Blue Shirt and Khaki: A Comparison

by James F. J. Archibald

It is purely a matter of sentiment that prompts any particular disposition of the bodies of those who fall in a fight, or who succumb to the ravages of fever; but to the fighting man in the field it is a tender sentiment that means much. The body of every American soldier who falls on a foreign shore is sooner or later brought home and buried, with all the honors of war. If his family or friends want his body for private burial, they are aided in securing it; but if it is not so claimed, it is then taken to one of the great national cemeteries and laid away with proper ceremonies. If one were to ask a soldier in good health whether he wanted to be taken home to be buried, he would probably reply that it did not matter at all what was done with his body after he got through with it. But if the time came when death seemed near, that same man would find sensible satisfaction in thinking that some day his own family would stand beside the box that served as the narrow cell of his last sleep. I have seen many a man die soothed by the feeling that he would eventually be taken home. In a severe campaign in a distant or foreign land, the idea of home finds a meaning to matter-of-fact and apparently unimaginative soldiers which they cannot express, but which stirs infinite pathos. When a soldier lies weak from a burning fever, but with all his mental faculties more than ever alert, or when he is on solitary outpost duty against an active enemy, with time to turn the situation over in his mind, it is then that he thinks of home as at no other time, and it is then that he will appreciate all that he knows will be done for him should he happen to be found by death.

Whenever an American soldier falls in action or dies of disease, he receives as good a burial as the circumstances permit, and his grave is distinctly marked, so that there will be no possibility of its not being found when the time for removal comes. It may be months before the day arrives, but it is sure to come at last, and then the bodies are taken up and put in leaden-lined coffins and transported home.

Burial at Arlington of 426 American soldiers who fell in Cuba.

The year after the Cuban campaign I attended the burial of four hundred and twenty-six officers and men at Arlington, the great national cemetery on the beautiful, sloping banks of the Potomac River, opposite Washington. The President, the members of the cabinet, the commanding general of the army, and other high officials of state were there to pay their respect to the noble dead as they were laid to rest in the company of the thousands of others who gave their lives for their country in the Civil War. The long lines of coffins, each one draped with a flag, resting beside the open graves, ready to be lowered, told a heavy story of the breakage of war. Two chaplains, one Protestant and the other Roman Catholic, read the service for the burial of the dead, while a soldier stood at each grave and sprinkled the symbolic handful of earth upon the coffin. At the end of the ceremony the artillery boomed the last salute, and the trumpeters sounded the slow, mournful notes of “taps.” The imposing funeral cost the government a great amount of money. But each year the soldier dead are gathered home; the dead of every war our country has waged have been brought together, a silent army of heroic men. These graves will be cared for and the names will be preserved so long as the nation lasts.

In South Africa the English forces buried their dead with the honors of war whenever it was possible, but not with the intention of taking the bodies home at any future date; and in hundreds of cases the graves were not even marked. There was not that deserved attention paid to the dead which seemed often feasible, and which in some cases I felt that Americans would have made feasible. In one instance in Natal a Boer general sent a flag of truce to the British general, whose forces had just met with a severe defeat, and told him that a truce would be allowed in which to bury the dead, and that if the British general would send out a burial party it would be given safe conduct and every assistance in the work. The answer went back to the Boer commander, “Bury them yourself and send us the bill.” The Boers did bury them, and read a Christian service over them, but they did not send in a bill.

Gathering the dead after the battle of Diamond Hill.

When rightly led, there is no braver soldier on earth than the “gentleman in khaki” who goes out to do his Sovereign’s bidding in every part of the world. He is the finest specimen of the sturdy soldier known in Europe. He is not unlike the American soldier, except in the standard of education and self-reliance. He is the same happy, careless, and kind-hearted man, who will fight an enemy all day, and, when he has been defeated, feed him out of his own scanty store of rations. The British soldier does not often become intoxicated; but when he does chance to take too much, he is apt to be affected with a bit more of dignity, or with an exaggerated straightness; he is rarely quarrelsome.