Ferdinand Cowle Inglehart,
Theodore Roosevelt: The man as I knew him
(New York: The Christian Herald, 1919), 271; “A Solution Perhaps Acceptable,” The
New York Times
, Jan. 1, 1919. After resting near Chamery for almost three decades, Quentin Roosevelt’s body was removed to the American
cemetery at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer in 1945, when he was buried beside his brother Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr., who died
of a heart attack after the Normandy invasion of 1944. Ted junior was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Renehan, 239–40.
43
. Margaret MacMillan,
Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed The World
(New York: Random House, 2002), 3–4.
44
. Erna Risch,
Quartermaster Support of the Army, 1775–1939
(Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 1989), 599–694; Edward Steere, “National Cemeteries and Memorials in Global
Conflict,”
Quartermaster Review,
Dec. 1953, 23–25; statement of Brig. Gen. Peter C. Harris, House Committee on Military Affairs, Feb. 1, 1921.
45
. According to ancient tradition, Athenians carried their honored warriors home for burial, but they made an exception after
the great battle at Marathon, where Thucydides wrote that the dead “were interred on the spot where they fell … for their
singular and extraordinary valor.” This was the standard Theodore Roosevelt cited for leaving his son Quentin buried in Europe.
46
. Memorandum of Adj. Gen. Robert C. Davis for the Commander in Chief, GHQ, 4th Section, G.S., May 6, 1919, NARA RG 407,
File 293.8 to 293.9. Testifying at congressional hearings in February 1921, Maj. Gen. John A. Lejeune, commandant of the Marine
Corps, provided stark testimony about the dehumanizing effect of battle conditions. After the fight for Soissons in July 1918,
“a number of men killed could not be identified,” he told the House Committee on Military Affairs. “This was due to several
causes, the most frequent being the rending apart of men’s bodies by high explosive shells, so that in many instances only
small bits or pieces or fragments of a body could be found. In one case, I remember particularly, a man was wounded and left
in a shell hole and when they went to find him there was nothing there but some small pieces of flesh. A shell had made a
direct hit and torn the body into a thousand pieces.”
47
. Ibid.
48
. Memorandum of Brig. Gen. Peter C. Harris, June 4, 1919, NARA RG 407, Box 566, File 293.8 to 293.9.
49
. Letter from Maj. Gen. Frank McIntyre for War Department News Bureau, July 25, 1919, NARA RG 407, Box 566, File 293.8.
50
. Mrs. L. Mantel to Secretary of War Nelson A. Baker, Dec. 10, 1919, NARA RG 407, Box 565, File 293.8.
51
. G. Kurt Piehler, “The Dead and the Gold Star: American Commemoration of the First World War,” in John R. Gillis, ed.,
Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity
(Prince ton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 174.