A Tomb of unknown soldiers

www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Tomb-of-the-Unknown-Soldier

Action without a name, a “who” attached to it, is meaningless whereas an artwork retains its relevance whether or not we know the master’s name. Let me remind you of the monuments to the Unknown Soldier after World War I. They bear testimony to the need for finding a “who,” an indetifiable somebody whom four years of mass slaughter should have revealed. The unwillingness to resign oneself to the brutal fact that the agent of the war was actually nobody inspired the erection of the monuments to the unknown ones -- that is to all those whom the war had failed to make known, robbing them thereby, not of their achievement, but of their human dignity. ~ Page 305 (Excerpt: Chapter: Labor, Work, Action ~ “Thinking Without Banister” ~ Hannah Arendt

Annemarie, William Sutherland, Walter 7.8.1956 have particularly liked this photo

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Dinesh ^club

Each hour of every day, a sentry at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Nation Cemetery enacts an elegant ritual known as “walking the mat.” The soldier -- known as a “Tomb Guard” -- begins by marching twenty-one steps to the front of the Tomb, turn to the east for twenty-one seconds, faces north for twenty-one seconds. She then marches back the twenty-one steps to her starting place, where she begins the ritual all over again. The number twenty-one reflects one of the highest honors bestowed to the U.S. military, the twenty-one-gun salute. The name of the ritual is drawn from the black mat that was installed because of the identations in the concrete caused by the constant repetition of the ritual since 1937

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier sits on a picturesque hill side of Arlington National Cemetery, ringed by trees. The design has the effect of channeling an onlooker’s view across the Potomac and into the heart of the nation’s capital, Washington, DC. But the monument itself is -- an eleven-foot-tall sarcophagus -- is plain and unassuming. Even the inscription etched into its face is simple and unadorned: “Here rests the honored glory an American soldier known but to God.” The understand words belie the fact that the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is probably the most sacred symbol on the most hallowed ground in the entire United States of America.

Some three million people visit Arlington National Cemetery each year. Almost all of them stop by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Many seat themselves on the steps of the adjacent Arlington memorial Amphitheater, and enjoy a silent reverie that might fairly be described as religious. Those who take time to explore the Amphitheater will find on its walls this Latin phase from the Roman Poet Horace: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” -- “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” ~ 153

2 years ago. Edited 2 years ago.

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