99% Invisible - 344- The Known Unknown [rebroadcast]

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Roman note: This is one of my favorite episodes of all time. Should be a movie. Enjoy!The tradition of the Tomb of the Unknowns goes back only about a century, but it has become one of the most solemn and reverential monuments. When President Reagan added the remains of an unknown serviceman who died in combat in Vietnam to the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery in 1984, it was the only set of remains that couldn’t be identified from the war. Now, thankfully, there will never likely be a soldier who dies in battle whose body can’t be identified. And as a result of DNA technology, even the unknowns currently interred in the tomb can be positively identified.The Known Unknown

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. I fell of Americans. Memorial Day is a day of ceremonies and speeches. Throughout America today we honor the death of our wars. Whatever you think about Ronald Reagan, they called him the great communicator for a reason. The unknown soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. On that memorial day, Reagan was eulogizing the remains of an unidentified servicemember from the Vietnam War.

The remains would be intumed alongside three other unknown service members from World War I and II and the Korean War. It was a big event. That's our own Joe Rosenberg. A horse-drawn carriage brought the casket to the tomb past 250,000 onlookers, including hundreds of veterans who emerged out of the crowd to walk behind the remains on their way to Arlington. The most powerful part though, soon Reagan talks about who this unknown soldier including hundreds of veterans who emerged out of the crowd to walk behind the remains on their way to Arlington. The most powerful part, though, is when Reagan talks about who this unknown soldier

might have been. Did he play on some street in a great American city? Or did he work with side his father on a farm out in America's heartland? Did he marry? Did he have children? Did he look expectantly to return to a bride? We'll never know the answers to these questions about his life.

As Reagan spoke, etched on the side of the tomb itself with words known but to God, it's all really moving, even knowing what we know now. Which is that although the person being buried that day might have been unknown to the public, a lot about his identity actually was known. The government likely even knew that he had a family who would like to have his body back, but they buried him anyway.

How to honor unidentified remains has always been one of the great conundrums of war. The Romans were fond of honoring them with an empty sarcophagus. After the Civil War, the Union buried 2,111 soldiers in a mass grave in Arlington that they purposefully built on top of Robert E. Lee's Rose Garden. It wasn't until the 20th century that it occurred to anyone to bury a single unknown soldier in a public setting. This sort of memorialization came about from World War One. This is Robert Poole.

He's a former executive editor for National Geographic, who wrote a book about Arlington called On Hallowed Ground. And he says World War One ushered in an era of total war and mass participation, in which the combatants on both sides were mostly ordinary citizens. Anonymous every man often rendered literally anonymous amidst the violence of the Western Front. Everything about the war, not only the numbers, but the nature of it, was dehumanizing. Nobody who went through that war was ever the same again.

And there was a British chaplain who was in the worst of the fighting on the front lines named David Ralton. Ralton would spend his nights conducting funeral services over the remains of soldiers ripped apart by shell fire, often burying them on the spot, sometimes unmask and the giant craters the shells had left behind. And while he was there, he thought about how terrible it was that there were these people who were essentially forgotten buried in their graves and nobody would ever remember them, and that there should be something better than that for them. And it was around this time that David Rilton came across a temporary grave, a few miles behind the front, marked by a cross bearing the name of a regiment and the words, an unknown British soldier. And he realized.

If you had a mass grave with 2,000 people in it, then it's a mass grave with 2,000 people in it. It's not an individual who had a life. Something about having a particular person, makes it more real, more human. After the war, Railton advocated for a grave bearing the body of a single soldier to bring the impossibly large tragedy down to a human scale. The soldiers in an imidity would allow each person

who came to the grave to project whatever was was most important to them onto the mystery. It didn't matter if you wanted to honor all those who served, or merely those who died, those who volunteered, or those who were drafted, or even whether you were for the war or against it. Everyone was free to mourn in their own way. And sure enough, when Britain dedicated the grave of an unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey in 1920. It was an overnight success.

The dedication alone attracted so many mourners, the line for viewing lasted 10 days. And Britain's unknown warrior wasn't the only one. Britain, France, Romania, Italy, everybody at the same time jumped on this idea. Over 50 countries would end up building similar memorials, in part because the formula was so easy to follow. All you needed was the body of a single unknown soldier. The American memorial is especially beautiful. It sits at the top of a hill that overlooks the rest of Arlington Cemetery.

In starting in 1937, it has been watched over day and night without a single interruption by a lone guard, forever marching back and forth in front of the tomb. No one knows which service the remains are from. So instead of soldier or sailor or marine, they're simply referred to as the unknown. In fact, anything that narrows the scope of who this person could be, including where exactly they were found, is purposefully withheld from the public in order to make sure

that they represent everyone who fought. The tomb has become one of the Washington DC areas biggest tourist attractions. But in 1956, we made one small seemingly innocent change to the formula of the unknown that would end up proving tricky. We began adding a new set of unidentified remains for every subsequent war. World War 2, Korea, and eventually Vietnam. Each war would get their own unknown. Which made sense there were lots of unknowns to choose from at least at first in World War One There were something like 1648

unknowns World War two The unknowns were 8,526 a Korean War 848 and then the the last war in which we had an unknown Vietnam. 4. Thanks to improved battlefield evacuation tactics, the Vietnam War produced only four sets of unidentified remains that could potentially go into the tomb.

And then, as more information about those remains was discovered. It was down to 3, then down to two, then down to one. One set of remains for all of Vietnam, who was unknown. That single set of remains, the one Reagan eulogized in that movie in ceremony in 1984, in which was presented to the public as the unknown soldier was referred to internally as X26. But his actual name was Michael Blassie. There's not supposed to be favorites in families, right? This is Patricia Blassie.

But the first born just has something about them. Michael Blassie was Patricia's oldest brother. He was the oldest of five actually in the Blassie family. So growing up in St. Louis in the 1960s and 70s, she looked up to him. He was actually very good at anything that he did. Trisha says that Michael was constantly bouncing between activities, mastering each one

before moving on to the next school, music, sports. You know, I think he could have done whatever he wanted to, but then he received an appointment to the Air Force, and he fell in love with flying at the Academy. At flight school, Michael was assigned to fly a ground attack aircraft known as the A37, dubbed the Dragonfly, or sometimes the Super Tweet. It was designed to fly low over its target. Pilots loved it, because closer to the ground, the landscape

rushing by, the sense of flight, speed, of combat, was heightened. To the uninitiated, of course, all these things made flying the A-37 downright terrifying. But I don't remember Michael ever saying anything about being afraid of it. And so once he graduated, it was off to pilot training. Then it from there, it was off to survival training and from there, it was off to Vietnam. And I remember seeing him get on the aircraft in St. Louis, and I remember him looking back and waving to us with that beautiful smile.

And I just remember thinking, oh, we'll see him again. I think we all did. By 1972, when Michael Blassie was deployed, America's military presence in Southeast Asia was shrinking rapidly. There were fewer than 25,000 U.S. servicemen left in Vietnam, as opposed to over 500,000 who had been deployed by the late 1960s.

The war was, in effect, winding down, but it was still dangerous and there was still a lot of combat going on. This is Bill Thomas. He's a reporter who wrote about Michael Blassy for the Washington Post. And he says that the American servicemen who remained behind were stretched then. They had to do a lot with a little. And that meant Michael was going to see a lot of combat. He arrived in Vietnam in January of 72.

And by May of 1972? He had flown something like 130 missions. So virtually almost every day, he had at least one combat, sometimes two combat missions. So, but virtually almost every day, he had at least one combat, sometimes two combat missions. The A37 that Michael flew had a good record up to that point in Vietnam, only if you had gotten hit. But when they were hit, things could get ugly fast. Because it could take all kinds of fire, I mean, you're flying 400 feet in the air and you get hit, you know, it can be able to parachute out of the plane.

So that made it very dangerous. Michael would always take off in land from a protected air base near Saigon. But his missions had him flying over a lot of dangerous places. And the most dangerous was arguably a town in South Vietnam called An Loc. In 1972, An Loc was occupied by the South Vietnamese Vietnamese military along with a handful of American advisors, but it was under siege by an invading North Vietnamese army. The siege lasted a very, very long time. It went on for months and I encountered a guy who was in analog, Chris Calhoun. And he see described it as like a scene out of apocalypse now.

The city of Anlock was totally leveled at look like Hiroshima. This is Chris Calhoun. He was stationed in Anlock as an army ranger during the majority of the siege. And he often resorted to analogies as a way of explaining just how awful it was there. At one point, he described the South Vietnamese wounded

with their meager medical support as looking like something out of the Civil War. At one point, he described the South Vietnamese wounded with their meager medical support as looking like something out of the Civil War. Anlock was completely cut off from the rest of the world. We got food and ammunition by parachute drop every day. We were under constant shell fire. Chris's duty in the midst of all this chaos was to call in air strikes. And it was Michael Blasie's quadrant that was providing the air support.

They were flying bombing runs over and lock nearly every day. Michael and Chris never actually spoke one-on-one. Their time there didn't quite overlap. But Chris did get to know a lot of Michael squadron mates really well. And we would talk on a radio. They'd read me stars and stripes. Stars and stripes is the US military's independently run daily paper. Why would they read you stars and stripes? Well, it was my only contact with the outside world. But in Anlock, they would be over us almost 24 hours a day.

And they kept the North Vietnamese off our back. So these were people who I owed my life to. And it was on one of these bombing runs, keeping the North Vietnamese off their backs, that Michael Blassie flew his 130-second in a final mission. We'll never know exactly what happened on May 11, 1972. Witnesses recall that day's fighting as being particularly intense and chaotic. So a lot of what we do know comes from Blassie's commanding officer, who's flying into plane alongside Blassie's. And he said, the thing he remembered most of all was how bright everything was.

The sky would have been filled with various planes and helicopters, each going after a separate target, but also tracer rounds being fired from multiple enemy aircraft guns. And they were taking ground fire the whole time, but because they were flying into the sun, they couldn't see where it was coming from. So this just added to the confusion of the battle. In somewhere in the midst of the blinding sun

and the chaos and confusion, Michael's plane was hit by ground fire. And remember, Michael's plane was designed to fly low. When he got hit, he was no more than 500 feet above the ground. hit by ground fire. And remember, Michael's plane was designed to fly low. When he got hit, he was no more than 500 feet above the ground. And he had lost control of the plane. Blosset's plane began streaming fuel, inverted, and then disappeared into the jungle below.

And there was no distress signal, which indicates that the pilot had probably been killed instantly. Michael's plane had crashed deep in North Vietnamese held territory. A helicopter team tried to get to the crash site, but due to heavy enemy fire, they'd leave after just a few minutes, empty handed. After that, there didn't seem to be any way to get to the site or find out exactly what would have happened. Michael Blassie was declared missing in action and presumed dead.

The Blassie family was informed that Michael's body would not be coming home. But with, I don't, it's the strangest thing that when there is no body, there is no gathering. When Michael died, it wasn't the first time Patricia had to deal with the loss of a close family member. Both her parents came from big families, lots of aunts and uncles, lots of funerals. And she says that anytime someone passed away, they processed it by gathering together at the funeral and just talking about the person's life, who they were, how much everyone missed them.

But this time, without a body to place beneath the tombstone, the family opted not to have a funeral. I mean, there was a memorial gathering, but it still wasn't the same. We didn't talk about it. We didn't... everyone just was... I remember it's just like quiet. And then it was just like, well, we'll go on with our lives and try to be normal. Well, it wasn't normal.

Patricia says that Michael's death, or rather the not talking about Michael's death, ended up putting a strain on her parents' marriage. They later separated, and Patricia joined the Air Force, eventually attaining the rank of Colonel. Life, in other words, went on, even as the topic of Michael sat undiscussed and unfinished. It was just sort of put on over on a shelf, this thing that we didn't get to deal with. And it didn't resurrect itself until 26 years later after he was killed. We realized where he was. In 1994, more than two decades after Michael had been killed, both Patricia and her mother received a phone call from a complete stranger.

And he said, I'm Ted Sampley, and I am a former Green Beret who served in Vietnam. Ted Sampley has since passed away, but back then he was sort of this minor celebrity, championed the cause of Vietnam POWs in MIAs. He was convinced the government wasn't telling veterans everything it knew, and he was sort of this minor celebrity, championed the cause of Vietnam POWs in MIAs. He was convinced the government wasn't telling veterans everything it knew, and he was calling Patricia without landish theory about Michael's death. I mean, there wasn't anything in his voice that was like angry or, you know, he would just matter a fact.

But he said, I started researching who was shot down on May 11th, 1972, and, you know know what was found with them and would that be on a fighter aircraft. His evidence was circumstantial and his logic was long-winded. But he said I believe your brothers in the tomb of the unknowns. But the body from Vietnam that President Reagan had buried with pomp and ceremony in 1984 wasn't unknown at all. That it wasn't fact. Michael. At first Patricia didn't know what to make of any of this. As far as she

knew, Michael's body had never even been recovered. And remember she herself was in the Air Force. So after getting off the phone with Sampley, she called up the Air Force casualty office and asked, could this be true? Could Michael be in the tomb of the Unknown Soldier? And they said by no means is there anything to substantiate that your brother's in the tomb? And I said, well, you know what? Thank you very much, because that is the craziest story that I could ever imagine that a known soldier was in the tomb of the unknowns. I mean, I don't know. That's the craziest.

It's just, it just didn't make sense. I thought this is the best example of internet conspiracy garbage I've seen to date. This is Vince Gonzalez. He was a young reporter at CBS Denver when he accidentally came across a post Ted Sampley had made on the internet about his theory that Michael Blassie had been buried in the two of the unknowns. This was in 1997, three years after the phone call with Patricia. And he says, yeah, of course, at first he totally dismissed it. And I thought, I'm going to print it out, I'm going to show it to college classes when

I visit and say, this is why we say don't believe everything you read on the internet. And I did that. I printed it out, had it on my desk at CBS, and then one evening I sat down and started reading it, and I thought, well, maybe I should check this out. Sampley had no direct evidence proving that Michael Blossy was in the tomb, but that didn't make him wrong.

Whatever was known about the remains of the Vietnam unknown had never been revealed. It was all part of the effort to make sure that the unknown could represent everyone who ever fought in the war. But Sampley had come across some secondhand accounts, suggesting that America's only set of unknown remains from Vietnam had been recovered from an aircraft

that had been shot down in 1972. And he had only been able to find one missing plane that fully matched the description. Michael Blassies. What still made it hard to believe was that the government was not supposed to bury anyone in the tomb. If there was a chance he could be identified like this. So Vince called a few sources in the military, not asking any hard questions.

Just wondering, almost kind of embarrassed. Could the government possibly bury a known person in the tomb of the unknowns and not tell anyone? One conversation in particular told me there was an attitude within some parts of the military that might allow something like this to happen. I called up a researcher in the Pentagon and I tried to talk really around the issue. I didn't want to let them know what I was working on, but I finally said said what if you could figure out who this was What if we could go in and identify this person and give them back to his family and his response was oh that would never happen And I said but that would be the truth and he said well the truth doesn't matter

He's not a human being anymore. He's a symbol in America's most sacred military shrine and we would never let that happen So I wrote down the truth doesn't matter on a posted note stuck it to my computer console symbol in America's most sacred military shrine and we would never let that happen. So I wrote down the truth doesn't matter on a post-it note, stuck it to my computer console and I thought, if there's a chance, you could figure out who this is and give him back to his family, you should do it. Vince began filing FOIA requests, trying to get his hands on any government document he could about Michael Blassy. But there were things I wanted that only family members could get, where you needed an affidavit.

So that was when I reached out to the Blassy family. Vince got in touch with Patricia and laid out his case, fact by fact, pattern by pattern. And Vince and I started talking and I called my mom and I said, you know what? It's somebody. And if it's Michael, you know, we need to pursue it. Which eventually gave Vince the leeway to file yet another FOIA request. Nothing special. Just some documents related to Michael Blassie from an Air Force base in Texas.

Not mentioning the tomb, not mentioning the unknown soldier, just asking for anything with Michael Blassie's name in it. And I got back this really thick envelope, a padded envelope, which is more than I think I'd gotten back from any other request. And I was actually back in Denver at that point, sitting in the newsroom, and I opened it up, and I was paging through it, page after page,

and going, oh my god, this is it. Because this wasn't just some small file containing a good lead or a tantalizing clue. These were military documents showing the entire unknown soldier selection process. When combined with his earlier research, the documents Vince Gonzales now held in his hands, painted a nearly complete picture of what the government knew regarding the identity of the unknown soldier, starting with something very important that they had known almost from the beginning.

That Michael Blassey's remains had been recovered in Vietnam, and that they'd been recovered by Chris Calhoun, the Army Ranger stationed in the unlock. You know, I don't really know exactly what went down, but I do know that everything pointed to me. Now, remember Calhoun didn't know Blassey personally, but he was friends with a bunch of the other pilots in Michael Squadron. They were the guys reading the newspaper to Calhoun over the radio, and it was on one of those lonely nights just chatting that they started telling him about Michael. The

only thing I knew was they asked me that one of their squadron mates had been shot down. They gave me the coordinates and they wanted to know if we could get the body back. This was in October of 1972, over five months since Blassey's plane had disappeared into the jungle. They knew they were asking a lot. So I think if that rapport wasn't there, then the request would have never come and I would have never acted on it. Chris took the matter to his regimental commander who assembled a special South Vietnamese patrol

dressed up as the enemy. In North Vietnamese uniforms with North Vietnamese weapons and they went out in No Man's land and they found the wreckage and they brought back to me what was left of the remains of Michael Blassy in a black plastic bag. The remains did not consist of much, just six bones, but they also brought back other evidence. An uninflated life raft was serial numbers, a parachute, part of Michael's flight suit, and critically his wallet. And that was a good shape. Pictures of him, pictures of Michael's flight suit, and critically his wallet. And that was good shape. Pictures of him, pictures of his family, pictures of his sister. There was no question.

The remains were Michael's. Chris then handed the bag with everything in it, off to the crew chief of the week's one outgoing helicopter. But he got the bag. The crew chief got the bag. And when you saw the remains, I go away in the chopper. I mean, what was your... Well, we were sending him home to his family.

You know, we were doing what was right. And of course, those South Vietnamese risks are lives to, you know. Get his body from that wreckage. And he deserved to go home. After that, Christa just assumed that Michael's remains would be returning to his family. But according to Vince's documents, that's not what happened. The remains, along with the survival gear, would eventually arrive at the Army's central identification laboratory in Hawaii.

But not before the wallet, containing the ID that could length the bones to Blassy went missing. Even though he knew about the missing wallet, the head of the lab using now outdated techniques determined that the remains did not match Michael Blassy's physical description. Instead, they were simply designated as BTB, believed to be Michael Blassy. Without a positive match due to army policy, the Blassie family could not even be told that any remains had been found. Meanwhile, pressure began to mount in the Pentagon

to place a veteran from Vietnam in the tomb of the unknown soldier. It was politics, but it was also patriotism. While there was a crass political angle to do this, to make nice with the Vietnam veterans, there was also a feeling of we need to get someone in that tomb so the nation can heal around this issue. But by the 1980s, there was only one set of unidentified remains left.

The ones labeled believe to be Michael Blassie. So in 1980, the lab was ordered to strip their remains of their formal connection with Blassie and give them the anonymous designation X-26. And in 1984, with the Reagan administration eager to put someone on the tune before election day, they were told to prepare X-26 for burial. And I spoke with technicians at the Army Lab later who said, we gave them every answer possible to say, don't do this. The technology is coming. This is not an unknown set of remains. The lab technicians told the Pentagon

that new DNA-based technology was being developed that would allow the remains to be conclusively identified. They also pointed to the artifacts, like the flight suit and the life raft, and a record of the missing wallet, all of which suggested that their remains were most likely glasses. But the push to put a Vietnam unknown in the tomb overrode that, and a general from the army was sent to tell them, everybody better get the hell out of the way.

And that's when Michael Blassy went into the tomb. I felt of Americans Memorial Day is a day of ceremony and speeches. Throughout America today we honor the death of our wars. In its when President Reagan, who may not have known that any of this had happened, gave a speech at a burial in Arlington invoking a powerful mystery. Did he marry? Did he have children? Did he look expectantly to return? To a bride? history.

The file that Vince discovered 13 years later in 1997 showed that there had never been any mystery at all. Armed with the documents, he teamed up with veteran CBS correspondent Eric Engberg. They talked to anyone they could find who was involved in the unknown selection process. And when they felt they were ready, they presented their findings to Patricia Blasey. And I asked my mom to call a family meeting. And we sat down and we looked at the documents together. And we discussed, you know, what should we do? Patricia wanted to go public with Vince and CBS. Her older sister Judy, if anything, was even more eager to blow the lid off the whole thing.

But George, the youngest brother, Boked. Michael was buried in a place of honor, he pointed out. Maybe he could stay there and serve as the unknown for everyone else who's loved to ones and never come back. But the tiebreaker was Michael's mother, Jean. She's a very, it was a very patient woman and she listened to all of the opinions

of her children, her living children and waited until we were done with our banterine or whatever, and she just looked at us and she said, I want to bring my son home. This is the CBS Evening News. Tonight the results of an Ion America investigation lasting over half a year. Is it possible the government knows the identity of a Vietnam war casualty buried at the tomb of the unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery, but deliberately kept its secret from the public and even his own family? A seven-month CBS news investigation has found evidence of a long-running cover-up.

What followed wasn't just one story on the evening news. It was more like a blizzard of stories. There are significant new developments tonight in the exclusive story that CBS used first broke on this broadcast in January. CBS's Vince Gonzalez uncovered new evidence and update tonight of our exclusive Ion America investigation. I think we did 15 or 18 pieces on this. It just was non-stop. And

tonight is Eric Ngber tells us there's more. Because CBS and the Blassy family didn't just want the world to know that Michael Blassy was in the tomb. They wanted the Pentagon to do something about it. Michael Blassy's sister Pat says the family wants the remains tested even if by some chance they aren't identified as Michael. Now Congress wants to investigate. If it's Michael, we want to bring him home. At a certain point, they called us up and they said, you're killin' us.

And day or two later, they announced the tomb would be opened and the remains were going to be tested. On May 14, 1998, the Department of Defense disinterred the remains of the Vietnam veteran from the tomb of the unknown soldier. DNA samples were taken from Michael's mother Jane and his sister Judy and tested against the remains. They were a match. And after the scientists were finished talking to my mother, we were wrapping things up because my mother had to sign some papers and things like that. And then all of a sudden a man walked

up and said, well, when we opened the tomb to do the DNA test, Michael's artifacts were in the tomb with him. And what would you like us to do with them? The life raft and other items had been found at the crash in 1972 had been the only physical evidence aside from the missing wallet that could have tied the remains to Michael Blassy. Whether it was to preserve the artifacts or to hide them. Someone at the Army Lab in Hawaii had put them where no one would ever think to look in the casket with Michael. They had been sitting in the tomb underneath the guards and the crowds and the Arlington soil for 14 years.

They were in a box and so after we buried Michael in St. Louis. There was a reception and then once everyone left. We stood around the table and my brother George opened up the box and started pulling out the life raft, portions of his parachute, portions of his flight suit. And I have him with me today. I keep him with me. But I was really glad to have them. Today, there is no body representing Vietnam at the tomb of the unknowns.

And thanks to improved forensics, there will likely never be an unknown from Iraq, or Afghanistan, or any future war. The military is now in the process of using the DNA from the families of missing veterans to identify over 650 sets of unknown remains from the Korean War. It's conceivable that they could use the same techniques

on the Korean unknown inside the tomb. The unknowns from World War I and World War II are safe for now, but in the era of 23 and me, well, let's just say anything's possible. If you go to Arlington today, the tomb of the unknowns is still there, minus the remains for Vietnam. The tourists still take pictures on their phones, and the guards still make their rounds in perfect,

silent precision. Day and night, even when no one is watching. And it really is beautiful. You should go see it. But the heyday of this unique form of remembrance has come to an end. Does that sadden you? Like does it sadden you that there is no unknown for Vietnam anymore? I can't say that it saddens me. I can't say that it saddens me.

I can't say that. I respect the timidly unknowns. But in order to have an unknown, they made one. They took Michael's name away from him. To satisfy something that I understand was very important to our nation. But the first thing that you and I did when we met one another over the phone Hi, I'm Patricia or I'm Pat. Hi, I'm Joe. A name is very, very important.

Patricia still visits the tomb. She says she's not sure why she does it, but it means that she's gotten to know some of the guards. One of them once told her that their mission, guarding the unknowns, is never really over. But that in Michael's case, just this once, their mission was completed. They were just looking out for him, until he could go home. Joe talks me through the very precise ceremony that has evolved at the tomb of the unknown.

After this. Okay, Roman. So when I was a little kid, my parents, and I think my grandparents who lived just outside of Washington, DC, they took me to Arlington, Cemetery to see the tomb of the unknown soldier. And I remember it really well, and I have to say the reason I remember it so well, and the reason I became interested in the tomb again more recently is not the mysterious soldier in the tomb projecting whatever you want onto his anonymity.

It's actually the guard. And it's not so much the idea of the guard keeping vigil like this solemn duty as much as it is what the guard is physically doing. And what they're doing most of the time is just taking 21 steps to the left, turning, stopping for 21 seconds, then turning and stopping for another 21 seconds, then taking 21 steps to the right, then stopping again, turning again, stopping again, stepping again, over and over and over, until there's a guard change every 30 minutes to an hour.

That sounds very, very precise. Yeah, and actually, that's the thing, he's like, you say that, but you have no life Let me sell you on this by just showing you a video of what this looks like. This is from a guard change Nice design touch. The stripes on the legs really sell the synchronization. So as regimented as I was imagining it, it is even more so. It is like the innards of a Swiss clock, the way that they move together and then they move in time is stunning.

Yeah, no. And one of the things I kind of really appreciate it is just the way, like, if you have like a Swiss clock that is kind of ticking away with precision, it hasn't this way of magnifying the silence around it. There's a kind of weird silence to it. And apparently, to get this right, they train and practice for months in a separate facility. Wow. And it's almost meditative. Like you said, like inside of the silence, when you hear the clicking of their shoes and their heels together, you do get this space that's created inside of it that's very meditative. The word that just instantly came to mind is like zen.

You watch the marching back and forth and the guards when they're doing it, they don't seem lost in the performance. Instead, at every step, they are totally present. They are completely aware of their surroundings. They are truly doing nothing but this. Unless you start laughing. Oh. It is requested that all visitors

maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times. Hopefully, Moly. I don't want to cross that guy at all. No, it's really terrifying. It just bursts out of nowhere. This is what happens if you get too rowdy or you laugh at the tomb of the unknown. There's more. There's this whole subgenre of YouTube videos of like tomb guards yelling at yelling at

visitors. Oh, good. they deserve it. Oh yeah, let's hear it. So like, let's find another one. They've requested it all for you to remain behind the change of rail. It's requested it all for you to remain behind the change of rails. It's like, and like, but they can just vary it up. They can like vary their tone.

They can switch up the words a little bit. I think it depends on the guard. It depends on there. Maybe they're mood that day. The holy moly. So here's a mo, here's a mo words a little bit. I think it depends on the the guard. It depends on there Maybe they're mood that day Holy moly, so here's it. Here's a moor curt one Oh, I love it. Just let them have it and this is this is one where they they Reprimand some parents Visitors must keep their children behind the great trains and rails

Thank you Little Billy being y yanks back real fast. That happened to me. There's other videos where you see like people trying to sneak in, like kind of behind the rails, you like you get a view of them, and then they're yelled at, and then they just like, they freeze like, like chipmunks who've been like, caught, you know, out in the open, and then just like, just bolted it like they're just terrifying. And then just like just bolt and it's terrifying. My favorite comment though is from a YouTube user who said, and I quote, when I was 10 years old, I made the mistake of sitting down during the changing

of the guards and I almost shat myself. So. Does any other national monument have something like this, where there's this 24, seven ritual, why in particular is that that happening right here? Well, yeah, I mean, that's a good question because the thing about the tomb is that like the way it is now is not the way it always was. It evolved into all of this kind of pomp and ceremony

and spectacle when it was first commemorated in 1921. It was a big moment. I think it was the first nationwide radio address that the president ever gave was from the commemoration of the tomb of the unknown. But back then it was just kind of this low stone slab. There was no big edifice or anything like that. And it kind of became a second-rate monument for a while. People would picnic there. And photographers would like,

cause it has a great view of the surrounding area cause it's up on this hill. And photographers would actually kind of set up shop there and people would like pose on the tomb. Almost like just kind of like a roadside attraction. And people, but apparently like veterans caught on to this and started complaining about it cause they saw that kind of people were just treating it.

Yeah, like entertainment and they were like kind of putting out their cigarettes on it, things like that. And so they kind of complained about it to Congress and eventually the government cobbled together the money to post a guard. And then starting in 1937, the guard was 24-7. And I've seen competing records on this once some say since 1937, others say since 1948, the guard has never left.

Even for hurricanes, it's state there. And then the other thing that happened during that time is that they always intended for there to be like a more updated fancy tomb, but it just took them forever to get around to getting the funding. And so they built the kind of the giants sarcophagus in 1931. And for that, they went to this quarry in Colorado, actually, to ensure that they got the exact same marble as the Lincoln Memorial. And although it wasn't designed by these guys, it was sculpted, like the actual physical sculpting is by this famous set of brothers called the Pico-Rele brothers,

were these Italian brothers who who sculpted like everything. They sculpted the Lincoln Memorial, and my favorite is they sculpted the two lions in front of the New York City Public Library. Wow. And then, in 1956, that's when we started adding these further unknowns from World War II, Korea, et cetera.

Yeah. So just built and built and built. Into this more and more reverent place. It has the image of an almost timeless tradition when you see it like this, but I actually kind of enjoy the fact that this is something that was, you know, iterated upon and improved and, you know, given a little more weight over time. I doubly appreciate it because I love when something's iterative in the direction of honing towards austerity and elegance, as opposed to iterative and feeling like clutter. Getting more casual or something like that. It's a fascinating place, particularly because of this ceremony,

makes it all the more special. Have you ever had a chance to speak to one of the guards when you do in the reporting? I confess, I did not manage to reach a guard in time for this Coda. I'd bigger fish to fry, right? I totally don't lose. There was a 20-year mystery, so. But I got the next best thing, which is I found that one of the guards did, of course, I got the next best thing, which is I found that one of the guards did, of course, a Reddit ask me anything. That's what I was saying. It's an express link. And so, of course, one of the things is like, when you're a reporter and you see and ask me anything

thread, you're like, you go through it, hoping someone's going to ask like the question you would ask. And the only question I wanted to ask is like, what is going through your head when you are marching back and forth, and that's particularly not during the change in the guard, but just during the long, 30 minutes, or the long hour, marching back and forth, and that's particularly not during the changing of the guard, but just during the long, 30 minutes of the long hour, but marching back and forth during this like meditative state, right? And so finally, someone like asked this, right? And the guard responded, I wish I could say that while we were doing this job, we are just meditating, what it means to guard the unknowns, but we are human and we are on duty

for long hours. So our minds do wander quite a bit, which was so disappointing to read. Oh, but it's really human. I know. I know, but here's the irony, which is like I realized that when I was doing the story, and I was like, oh, people are free to project whatever they want onto the mystery of the unknown soldier. That's of course my repertoire way of being really conceited and thinking, like, I'm

above that and I don't fall prey to projecting anything. I'm not too simpleism. But the minute I see the guard, I'm like, what do I want to see? Like, I'm a reporter at 99% visible who lives in San Francisco. I see like zen meditation, right? Like, it's immediately what I project onto this guy, right? And then, of course, like, in the asking me anything throughout, he's just like, no, no, no, our minds wander.

We think about whatever, what we're going to dinner who knows right and so you know, I guess The the the tomb is worked its magic on me as well. Yeah, thank you, Joe. All right. Thank you Roman 99% of Ismael was produced this week by Joe Rosenberg, edited by Katie Mangle, mixed by Sherefusif, music by Swan Rial. Special thanks to Lou Pennebaker and Andy Richards, whose interviews were not featured, but without whose help this story could not have happened. We're especially indebted to Andy Richards' book The Flag. It's a biography of David Railton, the clergyman who first came up with the idea of the tomb of the unknown warrior.

Bubble Link on the website. 99% of visible is executive producer is Cathy too. Our senior editor is Lene Hall, Kurt Colestet is the digital director. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Jason Dillion, Emmett Fitzgerald, Gabriella Gladney, Martín Gonzales, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Leigh, Lashmodon, Jacob Maldonado Medina, Kelly Prime, and me Roman Mars. The 99% of his below-go was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the Stitcher and Sirius XM podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building. In beautiful.

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