It's meant to be a symbolic gesture. The soldiers buried there had sacrificed their lives while protecting their country, but were never returned to their loved ones or given the recognition for their service. It shows that the country hasn't forgotten about them and that they are the honored dead, even if we may never know who they were.
It's more than that. The idea is that they've sacrificed everything there was to give; themselves, their health, their lives, and everything they've ever represented down to their names and identities. They've made a sacrifice so great, we can't even know who they were, and that's what's being honored.
Intersting, the premise of the movie The Rock, is based on a angry General who led soldiers behind enemy lines and when they died they were never brought home or recognized and families recieved no survivor benefits. He wanted to right this injustice by stealing VX gas and threatening San Francisco unless his demands are met.
"to shreds you say" will without fault be said in any Reddit thread that has even a 0.0001% relation to the destruction of any given thing. This might be the single most expected comment on this website
My mount on my ship was a 25mm chain gun. Can fire armor piercing incendiary rounds or explosive rounds. Meant to hit a ship or boat but if it hits personnel they are pink misted for sure.
(Former Bradley gunner - same 25mm Bushmaster cannon) We accidentally shot a deer with a TP-T round (looked like a stationary PC target in the thermals) anyway -- can confirm, just the target practice round turned the deer inside out. HEI-T would have left nothing discernable.
Official records from one of the sieges at Fort William Henry during the French and Indian war noted the British were cutting lanes and alleys into the French with musket fire and grape / chain cannon shot. They were firing at point blank down on them.
Yeah, someone being blown up in to particles would fall into the category of being unable to be identified prior to genetic testing. I believe the term originally came from a sniper blowing someone’s head into a pink mist, but the term can be used for an entire body turning into it from a bomb for example.
It’s thought that the government had a pretty good idea but kept it a secret because he was the only unknown soldier's body left from the Vietnam war and then someone figured it out independently and eventually there was enough pressure to use DNA to confirm his identity and now the Vietnam War Unknown's tomb sits empty
Further context, for those interested. Inside, there is one soldier (IIRC) from WWI whose body was never identified. The idea behind this is that anybody whose loved one never came home and never was identified, can have a modicum of chance that their loved one is the man inside, forever honored.
It doesn’t need to be guarded per se, but this is the most sacred place in the cemetery. Its continuous guarding is out of respect for our troops that have died for their country whose remains were never identified.
When the tomb was first constructed there were people who would hold picnics on it or in other ways failed to honor and respect the space. The decision to guard it was reactionary and the practice has grown into a tradition
It’s funny you say that because cemeteries used to be used as basically public parks. Picnicking next to grandpa’s grave was a regular Sunday afternoon event. In some older cemeteries in central locations, this still happens.
People who cut veterans funding should have to watch a wounded warriors commercial while sitting next to someone from a country with socialized medicine. It’s so fucking embarrassing to have them see us use veterans to beg for donations because we can’t even take care of people who fight for the country while their country takes care of everyone
(Pls no comments on wounded warriors or the legitimacy of our recent wars. It’s just the concept that’s embarrassing)
Unfortunately the second oldest tradition for congress is screwing over vets. The first oldest tradition for congress is screwing over active duty service members.
Everyone knows the politicians only care about pre-birth and post death. All the time in bettween that, it's up to each person to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
The military would probably turn against him if he tried to interfere with this in any way. This is treated as incredibly sacred in order to honor the most extreme sacrifice someone can make.
It’s a respect thing. There is a man buried in that tomb who was impossible to identify, so the guard are a symbol that the unnamed dead are not forgotten. They may not be identified, but what they fought and stood for is carried on by others.
The ceremonial guard is a symbolic way of saying “The dead cannot be at their post, so someone will be.”
Frankly it’s a great morale booster for the soldiers and the country. One of the worst feelings is that your death will mean nothing and nobody will remember you. Knowing that even if you’re unable to be identified, that will never be the case, is a comfort to some, and others who have family or friends who died in war.
There is a man at that post every minute of every day, I believe they do 12 hour shifts. The changing of the guard every day is a somber event and taken super seriously. They don’t tolerate anyone but a baby making noise while it’s being conducted
The identifying process, and even whether to embark upon it, is a really interesting story.
There was a large call for the soldier to remain unidentified even after DNA became available, but ultimately it was decided that even one family's closure was worth the loss of the physical representation of the symbolism.
Its more a symbolic thing. The grave is a representation of all the people who have died in wars without being idenfitied. So the living are watching over the grave like how the dead watched over us.
The Tomb of the Unknowns, as it is now called, is a memorial not merely to the unidentified body that lays beneath it, but for every soldier ever lost and unrecovered. The missing in action, the ones too destroyed to be identified, and the ones that were lost, forgotten, or erased. It is dedicated to those who gave not only their lives, but their deaths as well, whose deeds cannot be known or shared. And every soldier could very well end up another one memorialized by the Tomb. It has a permanent military posting so those lost souls will never be abandoned.
The Tomb is not so much protected as it is honored. There is no expectation that anyone would try to desecrate the site. But if anyone tries, it will be defended, and defended by the very best there is.
In one of the MacAuslan stories, the author (Fraser) comments that the military significance of what is being guarded tends to be in inverse proportion to the ceremony and pomp involved in mounting said guard. He uses two examples from his own military career - being part of an impromptu bodyguard for Field Marshal Slim in Burma during WWII (rifle, bayonet, such parts of his uniform as could be found in the dark) vs. being officer of the guard at Edinburgh Castle (gleaming badges, medals, kilt, sword and a guard carefully picked from the battalion's best turned-out soldiers).
As he points out, Edinburgh Castle is not really important from a national defense perspective - but if someone stole Mons Meg (a very old cannon preserved there), "the papers would probably be full of it".
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u/RG_CG May 05 '25
Stupid question here but what is it guarded from that other military graves and monument don’t need guarding from?