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Note: The following article was written for
Memorial Day in 1929. Because of the number
of requests for copies of it which the author
has received, it is herewith reprinted.
By ELMO SCOTT WATSON
E ENLISTED in one of the regl-
ments of “expert riflemen” which
the Continental Congress raised in
the backwoods of Pennsylvania, and
one fine morning in June, 1775, he
marched gaily away to help "throw
Tommy Gage and his lobsterbacks
out of Boston town." He followed
Montgomery and Arnold to Quebec
and he starved and froze amid the snows of
Canada that dreadful winter. He was one of the
tattered remnants of that tragic expedition
which finally ggered back homeward from
its heroic adventure.
Then, wearing ital Buff and Blue,
be fought under Washington at Trenton and at
3 neste, and in the summer of 1777 he was
e of the picked men t
who went with Dan’l
Morgan, “the Old Wagoner”. to help repel Bur-
goyne's invasion of New York. At Saratoga the
bayonet thrust of a Hessian grenadier struck
him down.
What if the historians of the future were to
call this conflict, din
faintly in his ears, one of “the
battles of the world”? What
him to know-—if
had been the pawns in the life-and-
death game of nation-making? For he was con-
scious only of the torture of thirst as his life
blood ebbed swiftly away until death came at
fast to still his pleading cry of “Water! Water"
and to ease his pain-racked body.
A great mor now stands on
which once the “pomyj
stance of war'—the surrender of a British
army. But, nearby, the smooth, green sod gives
no sgn that the soil beneath holds the dust
of a young Pennsylva who
had died in defense
Who was he?
Just an Unknov
Revolution!
EFORE the ink was scarcely dry on the
enlistment pi which made him a
private in the First infantry of the Unit-
ed States regular army, another boy, who had
never before been beyond the confines of the
rock-strewn acres of his New England birth-
place, was on his way to the western frontier,
there to serve in a lonely ealled Fort
Dearborn,
Here, it was as though he on another
planet, so far as communication with the world
he had known was concerned. But somehow he
managed to survive through the cold, desolate
winters and the hot, fever-breeding summers
amid the swamps along the Chicago river,
The summer of 1812 came and with it the
news that we must fight Old England again.
More alarming still, there was the threat of an
Indian outbreak, for the oratory of Tecumseh,
the great Shawnee, had been heard among the
wild tribesmen throughout the Mississippl val
ley. Then a courlergspeeding along the wilder.
ness trail from Detroit, brought orders to
evacuate Fort Dearborn.
One hot August day the retreat began. South.
ward along the sandy shores of Lake Michigan,
Capt. Nathan Heald led his little army, all too
few in numbers for its precarious task of safe
convoy for the wagons where rode the women
and children of the garrison. From out of the
sandhills swooped the firece Pottawatomles, A
short, desperate fight—and the Fort Dearborn
massacre was history,
That night there was a hellish orgy in the
Indian camp and the pitying stars looked down
upon a writhing figure at the stake. What if
this was one of the acts in the mighty drama
ealled “the Winning of the West”? What if the
future was to see one of the world’s greatest
cities rise on these sandy shores?
Could that knowledge have been recompense
for the fiery agony of this New England lad
above whose unmarked grave the hurrying feet
of Chicago's millions beat an endless requiem
today?
Who was he?
An Unknown Soldier of the War of 18121
= mm ma
Tews some of his neighbors denounced
but futile
the Contl
whose
Was now sgoun
fifteen deci
e could have
h
one of
this spot
circum-
crt 0
igiment
witnessed and
backwoods:
outpost
were
it as “an unholy war” into which Presi.
dent. James K. Polk was leading the na-
tion, a boy on a middle western farm was one
of the first to respond when on May 13, 1846,
the President called for 050,000 volunteers to
drive the Mexican forces back across the Rio
Grande,
80 he was among those who landed with
“Old Fuss and Feathers” Scott at Vera Crus
and started toward the City of Mexico, To his
parents back In Ohio came cheerful letters
from the boy, telling of the rapld succession
of victories won by the American army, assuf-
ing them that the war was almost: over and
that he would soon be home,
E
1
eZ
W//
THE UNKNOWN
SoLDIER'S TOMB
YN
MONUMENT TO THE UNKNOWN
Civin WAR DEAD
such a letter the
stormed Chapultepec,
his mother watched eagerly for the
his father from the dally trip to
store where he went to get the mail
time the father shook his head
Today in the environs of the City of Mexico
there is a little cemetery In which stands a
gmall granite shaft bearing these words: “To
the memory of the American soldiers who per
{shed in this valley in 1847, whose hones, col
lected by the country’s orders, are here buried-—
To."
And so this Unknown Soldier of the Mexican
war sleeps among the seven hundred and fifty,
far from his native land where flows “the Beau.
tiful Ohlo™
night before
After that
return of
the village
But every
sadly.
He wrote
Scott's men
ORT SUMTER had been fired upon. In the
J or a mighty chorus was swelling from
thousands of young American throats: “We
Are Coming, Father Abraham" In the South
the rollicking strains of “Dixie” were firing
thousands of other young Americans to an al
most religious ecstasy,
In the Upper Shenandoah valley of Virginia,
a father was bidding goodby to his two sons,
“Pray God, you two never meet In battle!” he
pald,
For one rode north to wear the Federal Blue
under General Patterson. And the other rode
south to become a member of Gen. Thomas J.
Jackson's “Stonewall Brigade.” Whether or not
his prayer was answered, the father never
knew. He never saw them again.
Perhaps in some Valhalla two warrior spirits
reminisce of Chancellorsville and Antietam, of
Manassas and of Malvern Hill, But there is no
bitterness now In their tones as they call each
other “Yank” and “Johnny Reb" '
The crumbling dust which once housed these
gpirits rests under a great monument of rough.
hewn granite and polished marble In Arling-
ton cemetery near Washington, On this monu-
ment Is an inscription which reads:
“Beneath this stone repose the bones of 2,111
unknown soldiers gathered after the war from
the fields of Bull Run and the route to the Rap-
pahannock, Their remains could not be Ident.
fled but their names and deaths are recorded In
the archives of thelr country and its grateful
eltizens honor them as of thelr noble army of
martyrs, May they rest In peace”
T WAS the spring of 1808, A Colorado miner,
1 coming off the night shift, joined a group
of his fellows gathered about one who held
fn his hands a Denver newspaper, One look at
the screaming headlines told the story: “War
With Spain”
There was a d¢
on through the ste
moment
son nen engng
combat—bayonet against bolo—a swarm of litt]
brown men
desg erat
inter 11s si
das of
3 4k ‘on ’ wear
ciawing EWeonRring
and at
sheer fore
ely-struggling khaki-clad figures
last bearing them
of numbers,
A few
mining camp whi 1
rocky slope of the mountain, a band was play
ing incessantly “There'll Be a Hot Time in the
Old Town Tonight.” For the troop of “our boys
was home from Ww
But out in the § i f Sulu a rusted Krag
Jorgensen rifle and bbed cartridge belt, al
ready nearly hidden by the lu vegeta
tion. marked the last re lace of one whe
didn’t come bome—a own Sol
vo,
usly
ithe
ish jungle
lier of "0S
"a
OVEMBER 11, 1622. In Arlington ceme
tery a great throng stood with bared
heads as a bugler blew “Taps” over
pew white marble tomb in which had been
placed the body of a dead warrior,
Who was he?
No one can say.
tery.
The lettering on his tomb betrays no word of
his identity, It says simply: “Here rests in
honored glory an American soldier known but
to God”
He is “The Unknown Soldier” of the World
war, i
He is the man “whom we have exalted out of
humanity into sainthood.” i
Since that day ten years ago when they en
shrined his dust in marble at Arlington and his
spirit in the heart of America, men and women
of every station in life have bowed their heads
reverently in the presence of his last resting
place. To It have come the great of other
countries—the queen of a European royal house
princes, fleld marshals, lord hdmirals, states
men, None has been too great to pay him hom
age, i
Orators and poets have tried in all-toodnade
quate words to pay fitting tribute to his mem |
ory. But the only real tribute to him is the un
volced one in the hearte of his fellow-Amer4
feans, To them he has given Memorial day a |
new meanisg. For on that day their thoughts
turn to hls tomb as the shrine upon which Is |
offered America's tribute to her soldier dead, |
and more especially to the Unknown Soldiers
of all her wars,
We cannot decorate their graves In accord
ance with the Memorial day custom, for they
are scattered far and wide over the face of
the globe, Bome of them fell before Indian bul.
fet and lance on the windswept plains of the
Great West. Some of them died in China, In
Cuba, In the Philippines, In Mexico, Some of
them “went west” on the battlefields of France
and Belgium,
80 In alien soll they keep their lonely “biven-
ac of the dead,” and while we cannot pay them
the same honors on Memorial day that we do to
the others who gave their lives for thelr eoun.
try, we can offer up to them our tribute of
gratitude by remembering on that day what they
did even though we do not know who they were,
(® by Western Newspaper Union.)
For his is the eternal mys
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thicker than
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intervals all along the line
branch a
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at the end of each
duck reports?’
“In limp leath
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One of the most famous tonics for weak.
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the guid
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Using Car
York, England,
bind these lame
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