America's First Unknown

Have you visited Arlington Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknowns? Perhaps one of the biggest impressions made is the dedication of the honor guard, keeping watch no matter how bad the weather.

But what about the men inside the tomb? Have you heard how the first man, killed in World War I, found his way to Washington?

Other Allied countries honored an unknown. The French at the Arc de Triomphe, the British at Westminster Abby. A captain in the war, New York Representative Hamilton Fish, introduced legislation for a memorial in the United States,

Army Chief of Staff General Peyton March dismissed the idea. Likewise, Secretary of War Newton Baker believed all dead would be identified, and advised the Senate not to take up the bill. Public support grew, however, and General Pershing lobbied for a tribute. Baker got on board.

The Quartermaster Corps was ordered to select a body buried in France. Every detail of the selection process was planned to assure a body was chosen that could never be identified. From four cemeteries, a body was exhumed and carefully examined for any scrap that could reveal the man’s identity. After three years, he was badly decomposed, and his remains were carefully wrapped in a blanket and placed in a gleaming steel casket.

The four cemeteries represented the four major battles the Americans had fought: Belleau Wood; Bony, in the Somme; Thiaucourt, in the St. Mihiel drive; and Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, in the Meuse-Argonne.

The four identical caskets were taken to Chalons-sur-Marne, in the Champagne region of northeastern France. At the city hall, a French honor guard stood in formation as the caskets were carried inside. For two hours, French citizens passed through, paying final respects to the flag-draped caskets.

That evening, the caskets were shifted around so no one knew which casket came from which cemetery. To further confound the mystery in a game of musical caskets, the remains were then removed from their original caskets and placed in one of the others.

A wounded veteran, Sgt. Edward Younger, was selected to make the final choice. While a French military band played Chopin’s Funeral March, Younger entered the room with a bouquet of white roses. He walked around the caskets, wondering if any held a friend. Finally, he laid the roses on the casket second to his right upon entering the room.

America’s Unknown was transferred to an ebony and silver casket, which was sealed and placed in the city hall lobby. He lay in state until evening, with a French honor guard on one side and Americans on the other, as the public passed through. A funeral cortege, with black horses pulling a caisson, took him to the train station for another hour of laying in state before boarding a train.

After an overnight in Paris, the train arrived in Le Havre for another ceremony with another large crowd of French citizens bearing flowers. An elaborate funeral parade took the Unknown to the USS Olympia, which took him home. A French battleship fired a salute.

More ceremony was accorded the Unknown as he was carried through the streets of Washington. He lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday, November 10, 1921. Between 90,000 to 96,000 came to pay him their respects, leaving mounts of flowers.

On Friday, Armistice Day, he proceeded to Arlington National Cemetery. Among those in the procession was a group of soldiers who had received the Medal of Honor, and a group of Gold Star Mothers, who had lost sons in battle.

After speeches and prayers, church bells rang out the noon hour, signaling for two minutes of nationwide silence. President Harding then spoke to the nation, his words transmitted electrically for the first time to New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

Before the Unknown could finally rest in peace, he received awards. From the United States, he received the nation’s highest honors for military service: the Distinguished Service Cross and the Medal of Honor. He also received the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Victoria Cross of Great Britain, the French Croix de Guerre with Palm, the Italian gold medal for bravery, the Romanian Virtute Militară, the Czechoslovak War Cross, and the Polish Virtuti Militari.

The Unknown Soldier is Unknown But to God. He died one hundred years ago.

Biography of a Palace

Born in 1882, Otto Petschek was a leading banker and industrialist in the new democracy of Czechoslovakia. During the years of World War I, he foresaw Czechoslovak independence and recognized that coal would be vital. He bought as many mines as he could. The Petschek bank’s holdings skyrocketed as the largest holders of lignite and controlled almost half of the brown coal in Europe. Otto was the King of Coal.

He and his parents purchased plots of land in Prague, Czechoslovakia, over several decades to form a five-acre parcel. In 1924, Otto began building himself a palace. It was to be the last palace built in Europe.

He was passionate about architecture and acquired a vast collection of books on the subject. From these and his travels, he planned his palace. It must befit his status as a prominent citizen of Prague, and embody the brilliant future of peace and prosperity after the war to end all wars.

Austria-Hungarian Emperor had offered to elevate Otto’s father Isidor and Uncle Julius to nobility, but they declined, preferring to keep a low profile. They were Jewish, and their family had escaped to Prague from a pogrom in 1876.

Otto was particular about his palace. The first architecture was dismissed when he started the construction in the wrong shape. Otto’s home was not to be a straight rectangle, but was to curve. He continuously sent the second builder alterations that required parts being ripped out, reversed, and redone.

The delays fueled Otto’s temper. He argued with his wife and snapped at his four children. His obsession with the palace and its extravagant furnishings brought him to the edge of ruin. Finally, in 1930, they moved in, but the children weren’t happy.

With the Great Depression, ethnic Czechs opposed Otto for being too German, and German Czechs disparaged him for being too Jewish. The rise of Fascism, and Communists in the mines, further plagued him. Otto died in 1934, having lived in his palace for only four years.

His widow and children escaped Czechoslovakia in 1938. The palace was taken over by the Germans.

Colonel Rudolf Toussaint had been the military attaché in Prague before World War II. He had wanted to be an artist, but his father wanted him to join the military. He favored neither the Führer nor the regime. He hated war, having survived some of the worst of the first war. During this time, the French and British assisted Hitler in dismembering Czechoslovakia, beginning with the Sudetenland. With the country notched on Hitler’s belt, Toussaint was transferred to Belgrade in 1939.

In October, 1941, promoted to general, he returned to Czechoslovakia as the Wehrmacht commander, and Otto’s palace became his home. Otto’s staff, led by majordomo Adolf Pokorny, appreciated their new proprietor with the elegant manners who treated them politely. They kept the palace running smoothly, and Toussaint gave them a free hand.

Two generals had occupied the premises before him, taking away silver and china, and stripping Otto’s wife’s closets. Everything they left behind had been stamped with the Nazi symbol, a stylized eagle clutching a swastika. Remaining in the library were all of Otto’s Jewish books.

In the final days of the war, Toussaint worked hard to keep Prague from being destroyed, violating an order from his superior to gain a ceasefire.

Laurence Steinhardt arrived in July, 1945, as the new US ambassador to Czechoslovakia. The palace was now controlled by the Czech military, and he came to call on them. Pokorny informed him of Otto and the palace’s history.

The Soviets had seized Otto’s home when they liberated Prague, and did more damage in a few days than had occurred in six years of war. They’d also trucked away silver, linen, and porcelain.

Steinhardt requested of President Beneš that the United States rent the palace. Beneš wanted to cultivate US favor, but the State Department refused. Steinhardt rented the palace himself, paying 150,000 Czech crowns per year.

Repairs were hard to obtain through the Communist government. Steinhardt wanted the State Department to buy the palace, but who had the rights to it, the government or Otto’s son Viktor? The ambassador sought to obtain the palace against Czech debts to the US. The Czechs were unlikely to be able to repay the debt, which would be necessary before the US would return the Czechs’ wartime reserve of gold held in US banks. The deal went through, and Mr. Pokorny and his wife now lived on American soil in the little gatehouse.

A pool in the basement.

Former child star Shirley Temple Black was in Prague in 1968 to invite the Czechs to join the International Federation of Multiple Sclerosis Societies. The Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia on the day she was to leave. The event triggered a new career for her in international relations. Twenty-one years later, President George H. W. Bush appointed her as the new ambassador.

In the two decades since her visit, the popular had become downtrodden. Events were happening quickly in Eastern Europe though. Shirley soon became involved in the Velvet Revolution. The people rallied, with her whole-hearted support, and brought down the Communist regime.

Photos U.S. Embassy Prague

Coming in September: The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House by Norman Eisen

Leave Them? Or Bring Them Home?

Should soldiers lie where they fell? That’s the way it used to be. Bringing the dead home from foreign battlefields was expensive and cumbersome.

After World War I, the United States gave families the choice on their loved ones’ disposition. Former President Teddy Roosevelt was adamant. His son Quentin should “continue to lie on the spot where he fell in battle.”

New York Times writer Owen Wister opined, “Out of these holes were being dragged—what? Boys whom their mothers would recognize? No! Thing without shape, at which mothers would collapse.”

Grieving mothers didn’t agree. One wrote to Secretary of State Robert Lansing, “You took my son from me and sent him to war…Now you must as a duty of yours bring my son back to me.”

Families of 46,000 WWI dead—nearly 60%—opted for their boys to come home. After World War II, only one quarter of the families brought the dead home. With American-owned cemeteries that are works of art, many prefer to leave their loved ones among comrades-in-arms.

Where would you want a loved one to be buried?

Luxembourg American Cemetery

Burying the dead where they fell—be it a ditch, someone’s yard, a burned-out tank, the middle of a street—is impractical. Quentin Roosevelt was originally buried in the French village where his plane crashed. Now he lies beside his brother Ted Jr. in Normandy American Cemetery. Surely his father would approve.

Rocket Men

I’ve been fascinated by space since studying the solar system in second grade. If there’s an astronaut book out there, I’ve read it. The latest is Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon, by Robert Kurson.

Apollos 11 and 13 are famous as the first moon landing and the successful failure of a moon landing. Less well-known is Apollo 8, which, in the words of the late Neil Armstrong, was “an enormously bold decision.”

The Saturn 5 moon rocket had flown twice, and the second time was a failure. The lunar module was behind schedule. The Soviets were suspected of attempting a manned lunar flight by December.

The American space program was in trouble. A crew had perished in a spacecraft fire on the pad in 1967. And not only the space program, but all of America was convulsing with anti-war fervor, racial unrest, and assassinations in 1968.

Apollo 7, the first manned flight of the Apollo spacecraft, had yet to fly when George Low proposed a lunar flight in December, four scant months away. Precise navigation and trajectories had to be calculated, the moon rocket fixed, essential systems and software developed.

It was dangerous, but it would keep the space program moving forward toward the goal of landing men on the moon before the end of the decade, and maybe even beat the Soviets.

The optimal launch window would be December 20 or 21, which meant Apollo 8 would be orbiting the moon on Christmas. If the flight was a disaster, Christmas would be forever linked with it.

The crew selected for the daring flight had been training for Apollo 9. Frank Borman had little interest in space exploration. He joined NASA to fight the Soviet Union on the new battlefield of space. His teachers had labeled him as bossy and hardheaded. His peers found him arrogant. His own assessment was, he was among the best of the astronaut corps.

His opposite had been his crewmate on Gemini 7. Jim Lovell had a lifelong dream of exploring space and flying rockets. Folks most remembered his warmth and friendliness.

Rookie Bill Anders rounded out the crew. He was dismayed by their assignment to Apollo 8. He’d been training to be a lunar module pilot. With no LM, he’d be switched to command module pilot, and his future chances of walking on the moon disappeared.

The flight of Apollo 8 was a resounding success. And 1968 ended on a bright, shining note.

Who’s On Your Guest List?

I’ve been reading Lady in Red: An Intimate Portrait of Nancy Reagan by Sheila Tate. Nancy was often portrayed as a shrew, but her former press secretary does a great job of refuting that reputation.

The State Dinners of the Reagan years are covered, and that got me to thinking. If I could invite people to a State Dinner, who would I invite?

It’s no secret; astronauts fascinate me. I’ll start there. Jim Lovell of Apollos 8 and 13, the first manned flight around the moon and the successful failure. Moon walker Charlie Duke, who has said, “Walking on the moon was three days, but walking with Jesus is forever.” Shuttle astronaut Tamara Jernigan, veteran of five flights, doctorate in astronomy, my age.

An author, Robin Jones Gunn. I’ve enjoyed her books and I’ve was privileged to hear her speak. She’s the only conference keynote speaker whose words I still remember.

As a World War II writer, I need to have a WWII veteran, George H. W. Bush, a naval pilot whose presidential legacy should improve on historical assessment.

And his daughter-in-law, librarian Laura Bush. (Her husband, of course, is included.)

Sports figures are always popular. Green Bay Packer quarterback Bart Starr would probably have to decline due to poor health, but he’s been a towering figure, on the field and off. Figure skaters Paul Wylie and Scott Hamilton are inspiring.

Actors were very popular during the Reagan years naturally, with both of them coming from that line of work. I doubt if Doris Day would want to travel across country, but she’d get an invitation. So would Tom Hanks.

Marine artist Christian Riese Lassen is a possibility. I love his seascapes.

And Max Lucado.

Who would be on your guest list?

End of the War Incredulities

Nicholas Best wrote Seven Days of Infamy, that I featured last week. He also wrote Five Days That Shocked the World. He’s a great storyteller, and this book is filled with accounts from the end of the war in Europe. For instance…

The British picketed a London cinema that showed the first film of the concentration camps. During World War I, British propagandists had spread the report that Germans were melting down corpses for fat. Now with rumors of shrunken heads and lampshades made from human skin, they were outraged that their own government was lying to them again.

When Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were captured by partisans, one of the guards spied on Clara as she washed up that night. He reported to his fellow guard that she had a magnificent physique; no wonder Il Duce kept her as his mistress.

Clara wouldn’t have been killed with Mussolini. She was told to get away from him when he was stood against a wall. Instead, she clung to him, and died.

At the end, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop discovered he had no friends, pompous and insufferably overbearing as he was. No important party members wanted anything to do with him. He’d heard the British spoke of hanging Nazi leaders, but Ribbentrop couldn’t believe they were serious. Hanging was for criminals and murderers, not for people like him, not the leaders of a nation.

Like Ribbentrop, Heinrich Himmler had failed to make plans for himself. Rather than fleeing, he was paralyzed with grief, begging an astrologer to tell him what to do. He thought of going to Czechoslovakia where the army was still in control. The astrologer, who had been imprisoned and persecuted by the Nazis, told him the stars didn’t look good for Czechoslovakia. Himmler still wanted to become the new leader of Germany, the man the Allies would have to deal with if they wanted peace. Both he and Ribbentrop believed they would be treated with respect and consideration by the western allies. Many Nazis were convinced the allies would appreciated their services in the continuing struggle with the Russians.

A large consignment of lipstick arrived at Belsen concentration camp. It went far is raising the morale among the women prisoners. They remembered they’d once been feminine and might be so again someday.

The Belsen commandant dumbfounded British officers. He was totally blind to the realities of what happened in the camp. It never occurred to him that the Allies would not like what they found there. He’d just done what he’d been told to do. Many sadistic guards found talk of the death penalty for them hard to believe. They’d broken no German laws, and the Allies were civilized people.

Among those working at Belsen were Georg Will, who managed the camp cinema, and his wife Liesel, who ran the canteen, supplying comforts to the SS and keeping them entertained. They lived well amongst the dying. Now they wondered if they would have a price to pay, even though they’d committed no atrocities. They relied on a trump card. Liesel’s younger sister had renounced her German citizenship and become an American and sang for the troops. Surely Captain Marlene Dietrich wouldn’t let her kin suffer.

Nazi wives were often fatter than other German women, because they’d eaten better during the war. This was a disadvantage when Berlin fell. The Russians preferred women with flesh on them, and raped them first.

The Russians and the Americans thought the Germany countryside they traveled through was some of the prettiest they’d ever seen. They found it hard to understand why the Germans wanted to invade so many other countries when their own was so rich and beautiful.

I’m reminded of a line from Hogan’s Heroes spoken by Corporal Louis LeBeau, played by Robert Clary, who spent time in a real concentration camp because he’s Jewish. “It’s a crazy war.”

Pearl Harbor Promptings

A new book, Seven Days of Infamy: Pearl Harbor Across the World, is described as a collection of remembrances of mostly famous characters not usually associated with the attack on Pearl Harbor. It offers anecdotes I’d never heard before.

Actress Greer Garson didn’t want the role of Mrs. Miniver. Portraying a mom of a grown-up son was professional suicide. Louis Mayer strong-armed her into signing on. It proved to be her greatest film.

Mary Astor didn’t like kissing Humphrey Bogart. A botched lip surgery made him a very slobbery kisser.

The Japanese knew their China “adventure” was a mistake and very unpopular at home, but they couldn’t pull out without losing face. Certainly they wouldn’t because the United States told them to.

If Honolulu radio station KGMB played music all night long, military aircraft were expected to arrive early the next morning. The air force paid for this service so planes could home in on their signal. Of course, so could the Japanese attack force.

At Schofield air field, a medical officer stood ready to spray an incoming flight of B-17s with insecticide to kill any bugs as soon as they touched down.

Author John Steinbeck wrote a play about a European town occupied by Germans for the Foreign Information Service to combat German propaganda. He dictated the play to a secretary who made significant changes of her own to the script, leaving out portions about the Germans she didn’t like. Turns out she was a Nazi sympathizer actively supporting Hitler.

The British were ecstatic over the attack on Pearl. They felt no outrage at the Japanese, no sympathy for the American dead, only pleasure that America was now in the war. The British ambassador, Lord Halifax, was sent to America to persuade Americans to join the war, which proved to be very much an uphill task. He was amazed at the virulence of anti-British feeling across the country. America Firsters in Detroit, convinced the British wanted America to fight to defend their empire, pelted him with eggs and tomatoes.

Many Americans were pleased the attack brought them into the war. Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease envoy to Britain, Averell Harriman, was bitter toward isolationists. He hoped American cities would be blitzed to wake people up.

Britain had no diplomatic relations with Hungary, so the American ambassador in Budapest handled their affairs. That included delivering their declaration of war. The British had no quarrel with Hungary, but their Russian allies, bitter over Hungarian soldiers on the Russian front, pressured them into the declaration.

A week later, the Hungarian prime minister/foreign minister returned the favor to the American ambassador. At Germany’s insistence, Hungary declared war on the US.

Spain was pleased with the attack, another success of the German-Italian-Japanese Axis that Spain had all but joined. Franco sent a congratulatory telegram to Tokyo. He presumed the American entry into the war would be confined to the Pacific.

The Japanese high command entertained far-fetched ideas in their euphoria after their success, such as an amalgamation of Alaska, Alberta, British Columbia, and Washington State in a new Japanese-controlled country after they won the war.

How much of this did you know?