Our logo and in this case here, this is the second least awarded badge with the exception of the astronauts badge. The astronaut badge is in the low 200. Today, we are giving badge number 634 to a young man who has completed his training and is ready to be considered a badge holder and of the fraternity and sorority, brotherhood or fellowship of tomb guard. We are a 501 c 3 organization and part of our bylaws is that we do Community Outreach to educate the public about the tomb. I find that your generation, sort of a sweeping generalization, that your generation knows about the tomb. I talked to School Groups and it is appalling how little they know of our history. It is not their fault. We have failed them because we have allowed all of this testing and teaching to the test and not put history on the test. I will get off my soapbox. Just think of that. I do speak to a lot of School Groups pro bono. This is my 81st speech this year. I will have well over 100 by the time veterans day is over. I am speaking premuch nonstop nonstop from the first through the 14th of november two a lot of groups, multiple, three in a day or for in a day. Im a bit of a work horse around veterans day and memorial day. I have been invited to the National WorldWar Ii Museum and will speak at that specifically about the selection of the buildings and how that was complicated. As a 20yearold soldier, i was given a huge gift and norms gift and amazing gift. I was selected to be one of these guys. And that is me. This photograph was taken on june 15, 1969 on the fourth month anniversary of my first ever walk on the map. We refer to the mat as this piece of rubberized material here that is 63 feet long. It serves several purposes. One is to insulate from the cold, cold granite you are walking on. The other is to give a little traction. But the main reason this is their is to prevent the shoes from wearing a groove in the granite. Because the granite is constantly walked on. The same path, same number of steps constantly since midnight, july 2, 1937, when it was discovered people were coming into the cemetery at night and chipping pieces off to take it home as souvenirs. We will talk about that in just a bit. This piece of marble is from colorado. Its actually several pieces of marble. The capstone is 12 tons, quarried out near marble, colorado in 1931. Brought to this place and finished in place. This carving was done after it was set in place here rests in honored glory a soldier known but to god. That phrase was almost verbatim from a soldiers grave in france and belgium that said here rests an american soldier known but to god. Honored glory is added for the tomb of the unknowns. This piece is 36 tons and is the largest single test largest single piece of carved marble in the world and it is cracking. You can see the crack here this is in 1969. I will tell you about the replacement object that was on schedule and then ported by thwarted by legislation in 2009. The base is 15 tons and there are four pieces in the subbase, four tons apiece for a total of 79 tons. The fourth month anniversary was the first day i got to where this badge on my right breast pocket. It is the tomb guard identification badge. Mine is number 78 and today, we are giving away number 634 for that person to keep. This badge has one stipulation no other badge in the military has and that is it can be revoked for as long as i live. We have revoked at least 21 of them for conduct unbecoming a tomb guard. For those who have committed felonies and other such transgressions that have brought shame upon the tomb, the unknown soldier and the u. S. Army. We have a motto in our society like the boy scout motto is be prepared ours is soldiers never die until they are forgotten and tomb guards never forget. We also have this 1 through the years of diligence and praise, i will lock my tour in humble reverence to the best of my ability. It is he who commands the respect i protect, his bravery that made us so proud, surrounded by wellmeaning crowds by day, alone in the night, this soldier will rest under my eternal vigilance. We take that to heart. A little bit of history i get the feeling we have some history buffs in this room. [laughter] hands, please question mark history fanatics . We are going to start in 1669. Ships captain named robert housing was given 6000 acres of land from the Potomac River in what is now washington, d. C. Can you imagine any real estate people in here . Can you tell me what an acre of land there is worth . A bunch of. Multiply that times 6000. Current value of the property, with no improvements. He sold it for six barrels of tobacco. Moving forward, the property ends up in the alexander family. John and Philip Alexander establish alexandria, and it is a slave trading hub. A big slave trading hub in northern virginia. This is crucial later on. In 1778, during the middle of the american revolution, a guy with a famous mother buys a 1100 of those 6000 acres. His name is john park custis. Im related to john park custis. My first forbear was robert park who settled in mystic, connecticut. He arrived in 1630. My mother was the dar and we have relatives on both sides of the american revolution. His mother is Martha Dandridge custis washington. She is not washington yet. His father dies in 1757. In 1759, his mother remarries George Washington and he is raised at mount vernon. He and his sister patsy. Jackie and patsy were raised at mount vernon. 1778 he buys this property. He is an aid to his adoptive father at the siege of yorktown. Cornwallis has surrendered. He gets sick and dies from camp fever. That could have been any number of things. Probably diphtheria or typhoid. He passes the property to his son, George Washington parke custis, named in honor of his grandfather. He builds this house over 16 years. He did not go to the bank and say i need 400 grand and will pay it off in a mortgage. You did not do that. You bought materials and you did things as you went along. It took 16 years to complete. I just want to point out this grave. This is the grave of horatio wright. He will be in the second half of this program when i talk about who is buried in arlington. He got as close to the front door of that mention as anybody. There was a contest among civil war generals to get as close to the front of this house as possible and i will explain why that was crucial for them to try to do that. This is a big place. Thats a park ranger standing right there. Those columns are about 30 feet tall and the house is 142 feet from and to end. He has four children. Only one of them lives to be an adult. Her name is Mary Anna Randolph custis. In june 30 in this room, she marries her third cousin and childhood playmate, you might not recognize this photo, but you will this one, robert e. Lee. Lee never owns the property. It is always in the custis family name. In 1863, she will be charged a tax and she will not take it in person, which she is ordered to do, but he lives here and considers it home. They have their family here. He goes off to fight in the mexican war and is the superintendent of west point from 18531854. Hes on the Mississippi River surveying for forts near where i grew up in iowa. He consider this his home but never owns the property. His father, white horse harry lee, governor of virginia and revolutionary war hero, but a financial deadbeat. He abandons his family when lee is young, about five years old. He goes off to the islands in the atlantic what am i thinking about the caribbean and comes back and on his way back, he dies and is buried in georgia. Lee only spoke of him once on record and it was a fleeting mention. But his name will come up in a little bit. In 1861, we know what happens fort sumter is fired upon. Lee is summoned to the District Of Columbia and is offered command of union troops by Francis Blair senior, whose son Montgomery Blair is in lincolns cabinet. He refuses and resigned his commission in the United States army and writes a very eloquent letter in this house last night to Winfield Scott saying i shall not raise my sword save in defense of my native virginia. Several days later, he goes to richmond, urges his wife to follow as soon as possible. It takes her a couple of weeks. You know how the ladies are. Was that a sexist comment . [laughter] ok. She took her time. She comes, and a few weeks later, several troops, cross come across after the voters vote to secede, after legislature has voted to secede. 32,000 troops are gathered and they are marched off to manassas junction, where he fights the first battle of bull run. He loses because jackson shows up. He gets his nickname at that battle on that day. A confederate general says there stands jackson like a stone wall. The general is shot and falls the following morning. Jackson likes the moniker and keeps it. Troops occupy this land. It is never contested by confederate troops. They never try to retake this place. This is a slaveholding. This was a slaveholding plantation within sight of the Nations Capital until troops came ross in 1861. Came across in 1861. In 1863, a law is passed. Mrs. Lee is ordered to show up and pay 92. 07 tax on property. She has a good chance of being taken prisoner if she shows up. She sends a male cousin on her p half on her behalf and he is refused. The property is seized. The government gets the property. Slightly below fair market value. This guy is the most Important Union general no one has heard of. He was born in augusta, georgia, educated in the north, at west point, considered anyone educated at west point to be a traitor if they fought for the confederacy. Especially lee and davis. He did not get his way. Davis was imprisoned for a while. Montgomery cunningham maggs was quartermaster through most of the civil war. When the war broke out, it was joseph e johnson. You know Joseph E Johnston was a very effective general for the confederate states. He and William Tecumseh sherman became friends after the war. Johnston was a pallbearer at tecumseh shermans funeral and refused to keep his hat on. This is an old story. He got sick and died a few weeks later from pneumonia because he refused to cover his head. He was credited for accounting for every cent the union army spent. Every cent was accounted for by this gentleman. He was the one who recommended that we start using this plantation as a burial ground. It was a way to get back at lee. A way to shame him, a little bit of revenge was to make this place a union graveyard. About a year later, the war would end. He dies in a hospital. This is in section 27. Section 27 is one of my favorites. It is where a lot of unknowns, the u. S. Color troops, and the contraband escapes. Escape slaves section 27 is a stones throw from the iwo jima memorial. You go across the wall and you are in section 27. It is fascinating to read the stones and the dates of death. Arlington looked like this in 1865. These are wooden planks painted white and stenciled with black paint. The upkeep was going to be horrendous. 1873, congress authorized the use of marble headstones. They are buried mostly in a segregated section. A few are integrated with white in listed men. Enlisted men. This is a mass grave. To seal the deal, to make sure they would not wish to come back, he dug a hole and put the bones of unknown soldiers gathered after the war. The remains could not be identified. Is jessica in the room . There you are. Would you come and touch my hand . I will meet you in the middle. Thank you. Jessica touched my hand. This hand held the hand of a man who was born that year and i called him grandpa. I do this with school kids and they cannot believe i am standing here talking, that i am only three generations from the date in my family. History. Ancient to school kids, vietnam is ancient history. World war ii, they do not know when it was fought. I take personal pride in taking that message and informing them about the sacrifice made on their behalf, that they should know about and they need to know about. This mass grave, he did not just lay bodies in there. He stacked the skulls together. He nested the pelvises together, so they would fit. He stacked the seamers and the s and the ribs together. A little bit weird. Were they all Union Soldiers . Probably not. They were skeletal remains. Who knows . They were dug up after the fact. World war i comes along, we are in the centennial observance of that. The u. S. Lost 116,000. 50,000 battle deaths. 63,000 other deaths. Many of those deaths, spanish flu. It was called the spanish flu, not because it did not originate in spain, but they were reporting numbers of how many had died. It became known as the spanish flu because the spanish were reporting the numbers. The brits lost 900,000. The french lost 1. 4 million. 1. 4 million military deaths. The germans, 2. 2 million. No one knows how many the russians lost. At least 2 million. They were not good record keepers. In 1915, following the second battle, there were five battles. It never fell. It was reduced to rubble, but never fell. A canadian doctor, a doctor and a soldier, he was helping when he could, trying to save lives. After 17 days, he sat on an ambulance wagon and wrote the following poem. In flanders fields, the poppies blow. Now we lie in flanders fields. The torch be yours to hold high. If you break faith with us who died, we shall not sleep where poppies glow in flanders field. A friend rescued it and send it to london. It went viral. If anything could go viral. I love that blood red poppy they wear for remembrance day. We call it armistice day. In 1922, the veterans created the buddy poppy. It was sold when i was a kid. In des moines, we would walk down the street and people you would see every corner, someone selling these. Widows and orphans of the war were to benefit. You do not see that so much anymore. The british and the french interred unknowns. The brits in westminster abby. Two years after the signing of the armistice. The french interred theirs beneath the arc de triomphe. The eternal flame. That was Jackie Kennedys inspiration for the eternal flame at jfks grave. In 1921, the military hierarchy thought we were going to identify everyone and they thought it was yet to have was was thought it inappropriate to have one representative for those unidentified. We had no way to connect them. They said lets do this. They went to four american cemeteries in france and exhumed four unknowns, brought them to a Central Place and put them in identical caskets. This is a town hall in a city in france. This is where the selection took place. They brought those in. They took great care. They destroyed the records pertaining to the grave sites. They reexamine the bodies to make sure there was nothing on them a with them that could identify them to unit, rank, anything. They put them overnight in this place. In the middle of the night, a crew came in and move them around, so no one could think there was no way anyone could know which was which. A sergeant, edward f younger, was given a spray of white roses. The roses were laid on one of those four caskets and that became our unknown soldier. They take him to the train. Those roses will stay on that casket all the way across the ocean and into the crypt in Arlington National cemetery. Then to the uss olympia, the olympia will be escorted out of harbor by the reuben james. It was the u. S. Destroyer that was torpedoed halloween 1941 by a german uboat five weeks before pearl harbor. The germans apologized. Here he goes. You cant know which direction the casket is moving because the stripes go first. He is coming down the steps. They walk up the street and across the river. There was no Memorial Bridge yet. It was not built until the 1930s. This is warren g. Harding, one of our bestever president s. Just kidding. Presiding over the unknown soldier. He is dropping a fistful of soil on the casket. The bottom of this crypt has two inches of soil from the battleground. He is lying in perpetuity in the ground that he died defending. This is what the tomb looks like. This woman is a widow of one of those 3173 mias. There is a possibility, slim, that is her loved one in the crypt. That is why the selection was done with great care, to make sure no one could know who was in the grave. In 1925, a veteran comes around the corner and finds a family having a picnic lunch on top of the tomb of the unknown soldier. He goes to the white house. He walks through the gate. He does not have to jump the fence. He walks up to the gate. He rings the doorbell. He gets in. He says i want to see the president. People are having picnic lunches on the tomb of the unknown soldier. He gets to see calvin coolidge. They put a civilian guard on the tomb. Three months later, the United States army takes over. I tell people i was a tomb guard. They say oh, you were in the marine corps. I say i have the utmost respect for the marine corps. They are the bravest of the brave. But the army has always guarded the tomb of the unknown soldier. The army is the senior service. Arlington is administered by the department of the army. Most other cemeteries, with the exception of the old soldier and sailors home in d. C. , all our administered by the department of veterans affairs. Going to leap ahead here. They had just knocked down the navy annex. I do not qualify for inground burial at arlington, even though i was a sentinel at the tomb of the unknown soldier. I do not have a purple heart, a medal of honor, i did not retire from service. Not everybody can be buried in arlington. All retirees are qualified. In 1931, this was placed on. Notice this crack. This is going through the block. They think it goes all the way through. After the earthquake, i said does it stay on . They knew what i was talking about. The crack goes through here. These are the three figures of peace. Six wreaths represent the six battles fought. This is a wreath of sadness and mourning. It is an inverted wreath. Midnight july 2, 1937, 24 hour guard was posted. The tomb has been guarded nonstop since. I was privileged to have 15. 5 months of that continuum of guarding and protecting these soldiers, who lost their lives and identities. Protecting them and keeping them from harm of people who would disrespect the tomb or vandalize the tomb. T