KNOWN BUT TO GOD

A famed American author turns his attention to the history and meaning of the Tomb of Unknown Soldiers, in Arlington Cemetery. Beginning with a brief history of the cemetery itself, he tells how the first Unknown Soldier was placed there in 1921, then how remains of two more soldiers were selected from World War II and the Korean War to be placed at the monument as well. Reynolds then sketches three mythical men---Danny Cannon, Steve LeMaire, and Jefferson Leigh---who might easily be the three unknowns. Cannon, who died with the Lost Battalion in 1918, is conceived of as the son of a Brooklyn lawyer. The second mythical soldier, LeMaire, is a flyer who later died while trying to rescue fellow airmen from the Japanese. The third, Leigh, is a San Franciscan who, as a medical corpsman, is killed tending to wounded in a Korean farmhouse. The result is a book historically interesting, emotionally moving. In places, its mythical characters assume something of the role of real human beings, but not consistently.