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Show i By ELMO SCOTT WATSON ! TTTT E ENLISTED In a Pennsyl- fi vanla regiment In June, 177S, and marched to tlie f siege of Boston. He fol- ; lowed Montgomery to Que-jssL Que-jssL bee, and starred and froze a amid the snows of Canada. T Wearing the Continental a Buff and Blue, he fought y ' under Washington at Trenton Tren-ton and at Princeton, and In the summer of 1777 he went with Danl Morgan to repel Burgoyne'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, whose din was now sounding faintly In his ears, one of "the fifteen decisive battles of the world?" He was conscious only of the torture of thirst as his life-blood life-blood ebbed swiftly away until death finally stilled his cry of "Water! Walter Wa-lter 1" A great monument stunrls on the spot which once witnessed the "pomp and circumstance of war" the surrender of a British army. But, nearby, the smooth, green sod gives no sign that the soil beneath holds the dust of a young Pennsylvania backwoodsman, one of the many who died In defense of American liberty. Who was be? Just an Unknown Soldier Sol-dier of the Revolution ! Before the Ink on his enlistment papers In the First Infantry was scarcely dry, another boy, who had never before been beyond the confines con-fines of the rock-strewn acres of the little New England farm where he was born, was on his way to the western frontier, there to serve In a lonely outpost called Fort Dearborn. It was as though he were on another planet, so far as communication with the world he had known was concerned. con-cerned. But Bomehow he managed to live through the cold, desolate winters win-ters and the hot, fever-breeding summers sum-mers amid the swamps along the Chicago Chi-cago river. With the summer of 1812 came Hie news of war with Great Britain, nnd, more alarming still, the threat of an Indian outbreak. Then orders to evacuate Fort Dearborn. One hot August day the retreat began. be-gan. From out of the sandhills along Lake Michigan swooped the fierce 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 Btuke. What If this was one of the n-ts In the mighty drama called "Uie Winning of the West"? What If the future wns to see one of the world's greatest cities rise on these sandy shores? Could that knowledge have been recompense rec-ompense for the fiery aony of this New England lad above whose unmarked un-marked grave the hurrying feet of Chicago's millions today bent an endless end-less requiem? Who was he? An Unknown Un-known Koldler of the War of 1811;! Though some of his neighbor denounced de-nounced It as an "unholy war" Inlo which President Polk wns lending the nation, a certain Middle Western fiiriu boy wns one of the first to respond whim the President on May l.'l, 1SI0, cnllcd for bO.'KX) volunteers to drive tlie Mexlriiiis baek arrosr the J'lo firnnde. And so he whs among thosf? who landed with "Old Fiikh and Feathers" Scott at Vera Cruz and started toward the City of Mexico. To his parents back In Ohio came cheerful letters from the boy, telling of the rapid succession of victories won by the American army and assuring as-suring them that the war was almost over and that he would soon be home. His last letter was written the night before Scott's soldiers stormed Cha-pultepec. Cha-pultepec. The boy's parents awaited his return In vain. Today In the environs en-virons of the City of Mexico there Is a little cemetery In which stands a small granite shaft bearing these words: "To the memory of the American Amer-ican soldiers who perished In this valley In 1S47, whose bones, collected by the country's orders, are here burled. bur-led. T.'iO." And so this Unknown Soldier Sol-dier of the Mexlcun war sleeps among the 730 In alien solt. Fort Sumter had been fired upon. In the upper Shenaudoah valley of Virginia a father was bidding goodbye good-bye to his two sons. "Pray God, you two never meet In battle," he wild. And one rode north to wear the Federal Fed-eral Blue under General Patterson and the other rode south to become a member of Gen. 'Thomas J. Jack- J The Dead : i: Blow out, you bucles. over the : V rich Jjead! ; There's none of the so lonely ! and poor of old, But dylnfr. has made us richer :: gift thrtn gold. :: Thes Inld the world away, V : poured out th red V Sweet wine of youth; gave, up th years to be V Of work and Joy; and that un- : hoped serene, y y That men call sse; and those y y who would have been. Their nonx, they gavs, their V Immortality. V y W. y Blow, bugles, blow ! They brought y us, for our dearth, y Holiness, lacked so long, and :,' y lxve. and I'atn. y y Honor has come back, as s king, yj i, to earth, And paid his subjects with a V royal wage; y y And Nobleness walks In our y y, ways again; y :i And we have come Into our ' berltnge. V Itupert Brooke. y X ;:o"co:yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. ion's "Stonewall Brigade." Whether or not his prayer was niiswored, the father never knew, lie never saw either again. I'erht .s In somo Valhalla two warrior spirits icmlnlsce of Chnncellorsvllle nnd Antictiim, of Manassas nnd Malvern Hill but there Is no bitterness In their tones as they call each other "Yank" and "Johnny Itch." The crumbling dust of the hmlles which once housed these spirits rests under n great monument of rough-hewn granite gran-ite and polished tnnrhle In Arlington cemetery near Wnshlngton, D. ('. On this mmiumctit Is an Inscription which reads : "llenenth tbls stone repose the hones of !i!,l 1 I unknown soldiers gnth ered after the war from the fields of Pull It 1 1 ii ntnl the route to the Itnppn-hniinock. Itnppn-hniinock. Their remnlus could not be Identified but their names and deaths are recorded In the archives of their country; nnd Its grateful cltlr.eiiH honor them its of their nnblo nrtny of miirtyrs. May they rest In pence." It wns (he sprln:: of sus. A Colorado Col-orado miner, coming oh the night shift, Joined a group of his fellow? gathered about one who read In a Denver paper the headlines: "War With Spain." A month later he was on an army transport that steamed through the Golden Gate Into the broad Pacific. The next year he was one of a detachment which set ont through the Philippine Jungle in pur suit of a party of Moro raiders. There was a deathlike hush as they pushed on through the steaming heat of the jungle. A moment later Its stillness was shattered by the sounds of men engaged In furious hand-to-hand combat, com-bat, bayonet against bolo, a swarm of little brown men chiwlng at a group of swearing, desperately-struggling khaki-clad figures aud bearing them down to earth by sheer force of numbers. num-bers. A few months lati back In the Colorado mining town a band played "There'll Be a Hot Time In the Old Town Tonight," for the troop of "our Ikivs" was home from the wars. But out In the province of Sulu a rusted Krag Jorgensen and a webbed cartridge bsit already nearly hidden by the lush Jungle vegetation, marked tlie last resting place of one who didn't come homo an Unknown Soldl.jr of liS-V.l. November 11. 1021 In Arlington cemetery a great throng stood with bared heads as a bugler blew "Taps" over a new white marble tomb In which had been placed the body of a dead warrior, of hlrn It hns heen written, "Once he trod our streets perhaps the very pavements which we dally travel. It never entervd his head that he would become a symbol of sacrifice nnd his tomb a shrine of pllgrlmnge. If any one had foretold as much to him, how he would hate laughed! If anyone were to reveal to us who he really was that he had been a cashier In a New York bank or a taxi driver In Chicago would he still retain his power so deeply to move us? Who was he, this Unknown Un-known Soldier, whom wo have exalted ex-alted out of humanity Into sainthood?" saint-hood?" That question of Identity can never be answered. But of 61m this can be said: since thnt tlay seven years ago Memorial tlay tins bad a new meaning. On this day his tomb Is a shrine before which In spirit all Americans bow reverent heads. For thus thuy honor not only tho Unknown Un-known Soldier of the World war but tho Unknown Soldiers of all of our wars the devolution, tho War of 1812, the Mexican war, the Civil wnr. the Spanish-American was. Wc cannot can-not decorate their graves In accordance accord-ance with the Memorial day custom, for their last resting places, un marked, are Rendered far and wide over tlie fnce of the globe. Some of them fell before Indian bullet nnd lanco on tho windswept plains of the Great West. Some of tliem died In China, In the Philippines, In Mexico. Mex-ico. Some of them "went West" on Hie balllcllehls of Frmica Mid Bel-glum. Bel-glum. So In nllon soil they keep their lonely "bivninic of the dead" and while we cannot pnj thcni the same honors on Memorial day that we do the others who gave their lives for their country, we can olTcr up to them our tribute of gratitude by remembering remember-ing on that dny what they did even though wo do not know who Ibcy were. |