Posted on 11/11/2004 4:56:43 PM PST by wagglebee
ARLINGTON — They stand vigil beside the nation’s most honored dead – a tribute paid with crack precision, perfect profiles and pressed creases.
Every minute of every day since 1937, the elite sentinels of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery have taken turns “walking the mat” beside the marbled crypt of an unidentified casualty of war.
The bones inside the tomb represent the thousands of Americans so badly butchered in battles over the centuries that their bodies came home unrecognizable.
The unwavering ritual outside the tomb makes good on a nation’s promise to never forget its warriors, especially those buried without a name, robbed of even family to grieve by their graves.
So, beneath the sun, under the moon, through hurricanes and blizzards, before spectators or all alone, the walk goes on.
Twenty-one steps in one direction. Twenty-one steps in the other.
All punctuated by whiplash pivots, clicking heels and precisely timed pauses.
All executed by a wooden-faced soldier who regards this duty as such an honor, that when his own life comes down to a few printed words at its end, this walk will be among the measuring sticks mentioned.
A bell tolls the hour in the heart of Arlington, echoing across the cemetery’s rolling fields. The peals announce the guard change. A knot of teens break into a run, their meander toward the tomb now a beeline. Couples with baby strollers pick up the pace. Fall leaves crunch beneath their wheels.
At the crown of a gentle hill, the white-columned ring of the Memorial Amphitheater rises like a vision from ancient Greece. Visitors scurry across a narrow plaza to perch on the amphitheater’s marble steps. It’s the best view of the rectangular tomb, so close on the other side of the plaza that the tomb’s chiseled inscription is easily read:
“Here rests in honored glory an American solider known but to God.”
All eyes are on the meticulously uniformed sentinel treading the mat, a 63-foot-long strip of rubber laid atop the slick marble underfoot.
The soldier’s spine is stiff, his young face solemn, his focus faraway, on something unseen.
He doesn’t march, but glides on fluid footwork – so smooth his hat floats, never bobs. His bayonet-tipped rifle shifts shoulders at every turn – a move carried out with snapping wrists and tricky balance.
His crackerjack performance is reverence in motion, a wake-up in the still of the nation’s most hallowed ground, where an unrelenting sea of tombstones – some 290,000 dead in all – can render a visitor nearly numb.
Chatter on the steps quiets to a whisper. Heads follow the soldier back and forth, mesmerized by his steadfast drill. They twist to the right when Sterling Alexander, a 6-foot-4, 230-pound, barbell-shouldered staff sergeant appears at the end of the mat.
In his role as relief commander, Alexander oversees the guard change, a switch made every half hour during the summer and every hour during the winter. He conducts the 12-minute ceremony with a careful balance of respect and showmanship.
The replacement guard is inspected with fiercely lowered brows, white gloves and the mechanical movements of a toy soldier. Spectators are addressed in a sing-song, bullhorn voice.
“In keeping with the dignity of this ceremony,” Alexander bellows, “it is requested that everyone remain si-lent AND stand-ing!”
No one mistakes his words for a “request.”
The visitors rise to their feet, and stay there.
Only a special breed embraces the discipline demanded by the tomb.
The sentinels hail from The Old Guard – the Army’s 3rd Infantry at Fort Myer, a small base hugging the western rim of Arlington. The regiment is charged with ceremonial affairs, presidential escort, capital security and burial honors for the dead at the cemetery.
Only the most select get a shot at tomb duty.
Requirements start with a G.I. Joe-physique.
Sentinels must stand 5-foot-11 to 6-foot-4 and have waists that measure no more than 30 inches.
They must exude a regal military bearing, and have a service record no less than spotless.
Those accepted enter a six-month training period.
Eighty percent will wash out before it’s done. A single mistake in public – a fumbled rifle, a miscount, a smile – can send a soldier home in failure.
Alexander, a 16-year Army veteran from Little Rock, Ark., knows the feeling. He blew it during his initial training, but received a rare second chance.
“I was being graded and I wasn’t centered on the tomb like I should have been,” he said. “I was sent back to my regiment, where I spent the next few weeks begging to come back.”
Now, at 36, he has been at Arlington two years, graduating from walking the mat to commander of a team. Six sentinels are currently training under his stern scrutiny, rotating a 24-hour duty with two other teams.
Most of their shift is spent holed up underground in the tomb guard quarters, a modest office-and-bunk complex built beneath the amphitheater. They train inside cold, dank catacombs or outside after sunset, when the cemetery is closed, learning seven different types of walks, honors and ceremonies. They study, memorizing a dozen lengthy poems, various orders and 16 pages of tidbits about the military, the tomb, Arlington and its notable burials.
And they groom their uniforms, spending up to eight hours to prepare their clothing for a walk.
A rookie can spend four to six hours just polishing his shoes to the standard mirror shine.
Haircuts – “high and tight” – are required twice a week. A trip upstairs to the mat is treasured.
“My men don’t see sunlight if they don’t walk,” Alexander said. “And they don’t walk if they don’t earn it.”
Winning a walk happens through the flawless performance of a previous one, most likely observed via a camera feeding live video to two plasma screens mounted in the quarters.
A session in a small alcove known as the Knowledge Corner can also tip the scales in a sentinel’s favor. Standing at attention under Alexander’s grilling, the sentinel tries to spout cemetery trivia the boss doesn’t already know.
Those who satisfy get three minutes to dress.
Racing from the locker room, they leap into place before Alexander and jerk tall, upper-lip beaded with sweat.
“Time, SIR!” they shout, ready for preliminary inspection. Another sentinel will assist with the uniform’s finishing touches, but Alexander wants to look over the basics.
“Straighten that tie!” he growls at one.
“Yes, SIR!”
Nerves tug at the corners of the sentinel’s mouth.
“And get that smile off your face!”
“Yes SIR! Sorry, SIR!”
“You owe me for that smile, sergeant!” Alexander promises ominously.
“Yes SIR!”
When the sentinel is gone, Alexander rubs a hand over his jaw, trying hide his own grin.
“The man has no composure,” he says with a shake of his head. “I don’t know if he’s going to make it.”
Showing emotion is a serious sin. Like London’s Buckingham Palace guards, tomb sentinels are supposed to remain expressionless. Composure training is held regularly. A sentinel is placed in a corner while the others gather around, acting silly or menacing, trying to make him “break.”
The punishment for a smile or an eye shift: “Muscle failure,” Alexander said. “Push ups, or something like it. Until you can’t do any more.”
They know they’ll be tested up above, despite the somber atmosphere of the tomb. The average age of a sentinel is 22, and young women seem particularly tempted to try to provoke a reaction.
Alexander won’t describe the women’s tactics.
“I’ll just put it this way,” he said. “It doesn’t work.”
If it does, a sentinel packs his bags.
Sentinels who survive earn the coveted Tomb Guard Identification Badge, one of the rarest of military medals. Those who last more than nine months get to keep the badge for life. Bad behavior, however – even decades down the road – can strip a sentinel of his prize.
On a wall-sized board inside the quarters, small brass plates display the names and numbers of the 527 soldiers who have earned the badge since it was first awarded in 1958. On 21 of the plates, the engraved letters simply form the word “revoked.”
Those badges were lost because of felonies, drunkenness, any breech deemed to disgrace the unit or the tomb.
“Those men have been stricken from the record,” Alexander said. “It’s as if they never even existed.”
It’s the ultimate disgrace for a sentinel.
Al Huddy, now 56 and a government employee at Fort Belvoir, worked at the tomb from 1979-80.
“When I wore that badge on my uniform,” Huddy said, “wherever else I was assigned in my military career, other soldiers would say, 'That’s something. You represented me in honoring all our fallen comrades.’ I took great pride in that badge. I still do.”
Sentinels-in-training are treated like second-class citizens until they earn it. Inside the quarters, only badge holders are granted a shelf to hold their gear. Trainees stow their stuff in a basement.
They’re also forbidden to touch or acknowledge anything in the quarters that bears the badge emblem. The path to the locker room cuts through the Badge Room, with its spacious table, comfortable leather chairs and TV. Trainees aren’t allowed to linger there or even glance at the screen. If a chair blocks their way, they can’t move or refer to it directly, but must ask a badge holder for help.
“Sir, something is in my way, sir,” they say.
A badge symbol on the bedspreads covering their bunks means they can’t lie there, unless they cover the spread with another blanket.
Few bother. There’s little time for sleep – or food – during the shift. The quarters has a kitchen, but most of the men get by on a sandwich from home or macaroni and cheese in the microwave.
Alexander lost 30 pounds during his first four months at the tomb – weight he has since replaced. These days, he’s watching his figure.
“Its taboo to have a stomach down here,” he said. “But when you have a big frame like I do, it’s tough to keep a 30-inch waist.”
The clock ticks toward
5 p.m. – time for the cemetery to close, and for Alexander to conduct the last public guard change of the day.
His uniform hangs in the locker room, carefully taken off between appearances to keep it neat.
Slipping out of his quarter s outfit – khakis and a polo-style shirt – he pulls on his trousers, blue with a thick gold stripe down the sides, hemmed just a tad shorter in the front so they won’t brush the tops of his shiny, black shoes.
The shoes have thick soles – specially built up so the heel and toe are the same height. Their levelness helps a sentinel keep his back straight. The extra rubber also makes it easier to “roll” each step along the outside edge of the foot, a technique that makes the walk flow. Steel plates, attached to the inside heel and on the sole, sound an attention-getting “click.”
White shirt and black tie come next, then “the fat man’s belt” – a wide, elasticized band fastened with Velcro that not only keeps the trousers in place, but helps trim the waist.
Standing before a massive, gilt-framed mirror, Alexander shrugs on his dark blue jacket, or blouse, as it’s known in the military. The silver tomb badge dangles from his right breast pocket.
His left bristles with other medals. They clank as he adjusts the jacket’s fit. He wears no sign of rank. He’ll chance no superiority over the men buried inside the tomb.
A sentinel comes to help with the gold-trimmed, ceremonial belt. Cinched around Alexander’s waist, it pleats the back of the jacket just so, and supports a 9 mm Beretta, holstered just above his right hip.
The assistant wets Alexander’s white gloves under a faucet. The dampness will improve his grip as he inspects the sentinel’s rifles on the mat. The gloves go on like a surgeon’s, tight and with a snap. A Velcroed band – or keeper – holds them snug around each wrist.
On go the sunglasses, then the cap, settled flat and level with the ground. Alexander studies himself in the mirror as the assistant circles, adjusting a pleat here, brushing at a speck there. Masking tape, wound around the assistant’s hand, dabs lint from Alexander’s shoulders and between every medal.
Then the jacket is sprayed with a light mist of water, removing any traces of tape or touch.
“This is when it’s your turn to shine,” Alexander said. “There might be total chaos going on down here, but when this uniform goes on, it’s on.”
In the winter, they wear an overcoat and warmer gloves. A raincoat keeps them dry in a storm. No one complains about the weather. Some feel, in fact, that the more uncomfortable the walk, the higher the honor.
Alexander was still walking the mat last year, when Hurricane Isabel blew across the cemetery.
The sentinels had been given permission to seek shelter under the arches of the amphitheater. But when the wind howled, Alexander just leaned into it.
Two large trees crashed to the ground near the tomb.
“I watched them fall,” he said, “then kept walking.”
William Finch of Norfolk died last year at age 83. As a young soldier. Finch worked at the tomb, then went on to become a decorated, wounded veteran of World War II.
Walking the mat rated a place in his obituary.
“It was one of the things he was most proud of,” said his daughter, Loyce Lawson, “something he told anybody and everybody about.”
About 10 years ago, Lawson took her father back to visit the tomb.
“He got such a kick out of talking with the young guys there now,” she said. “They even took him down in the quarters. Back when he worked there, they stayed in a tent.”
Nothing gets to a sentinel like an aging vet, Alexander said.
“When you walk out there, and you see them, and they’re struggling to their feet, you just can’t describe the feeling. You feel like you’re standing 4 or 5 inches taller. You just think, 'This is why I’m doing this. This is what it’s all about.’”
Far up the ranks from Alexander, Lt. Col. Tom Roe, a battalion commander with the 3rd Infantry, sees a larger picture.
“Some might wonder why we put such effort into this instead of something that shows a product,” Roe said. “But this is our product. What we do at the tomb has a vital place in a democracy.
Because democracies honor those who serve.
“We don’t simply use people up, and then throw them away.”
“Some might wonder why we put such effort into this instead of something that shows a product,” Roe said. “But this is our product. What we do at the tomb has a vital place in a democracy.
Because democracies honor those who serve.
“We don’t simply use people up, and then throw them away.”
When I read this this morning, I almost cried. It amazes me the reverence that these soldiers have for our country and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
This is one of those things that every American should try to see once in their lifetime.
Good for this reporter to write such a piece. I highly encourage freepers to e-mail a thanks to her for doing so. Unusual in the media today.
I've been there several times and every time has been an incredibly emotional experience.
It's my hometown paper (Norfolk-Virginia Beach), the paper is fairly liberal on the whole. However, we have such an enormous military population, both active-duty and retired, that the paper doesn't dare make any statements critical of the military.
Veterans Day Bump.
There was a good program on our public TV station KCET (Los Angeles) last night about just this subject. It was riveting, and treated the subject as reverently as it deserves. We as a nation do honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.
Thank God we have such great men (and women) defending and honoring this great country. God Bless our soldiers, and God Bless our president, GWB!!!
bttt
Bump...
Ping
Honor bump
And, if you can, stand just a little taller today because Josh deserves the extra measure. He gave it for us.
Excellent.
ecxellent post. hope to make it to DC for the inaugeration, and will put this at the top of my 'see' list.
my only complaint is regarding the hurricane. I remember reading a story at the time, and as I recall, they were instructed to take shelter. to a man, they refused, declining to leave their station. it was hairy.
Thank You, Lord, for the men and women of such integrity who serve in out military.
A few days after 9/11, I saw the Tomb of the Unknowns, and watched the guard change. Everyone was reverent.
Thanks for this post.
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