After the war, Railton advocated for a grave bearing the body of a single soldier to bring the impossibly large tragedy down to a human scale. The soldier’s anonymity would allow each person who came to the grave to project whatever was most important to them onto the mystery. It didn’t matter if you wanted to honor all those who served or merely those who died, those who volunteered or those who were drafted, or even whether you were for the war or against it. Everyone was free to mourn in their own way. [...]
The remains in the tomb are not even technically referred to as an “unknown soldier.” No one knows which service they’re from, so instead of “soldier” or “sailor” or “marine,” they’re simply referred to as the “Unknown.” In fact, anything that narrows the scope of who this person could be — including where exactly they were found is purposely withheld from the public in order to make sure that they represent every possible service member. It’s one of the reasons the tomb has become one of the Washington D.C. area’s biggest tourist attractions. [...]
At first, there were a lot of Unknowns to work with. In World War I there were around 1,648 Unknowns, in World War II there were 8,526, the Korean war there were 848. But thanks to improved battlefield evacuation tactics, the Vietnam War produced only four sets of unidentified remains that could potentially go into the tomb. Then, as more information about those remains was discovered, only one set of remains remained unknown. That single set of remains was known only as X-26, but his actual name was Michael Blassie.
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