--- title: Veterans Day: The Story of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier description: On Veterans Day, a wreath is laid at Arlington at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Here's what led to the ceremony becoming an annual tradition canonical: https://time.com/5014287/veterans-day-tomb-of-unknown-soldier-history/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-11-10T14:00:01.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:53:59.488Z article:section: History og:title: Why Veterans Day Is Special at Arlington's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier og:description: Here's why it became an annual ritual to lay a wreath there og:url: https://time.com/5014287/veterans-day-tomb-of-unknown-soldier-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaea9f7b17d6f4e80/6988e4f6e76ad24add62fdf8/unknown.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Veterans Day Is Special at Arlington's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier twitter:description: Here's why it became an annual ritual to lay a wreath there twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltaea9f7b17d6f4e80/6988e4f6e76ad24add62fdf8/unknown.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Deep Connection Between Veterans Day and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=aaeff1f1-9157-424c-b1c8-6f1230c29421&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=aaeff1f1-9157-424c-b1c8-6f1230c29421&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: the Influencers: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sebastian Junger [Watch (HLS stream): the Influencers: Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sebastian Junger](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ApkZjOyL.m3u8) (6:16)  _Published 2017-09-26. Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sebastian Junger on war and human nature_  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Nov 10, 2017 2:00 PM UTC  A couple walking by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. May 1943. A couple walking by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. May 1943. Historical / Corbis / Getty Images  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Nov 10, 2017 2:00 PM UTC On Saturday, for the annual [Veterans Day National Ceremony](http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/News/Post/4303/Public-invited-to-celebrate-Veterans-Day-at-Arlington-National-Cemetery), at exactly 11:00 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month, a wreath will be laid at Arlington National Cemetery at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The ritual has happened annually for more than half a century — but the tomb, also referred to as the Tomb of the Unknowns, and the day have been intertwined for even longer. The day now known as Veterans Day [originated with Armistice Day](http://time.com/4555301/armistice-day-veterans-day/) observances marking the anniversary of the 1918 [end of World War I](http://time.com/4105085/veterans-day-world-war-i-memorial/), which became an official holiday in the 1930s. For that reason, many nations that participated in the First World War will also be marking its end — often called Armistice Day or Remembrance Day — on Saturday. [Pilgrimages](http://time.com/vault/issue/1936-11-23/page/15/) to the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington — and parallel pilgrimages to such tombs in cities around the world — likewise quickly became [an Armistice Day tradition](http://time.com/vault/issue/1927-11-21/page/15/) for U.S. dignitaries and military families in the years immediately following the war. The Unknown Soldier had been [interred on Armistice Day in 1921](http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Tomb-of-the-Unknown-Soldier), just three years after the war’s end, with President Warren G. Harding leading the ceremony. As TIME later [reported](http://time.com/vault/issue/1955-11-21/page/22/), even as early as the selection of the body to be thus honored, the tomb has always been a place of great significance in the American imagination: --- > “” --- However, in the years that followed, the hope that World War I might be the “war to end all wars” was dashed, and the meaning of Armistice Day began to change, too. In 1954, the U.S. Congress [officially](http://time.com/vault/issue/1954-06-07/page/23/) turned Armistice Day into Veterans Day because, as President Eisenhower [said](http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=107219) at the time, “in the intervening years the United States has been involved in two other great military conflicts, which have added millions of veterans living and dead to the honor rolls of this Nation.” (Memorial Day, which honors those who died in combat, is much older, [dating back](http://time.com/4770697/memorial-day/) to the years [immediately following](http://time.com/3892630/why-do-we-celebrate-memorial-day/) the Civil War.) Accordingly, unknown troops from later wars — [World War II, Korea and Vietnam](http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Tomb-of-the-Unknown-Soldier) — were also honored with interment at Arlington. Following the Vietnam War, however, the tomb’s tenders faced a new problem: an unknown soldier of that war was to be buried at Arlington alongside his comrades, but between modern identification techniques and the small-unit fighting style of the war, every lost troop was [identified, as of 1972\. ](http://time.com/vault/issue/1972-07-24/page/16/)When an “unknown” was finally selected for Vietnam in 1984, questions [remained](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,987772,00.html) as to whether he was truly unidentified, and he was [exhumed and identified](http://www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Tomb-of-the-Unknown-Soldier) about a decade later. Today, even though Veterans Day has lost some of its association with World War I and is not only about honoring veterans who have died, the Tomb of the Unknowns retains its central place in the observance of the day. It’s no coincidence that it was at the Tomb that famed World War I soldier Alvin York in 1941 gave his answer to those who wondered whether war’s continued presence in the world meant that he and his comrades had fought in vain, as TIME [reported](http://time.com/vault/issue/1941-06-09/page/23/) then. “People who ask us that question, ‘What did it get you?’ forget one thing. True, we fought the last war to make the world safe for democracy, and we did for a while,” he says. “The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once—and then stop. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them.” ## Transcript [ BLANK_AUDIO ] We study war because we know, obviously, it brings out the worst. But we study war because it also brings out the very, very best. [ MUSIC ] The demonstrators resisted when police attempted to arrest a young man who tried to rip down an American flag. We spent ten years working on the Vietnam war. We wake up, and our films about mass demonstrations taking place all across the United States against the current administration. About a White House obsessed with leaks, in total disarray. About a president who thinks the press is lying and making stuff up about him. About asymmetrical warfare, about huge document drops of stolen classified material into the public sphere. And about accusations that a political campaign reached out during the time of a national election to influence that campaign And we kinda go wait a second, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. A quote that's attributed to Mark Twain. This is all Vietnam and hundreds of other things rhyme, and I'm thinking what you're doing and the kind of stuff you're trying to grapple with seems almost exactly the same thing we're trying to grapple with. But specifically about who these people are that we make Do the fighting that we ask to put their lives on the line. Well, you know I'm anthropologist and I look at all my journalism and film making through that lens. We're a dominant species because we're capable of organized aggression against enemies, we are mean. [ FOREIGN ] [ SOUND ] And I think you have this dynamic tension in human society which is why you keep getting these stories repeated over and over and over again You have the sort of the collective will of the people and there's a certain sense of egalitarianism and fairness. And then you have a very necessary sort of hierarchical structure that keeps order in society. And people in power then resort to a kind of top- down hierarchy and abuse it. If war is human behavior, human nature on steroids, then Also it shows the exaggerated positiveness of our species because in these moments of our worst behaviour we also see this empathetic tendencies, the love. The lost soldiers that I know of [ UNKNOWN ]. Right. A lot of people that I know who look through catastrophes. [ INAUDIBLE ] I know a woman who [ INAUDIBLE ] my first [ INAUDIBLE ] early 90's Right . >> Now decades later, I interviewed her and she said a lot of people in [ UNKNOWN ] missed the war - >> Yes, right . >> Because it brought everyone together [ MUSIC ] You know, from the Vietnam era as you were talking I'm thinking it's not just soldiers who feel that way, it's people who protested the war. They were part of something that was deeply meaningful to them and they thought they sacrificed. Some of them went to jail, went to Canada. You know, really committed themselves in a deep way to something they though was right. It didn't involve aggression in the way that Going to wars but there was a sense of life being higher, more powerful, more [ UNKNOWN ] like I was saying. [ UNKNOWN ] primarily two things a sense of meeting within our community and closeness and the closer you get to a catastrophe, to a disaster, to a war. The more people depend on you and vice versa. And that's what humans are evolved for. You clearly have studied this. I wanna know stuff to do. I don't mean no more wars. We know that's never gonna happen because, as you suggest, people are kind of excited about that stuff. But what is it that we and do? I mean we remember that sense of collective solidarity in a Few weeks post 9 / 11 that got squandered by the hierarchy that said go shopping, rather than please pay 50 cents more a gallon per gas. Right. Please don't do this. Please do this All of which every single American would have done. Done with glee but now we just got a kind of political sense in which we don't ask anything of Americans, we want to cut their taxes even more we want to do all this stuff and have the same smoke and mirrors. I'm not suggesting a political answer from you but there's a social and human set of actions, perhaps is the way to say it, that might help This. Psychologists will tell you the more you sacrifice for something the more you value it and the problem in modern America one says very lucky that we're such a wealthy safe nation that we don't require individual sacrifice of anyone. In some sense that's very lucky. But in other sense is actually not very good for us. I'm against the draft, I think it's [ UNKNOWN ] for someone to fight a war that they don't believe in but I would be completely for national service. Yeah, we agree completely. Yes. [ CROSSTALK ] And if you do that, because people are sacrificing a year or two of their lives towards this collective goal of having this nation You raise the value of the nation in people's hearts and that's when you start to feel a real part of something. I mean, just thinking about Vietnam and we've been thinking about it for so long that the lack of [ UNKNOWN ] was usually traumatic for soldiers and for the people on the other side, too. That the country didn't know there was such incredible. Profound cognitive dissonance That's right. About what we were doing. And it was on every level. Modern society is easy on the body and hard on the mind. Most of the country, Democrat or Republican, either way, I think most people want a kind of collective good for country Yes, I agree. Right? The country has to come up with norms of behavior that confront and contradict what has happened in our political world. In a crisis obviously, we've seen in Texas, people do that immediately. Right. Right, no black, white, rich, poor, no one cares. Right. That's humans at their best. But can we achieve that without the hurricane, without the war, without the fight, can we do it? I think we can, but we have to espouse it in a proactive way. Well, it seems like counting on the politicians to beat in the lead on that is probably unlikely, but it can bubble up through the way people tell stories and the way human experiences [ CROSSTALK ]. [ CROSSTALK ]. 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