He has no name. He has no rank. He doesn’t even have a face. Yet, millions of people visit his final resting place every year, standing in a silence so thick you can practically hear the history breathing. You've probably seen the sentries at Arlington National Cemetery, pacing their twenty-one steps with mechanical precision. But if you're asking who was the unknown soldier, you’re actually looking for more than just a name. You’re looking for a symbol that changed how we deal with the grief of war forever.
War is messy. It's violent, and historically, it was pretty efficient at erasing people. Before the 20th century, if you died on a battlefield far from home, you were often just dumped in a trench or left where you fell. Your family back home? They just got a letter saying you weren't coming back. No body. No closure. Just a permanent, agonizing question mark. That’s why the concept of the Unknown Soldier matters so much. It wasn't just a PR stunt; it was a radical shift in how nations treat the "common" person who does the dirty work of history.
The Fog of the Great War
The First World War was a meat grinder. It was the first time industrial technology—think machine guns and heavy artillery—met 19th-century tactics. The result was a level of physical destruction that is hard to wrap your head around. Shells didn't just kill men; they obliterated them. By the time the dust settled in 1918, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were "missing." This wasn't because they'd deserted. It was because there was literally nothing left to identify.
An army chaplain named Reverend David Railton saw this firsthand. While serving on the Western Front, he came across a grave marked with a simple wooden cross. On it, someone had scrawled in pencil: "An Unknown British Soldier." That hit him hard. He realized that for every mother who didn't have a grave to visit, that one nameless body could be her son. He wrote to the Dean of Westminster, and honestly, the idea took off like wildfire. It tapped into a global vein of collective trauma.
Picking the One
You might think they just grabbed a random body and called it a day. It was actually a deeply regulated, almost paranoid process to ensure the soldier’s identity remained a total mystery. For the American version, which was authorized in 1921, they brought four unidentified bodies from four different American cemeteries in France—Aisne-Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Somme, and St. Mihiel.
Sergeant Edward F. Younger, a highly decorated veteran who had been wounded in combat, was given the task of choosing. He didn't use a list. He didn't look at files. He was given a spray of white roses and walked into a room with four identical plain shipping caskets. He circled them three times. Silence. Then, he placed the roses on the third casket. That was it. In that moment, a nameless person became the most important soldier in the United States.
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The other three? They were buried in the Meuse-Argonne National Cemetery in France. They remain unknown to this day, resting among their comrades while their brother-in-arms became a national icon in D.C.
The Science of Silence
Here is where it gets complicated. When people ask who was the unknown soldier, they often mean the one from the Vietnam War. That story is different. It’s a story about how modern science almost ruined a powerful myth.
For decades, the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington held three occupants: one from WWI, one from WWII, and one from the Korean War. In 1984, a fourth was added to represent the Vietnam War. But by the 1990s, DNA technology was getting scary good. A journalist named Vince Gonzales started digging into records and realized that the "Unknown" from Vietnam might actually be identifiable.
The military didn't really want to open that door. The whole point of the Tomb is that the soldier represents everyone. If he has a name, the magic of the symbol kind of breaks. But the family of 1st Lt. Michael Joseph Blassie pushed for answers. Blassie was a pilot whose A-37B Dragonfly was shot down near An Loc in 1972. In 1998, they exhumed the body.
The DNA match was perfect.
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Michael Blassie was no longer unknown. He was returned to his family in St. Louis. Today, the crypt that used to hold the Vietnam Unknown is empty. It’s been re-inscribed with a message honoring all the missing from that conflict, but the military decided they will likely never inter another body there. Why? Because with modern forensics and DNA databases, "unknown" soldiers basically don't exist anymore. We’ve traded the mystery of the symbol for the certainty of a name.
Why We Still Care
It’s easy to be cynical. You could say it’s just a pile of marble and some very disciplined guards. But if you stand there during the Changing of the Guard, you feel something else. The sentries, who belong to the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard), don't just "watch" the tomb. They live a life of total devotion to it. They don't wear rank insignia on their shirts because they don't want to outrank the Unknowns.
They stay out there in hurricanes. They stay out there in blizzards.
The Unknown Soldier represents the ultimate sacrifice because it’s a double loss. They lost their life, and then they lost their very identity. In a world where everyone is obsessed with being "seen" and having a "brand," there is something hauntingly beautiful about a person who gave up everything, including their name, for a cause they believed in.
The Global Perspective
America isn't the only place that does this. The French have their Soldat inconnu under the Arc de Triomphe. The British have theirs in Westminster Abbey—the only grave in the entire floor that people are forbidden to walk on. Even the soil inside that grave is special; it was brought over from France so the soldier would forever rest in the ground where he and his brothers fought.
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Each country has its own flavor of the tradition, but the core is the same. It’s a way for a nation to say "thank you" to the people who don't get the statues. We build statues for generals. We build tombs for the Unknown.
Common Misconceptions
People get a lot of things wrong about the Tomb. First off, the guards aren't "trapped" there. It's a highly competitive assignment. They spend hours every day prepping their uniforms—literally using blowtorches to get the perfect shine on their shoes.
Another big one: "The soldier is definitely a man." While it's true that the current occupants of the American tomb are male based on the eras they served in, the concept of the Unknown has shifted. In some countries, the term has been updated to "Unknown Warrior" to be more inclusive of all service members.
Then there’s the "Sentinel's Creed." If you ever read it, it’s not about war or killing. It’s about "the dignity of my uniform" and "the standards of my corps." It’s about discipline. It’s about the idea that even if no one knows who you are, what you did still matters.
What You Should Do Next
If you want to truly understand the weight of this, don't just read a Wikipedia page. History is best felt in person or through the primary accounts of those who were there.
- Visit a Local Memorial: You don't have to go to Arlington. Most towns have a cenotaph or a memorial for the missing. Take five minutes to actually read the names. Notice how many families lost multiple sons.
- Research the MIA/POW Accounting Agency (DPAA): This is a real government wing dedicated to finding and identifying remains from past wars. Their work is fascinating and shows the incredible lengths we go to today to ensure no soldier stays "unknown."
- Watch the Changing of the Guard: If you can't get to D.C., there are high-quality, long-form videos of the ceremony. Watch it without distractions. Notice the "clicks" of the heels and the silence of the crowd.
- Read "The Unknown Soldier" by Neil Hanson: If you want the gritty, non-sanitized version of how these bodies were recovered and the political mess that sometimes followed, this book is the gold standard.
The Unknown Soldier isn't just a corpse in a box. He's a mirror. When we look at that tomb, we aren't seeing a stranger; we're seeing the cost of the world we live in today. Whether you're a history buff or just someone wondering why we still have guards pacing in the rain, the answer is simple: because forgetting is the only way a soldier truly dies.