#8: The Great City and the Great War

Eeek! The podcast was plugged by Doctrine Man, himself. How cool is that?!?! A screen shot is absolutely on the website. Also, we didn't quite make it to the story of the Unknown Soldier like I thought we would - but next week for sure. We do talk about the plans - and the planner - behind the construction of Washington, DC, the first US military aircraft, and the Great War.

This week’s Ghost of Arlington are:

1.  Army Brevet Major and Captain Pierre Charles L'Enfant (Section 2, Grave S-3)
2.  Army First Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge (Section 3, Grave 2158)

 Also, a very special thanks to Mountain Up Cap Company for its continued help to spread the word about the podcast on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/MountainUpCapCompany Climb to Glory!

For more information, including links to the podcast’s social media sites and pictures, visit the GoA website: https://www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com

Transcript

Episode 8: THE GREAT CITY AND THE GREAT WAR

Welcome and thank you for joining me for Ghosts of Arlington; Episode 8: The Great City and the Great War. It was another exciting week here at Ghosts of Arlington. A few hours after episode 7 dropped, Steve Leonard, a former Army strategist and the creator of Doctrine Man, a faux Superhero popular in military circles, gave this podcast a bump on the official Doctrine Man Facebook page. I hope some of his nearly 175,000 followers are listening today. If you are, welcome! Last week we discussed some changes that the dawn of the 20th Century brought to Arlington, including scores of new war dead to join the rows of white marble headstones belonging to Civil War casualties and veterans who had fought in the conflict some 30 years before… I also incorrectly thought we might get the Tomb of the Unknown Solider today, but that is going to have to wait until next week. And I promise it will come next week. Time keeps marching on, and the changes kept coming, in both Arlington and the wider world. At the turn of the 20th Century, Washington DC had grown into a modern, industrial world Capitol with all the congestion that accompanies such status. Some in Congress were alarmed that the city was losing its original majesty and charm and enlisted the help of a few prominent architects to help resurrect the vision of a man who had died almost 80 years prior and who had been largely lost to history. The most famous French veteran of the American Revolution – especially with the bump in pop culture notoriety given to him by an extremely popular musical – is the Marquis de Lafayette. I would argue that the second best-known French veteran of that conflict was a breveted major in the US engineers Pierre Charles L’Enfant. 

L’Enfant fought alongside and befriended both George Washington and Alexander Hamilton during the revolution and remained close to both men after the war. In 1791, L’Enfant was commissioned by President Washington to create a new capital along the banks of the Potomac River. He poured over maps with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and toured prospective sites with Washington and selected Jenkin’s Hill as the site to place the US Capitol building, calling it “a pedestal waiting for a monument.” He was a visionary but he was not patient. He jumped right into building Washington DC, digging canals, raising aqueducts, opening a quarry, and erecting new bridges without waiting for permission to do so. He emphasized river views, optimized green space, including the National Mall, and designed grand avenues to account for future growth he envisioned for the city. He eventually billed the government $95,000 for his services, which the government only valued at $3000, and after less than a year he was replaced as the city architect. Sadly, that seemed to set a pattern for the rest of L’Enfant’s life. He would win commissions, dream big, and watch his plans come crashing down. His wealthy patrons who saw to his needs passed on and he was left destitute. One of his final living friends invited L’Enfant to live with him in Maryland, on an estate Pierre himself had designed in better days.  L’Enfant died in 1825 at 70 years old, leaving an estate valued at $46. He was buried in his friend’s family plot under a red cedar, a few miles downriver from the magnificent capital he envisioned but was unable to build.

By 1900, L’Enfant had fallen into obscurity, as had his design for an open city in Washington, DC. Buildings had gone up haphazardly as the capital rapidly expanded during the Civil War, blocking river views and eliminating green space. The Pennsylvania Railroad depot was smack in the middle of the National Mall! In 1902, reform-minded Congressmembers and architects dusted off L’Enfants plans and got to work reviving his vision. Government office buildings were designed into what is today known as Federal Triangle, green space was reintroduced to the city, the railroad depot was renamed Union Station and relocated to its present location, and the Lincoln Memorial was planned to bookend the National Mall along with the Washington Monument. The new plan even endorsed a long-proposed – but yet unbuild – Memorial bridge connecting Washington, DC with Arlington National Cemetery. As this bridge would connect the Lee Mansion with the Lincoln Memorial, it was hoped it would also figuratively pull the North and South closer together. These reformers even turned their sights to Arlington, taking aim at the jumble of oversized tombs around the Lee Mansion, known as the officers’quarter, calling it pretentious. Instead of erecting such grandiose markers, the commission said that Arlington should <QUOTE> strive for the look of dignified simplicity, such as that evoked by the plain white tombstones making the graves of enlisted men and former slaves in the Lower Cemetery… Nothing could be more impressive than the rank after rank of… headstones, inconspicuous in themselves, covering the gentle, wooded slopes, and producing the desired effect of a vast army in its last resting place. <END QUOTE> This recommendation was eventually adopted in most sections of the cemetery, and we will see in a future episode that the highest-ranking officer buried at Arlington, the second-highest-ranking officer in the history of the United States military, has a standard-issue white marble headstone, just like those who fought under his command.  

As part of the reintroduction of L’Enfant’s grand vision, it was also decided that the original designer of the capital should be moved to Arlington. Today, Pierre Charles L’Enfant rests Section 2, Grave S-3, just down from steps of the Lee Mansion on a hill providing an impressive vista of the city he envisioned but did not live to see. During a visit to the site in 1825, L’Enfant’s fellow countryman, Layfette declared the view from that same hill, the greatest in the world. On the day of his re-interment, just before the casket was lowered into the ground, Senator Augustus Octavius Bacon, from Georgia, stepped from the crowd, removed a gold medal on a blue ribbon from his jacket, and placed it on L’Enfant’s casket. The medal, an eagle crowned by laurels, was from the Society of Cincinnati, a fraternal order for French and American officers of the Revolutionary war and their descendants. L’Enfant had not only been a member of the society but had also designed and oversaw the casting of the original medals. Somewhere along the way, L’Enfant had either lost or sold his medal. Senator Bacon had noticed that and made amends.

Begun as a graveyard for destitute soldiers, Arlington had expanded to receive all Civil War veterans a few years later. Then it grew to accommodate those killed in the fight with Spain. With the reburial of L’Enfant, he represented all those who had fought in the American Revolution, and soon after, a handful of veterans from the War of 1812 and the Mexican American War were moved to Section 1. Today, Arlington National Cemetery has become a place to honor those from all of America’s conflicts – past, present, and future.

In 1902, the Army issued new regulations for its standard headstones, making them more durable, taller, and wider than before. It also adopted more prominent markers for the graves of unknown soldiers, sailors, and Marines – in place of small square blocks issued to unidentified remains before 1903. 1903 also saw the successful demonstration of the Wright brothers, the first machine capable of powered flight. In 1908, hoping to secure a lucrative government contract, the Wright brothers brought a newly designed plane to Fort Myer and began flying demonstrations next to Arlington. The Army had promised $25,000 to anyone who could meet the specifications for what the military hoped would be its first warplane: It had to be able to fly 40 miles per hour, cover a distance of 150 miles, safely carry a pilot and an observer, and be portable enough to fit on a mule-drawn wagon. On September 17, 1908, a crowd of two thousand people had gathered to observe the thirteenth of these demonstration flights. On this particular day, Orville Wright was at the controls of his flying machine, with Army First Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge along for the ride. Selfridge was already a pioneering aviator, having flown dirigibles and experimental planes before these trials. When he was assigned to accompany Wright on this flight, it was recorded that he enthusiastically threw off his hat and coat and climbed aboard. A New York Times reporter said he looked as eager as a schoolboy for the test to begin. All went well until the plane’s fourth pass over the parade grounds when a propeller blade cracked, the aircraft faltered, and it plunged headlong into the ground. Wright and Selfridge were pulled from the wreckage and rushed to the post hospital. Wright suffered a broken thigh, broken ribs, and numerous lacerations, and remained hospitalized for months. Selfridge suffered a fractured skull and died three hours later, becoming the first fatality of powered flight. First Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge was buried with full military honors in Section 3, Grave 2158, just a few hundred yards from where he was killed. The western gates of the cemetery, which opened onto the old Fort Myer parade grounds were renamed in his honor and shortly thereafter an order went out for all Army pilots to wear leather helmets.

The airplane was just one turn of the century invention that would make warfare deadlier than ever before. By the time World War One kicked off in 1914, riflemen who could fire 2 well-aimed rounds a minute during the Civil War could fire 15. Artillery pieces, with their new automatic recoil, went from 3 shots a minute to 20, and machine guns, capable of firing 600 rounds a minute dealt death on an industrial scale. When the Great War erupted in Europe, the United State initially remained neutral, but that neutrality would not last and soon Arlington would need to make way for many more burials. 

For a variety of complex reasons, including but not limited to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Europe found itself on the brink of war in the summer of 1914. On August 4, 1914, German forces invaded Belgium with their eyes on France, and the dash for the sea began. I absolutely do not have time to get into all the causes of the Great War or the Great War itself, but there are several podcasts out there that do, including Mark Painter’s History of the 20th Century. By the time the guns fell silent with the armistice on November 11, 1918, the world had endured carnage on a scale never-before-experienced. 8.5 million people died in WWI, including 116,516 Americans; the United States entered the war about a year and a half before it ended. Within a month of the end of the fighting, the War Department recalled to duty Captain Charles G. Pierce. We haven’t mentioned Pierce by name yet, but he served as DH Rhodes deputy recovering US casualties in the Philippines and is the one often credited with creating ID tags – often referred to as dog tags – to help identify soldiers killed in action. Before 1918 ended, Pierce was promoted to major and send to Europe at the head of a 900-man Graves Registration Service team. Amazingly, this team was able to positively identify all but 2.2% of the Americans killed in action during the Great War. Reburied in 15 cemeteries in France, the Americans would stay there until the War Department decided to ship them home or leave them in Europe.

In 1919, many senior leaders, including General Pershing, the senior commander of US forces in WWI, expressed their opinion that those killed in action in Europe should remain there and Pershing personally negotiated for land to be designated as permanent American cemeteries. While some relatives of the fallen, including former President Theodore Roosevelt, whose youngest son Quinten, an army aviator, was killed in Europe, supported this decision, many grieving relatives did not and publicly expressed their anger at being denied the closure a funeral often brings. In October 1919, as the first anniversary of the end of the war approached, the government about-faced and Congress appropriated 5 million dollars to repatriate the remains if next of kin requested it. Between 1920 and 1922, more than 46,000 Americans killed in Europe were returned to the United States, while the rest were permanently buried in 8 cemeteries given to the Americans in Europe: one in England, one in Belgium, and six in France. Of the tens of thousands of service members repatriated, none was as revered as the unknown soldier, interred at Arlington to honor all Americans whose remains were not recovered and whose final resting places could not be marked.

Next week, we will discuss how the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers, Arlington’s most famous monument came to be and talk about the six servicemen selected to bring those remains to Arlington to be enshrined.

When I initially outlined the first few episodes of this podcast, I figured I would get through the history of the cemetery fairly quickly, but the more I record, the more I realize that this will not be the case. I should have known better – I have listened to enough podcasts to realize that it almost always takes more time to tell a story than originally thought. Regardless, I am enjoying myself and I hope that you are, too. Remember, you can find more information and pictures about each week’s episode on the podcast’s website, www.ghostsofarlingtonpodcast.com, and I would love for you to join me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Links to each of those can be found on the website are well. Finally, it would mean the world to me if you would take the time to give the show a five-star rating and write a review on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music, Google Podcast, or wherever you stream from – this will make the show easier for others to find. Also, if you are enjoying the show, it would mean the world to me if you would recommend it to your friends.  And as always, fear not death, for the sooner we die, the longer we shall be immortal.