Name/Title
StereographEntry/Object ID
2023.055.3.0184Description
A black and white stereograph. Image is of eight men carrying a coffin covered by the American flag, several men stand in a line to the side while others stand on the deck of a nearby ship, two men are standing at attention. Above the image "W298 (Star)" is printed, below the image "23306 "Back to Home Land !" Removing Casket of Ameriac's Unown Soldier from the Olympia, Washington, D.C." is printd, to the left of the image "Keystone View Company COPYRIGHTED Manufacturers MADE IN U.S.A. Publishers" is printed, to the right of the image "Meadville, Pa., New York, N. Y., Chicago, Ill., London, England." is printed. On the reverse the following is printed:
23306
AMERICA'S UNKNOWN SOLDIER COMES HOME TO HIS NATIVE SOIL
"Th muffled drum's sad roll has bet
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on Life's parade shall meet
Tht brave and fallen few.
On Fame's eternal camping ground
Their silent tents are spread
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead."
For Him, our Unknown Soldier, it is all over; the sadness of parting from loved ones, the long ocean voyage, the grind of the traninig camps, the weary matches to the front, the roar of the barrage, and then that last blinding flash of a descending shell which shattered his poor body and left him, dead and unknown, on the field of battle. This nameless hero of ours is being borne home with the highest honors of the Nation to sleep forever in the great National Cemetery at Arlington, Va., as the type and symbol of the thousands of other American lads similarly slain on the poppied fields of France. His life snuffed out in the flow of youth, with all the future before him, he is a sacrifice to the cause of his country and of humanity, as were the unknonw French youth who rests beneath the shadow of the mighty Arch of Triump in Paris, and the nameless English boy whose dust now mingles with that of the greatest men of his race under the quiet aisles of Westminster Abbey.
Those unknown dead of Arlington, of Paria and of London were sons of the common people; the commone people, whose composite impulses and sentimetns gave birth to the sentiments and the polices of their naitons.
Copyright by The Keystone View CompanyCollection
Photograph Collection