The book you see at the left was written in 2009 and is a very interesting story about one of America's most honored places, Arlington National Cemetery. One online review that I read of this book said that author Robert Poole does not write a comprehensive history of the place, so much as he tells stories about it, and from those stories, you do get a good understanding of how what was the ancestral home of Martha Washington and Robert E. Lee developed into the "hallowed ground" that it is today.
About the first one-third of the books tells of how the Custis-Lee mansion and estate (Robert E. Lee was married to the step-granddaughter of Martha Custis Washington) was usurped by the Federal government during the Civil War. The government, under the direction of US Army Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs pretty much stole the property from the Lee family under the exigencies of war. I think that many people with even a rudimentary knowledge of the history of the Civil War Era are aware of the Lee connection to Arlington. What you may not know is that many years after the War, in the early 1880's, the Lee Family sued for the recovery of the property and won their case. At that point, the Cemetery was well established, so the government was then in the position where they had to buy the property back from the Lees for fair market value, which they did for $150,000.
Great stories included in the book were the process for selecting an Unknown Soldier following World War I, and the weekend surrounding the assassination and interment of President Kennedy. Did you know that when Mrs. Kennedy asked that an eternal flame be installed by the President's grave, personnel at Arlington and the Army had no idea how to construct one, but they somehow found a way to make it work in less than 24 hours.
Another fascinating story involves the Unknown from Viet Nam. In the early 1980's, there was great pressure from the Reagan Administration to find, designate, and inter an Unknown from that war. However, the advances in both military operations regarding war dead and in forensic science, made it easier to identify all war dead, and, thus, their weren't that many unknowns. Nevertheless, and Unknown was buried in a solemn ceremony that included President Reagan, even though there were those who were pretty sure that the body buried was not Unknown. In 1998, the body was exhumed and identified. I am painting this story with a very broad brush, and the details of the Viet Nam Unknown's story make for great reading.
It's a pretty good book, and if you have an Amazon Kindle, you can purchase it for a mere $3.99!
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