On Nov. 1, John J. Morris Post 62 (Peoria, Ariz.) honored and recognized the Veteran of the Month as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. In December 1920, New York Congressman and World War I veteran Hamilton Fish Jr., proposed legislation that provided for the interment of one unknown American solder at a special tomb to be built in Arlington National Cemetery. The purpose of the legislation was “to bring home the body of an unknown American warrior who in himself represents no section, creed or race in the late war and who typifies, moreover, the soul of America and the supreme sacrifice of her heroic dead.”

In 1921, Sgt. Edward Younger of Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 50th Infantry, American Forces in Germany, selected the Unknown from the bodies of four unidentified U.S. military personnel exhumed from different American military cemeteries in France. He placed a spray of white roses on the casket he chose.

These caskets were transported to the United States on USS Olympia and later laid to rest in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. On Nov. 11, 1921, over a century ago, the Unknown was placed on a horse-drawn caisson and carried in a procession through Washington, D.C., and across the Potomac River to be interred in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. President Warren G. Harding officiated and placed the Medal of Honor upon the casket. Originally, the Tomb consisted of a simple marble slab. Today, the sarcophagus is decorated with three wreaths on each side panel (north and south). On the front (east), three figures representing Peace, Victory and Valor. The back (west) features the inscription: “Here rests in honored glory an American Soldier known but to God.”