#pershing

Chief Plenty Coups of the Crow Nation, pictured at the burial of the Unknown Soldier.  The sarcophagus familiar to modern visitors was not completed until 1931.

November 11 1921, Arlington–On Armistice Day 1920, the United Kingdom and France had both buried unknown soldiers in places of honor–the former in Westminster Abbey, the latter under the Arc de Triomphe.  In 1921, the United States followed suit.  An unknown soldier was transported back across the Atlantic from France, where he laid in state in the Capitol rotunda for two days.  On Armistice Day, the same day that the peace treaty with Germany would finally enter into effect, the casket was at the front of a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue as far as the White House, followed on foot by President Harding and General Pershing.  

Wilson in a carriage at the end of the procession down Pennsylvania Avenue.

At the end of the procession were Woodrow and Edith Wilson in a rented carriage.  The New York World wrote that the “pale face of the man who gave his health and strength to uphold the same ideals for which the Unknown Soldier died seemingly unleashed the pent-up emotions of the watchers.”  Wilson did not continue on to Arlington, due to a combination of his health concerns preventing him from climbing the stairs at the amphitheater there, and Harding’s desire not to be upstaged by his predecessor.

General Jacques of Belgium, General Diaz of Italy, Marshal Foch of France, General Pershing of the United States, and Admiral Beatty of the United Kingdom, pictures at the dedication of the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City on November 1.

At the service in Arlington, President Harding gave a brief speech.  He was followed by General Jacques of Belgium, Admiral Beatty (who presented the Unknown Soldier with the Victoria Cross), Marshal Foch, and General Diaz.  The four military men were at the end of a tour of the United States, along with General Pershing, which also included the groundbreaking of the Liberty Memorial (now the National World War I Memorial) in Kansas City on November 1.  Also in attendance were a large number of foreign civilian notables, among them Arthur Balfour and French PM Briand, who were in Washington for the start of the Washington Naval Conference on arms limitation the next day.

The burial service ended with a brief statement by Chief Plenty Coups of the Crow Nation, the sounding of “Taps” on a bugle, and a twenty-one gun salute.

Sources include: Patricia O’Toole, The Moralist (includes image credit for the picture of Wilson).