Soldiers Unknown and Known

Last week, we (“Grammie” and “Gramps”) received a number of text messages with photos from our grandson, who was on his way to Scouting’s 2026 National Jamboree in West Virginia. As part of their trip, the Scouts included a visit to Washington, DC. Along with images of the Lincoln Memorial and airplanes in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, our grandson included a photo of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. 

Although I was happy the Scouts had visited Arlington and my grandson had an opportunity to see it, I also was taken aback by the thought of a 15-year-old boy visiting the tomb. I think it was E.B. White who wrote something along the lines of the worst time to have a son is 18 years before a war. I wondered if a sane person will be leading our nation in three years. 

That same day I received another text message, this one from my son, who was on the same message thread. He inquired if my namesake was buried in Arlington.

If you have read this column over the years, you may remember my father decided my first name would be that of someone he knew, Larry McNew. McNew and my dad had gone through boot camp and paratrooper training together in 1943 and had become close friends. 

McNew was killed on the island of Leyte in the Philippines. He did not make it back to Arlington. He lies under a government-issued marble headstone in the American military cemetery in Manilla. With typical military brevity that stone simply gives his name followed by “PFC, 511 PRCHT INF, 11 ABN DIV, MINNESOTA, DEC 16, 1944.”

So McNew isn’t exactly an unknown soldier like the one in Arlington, but that headstone also doesn’t give much context to his life. If you cannot interpret the abbreviations, the inscription says his rank was Private First Class in the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division, he was from Minnesota, and he died on Dec. 16, 1944.

The stone neglects to say that McNew was in Company C, was about my father’s age of 21, and was from a small place near Itasca, Minnesota, or that he had married a girl from there who accompanied him when he went to boot camp in North Carolina, and he had become a first-time father after he left for the South Pacific. He never met his infant daughter before he shipped out. That bothered my father immensely, and that is why he named me after his fallen friend. 

Death is perhaps the most personal of all experiences; dying in war is possibly one of the most lonely and anonymous. Heroic generations might be remembered; the individuals within those generations rapidly become as unknown as the soldier in the tomb in Arlington. Such is the nature of time and human societies.

Without looking it up, can you, for example, name a soldier from Vermont who fought in World War I? According to internet search engines, more than 14,000 Vermonters served and approximately 1,300 were killed. The first Vermonter to die was Corporal Leonard A. Lord of Swanton. Back in March of this year, 108 years after his sacrifice, a Roadside Historic Site Marker was erected in Swanton dedicated to Lord’s memory. 

What about those who served in Vietnam, or Korea, or Saratoga, or Bennington? Or Gettysburg, where, according to Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, the Second Vermont Brigade “stood like granite” in repulsing Pickett’s Charge? Forty-five Vermonters were killed that day saving the Union. Do we remember their names? 

In wars there are very few John Basilones or Audie Murphys, whose extraordinary exploits earn them Congressional Medals of Honor and keep their names alive. Most soldiers are only known to and remembered by family and friends and only for as long as those families and friends remember them. Generations change, and with those changes so do our memories. 

Generations will soon change again. At the very least, we who remain should remember that through their actions, words, and sacrifices all those who have defended this nation are speaking to us. 

And none perhaps has spoken to us in this specific political time as succinctly and eloquently as Priv. Benjamin Warner, who served in the Continental Army during what he termed the “War of the Revolution.”

About a month ago, my grandson and I visited Fort Ticonderoga. We were fortunate that this summer, after about a decade in storage and in honor of the nation’s 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the fort’s museum had on display Benjamin Warner’s knapsack. 

Warner, who was born in 1757 and was from New Haven, Connecticut, carried that knapsack in campaigns in Quebec, Boston, New Jersey, and New York. 

He was issued the knapsack on enlistment. It was a simple linen and leather-trimmed bag, now, after 250 years, leather-less and dingy. 

More importantly, in 1837 Warner passed the knapsack on to his son, Benjamin Warner Jr., along with a “will” written in his own hand instructing that the knapsack be passed along to each new generation of Warners. Those instructions for the knapsack concluded with this plea:

“… and whilst one shred of it shall remain never surrender your libertys to a foren envador or an aspiring demegog.”

As the nation begins its 251st year, we need to listen and act accordingly. We need to honor that will.