About 30 people braved the Washington, D.C., area summer heat to tour Arlington National Cemetery and learn about the U.S. Army’s history on June 22, 2025. They took the “Global Wars, Global Warriors: Army History in the 20th Century Tour” hosted by ANMC Historians Dr. Allison Finkelstein and Tim Frank.
As their trolley drove through the cemetery’s rolling hills and rows of headstones, the two historians explained both the Army’s and the cemetery’s history. The trolley passed by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as Finkelstein explained how, after World War I, the Army selected one unknown soldier from American military cemeteries in Europe who would represent all the unknowns from the war. She added that even 104 years after the burial of the World War I Unknown, the Tomb “still draws thousands of visitors each day.”
The trolley stopped at several graves of soldiers connected to World War I, including Pvt. Henry Reed and Pvt. Jack Jones, both of whom served in segregated units in Europe, as well as Staff Sgt. Frank Witchey, an Army bugler who sounded Taps at the burial of the World War I Unknown on Nov. 11, 1921. Frank explained that Witchey’s superb bugling earned him the nicknames “the old ‘maestro’ of the trumpet, the daddy of the bugle and number one windjammer of the Third Cavalry.”
Other graves visited represented other wars. Maj. Stephanie Czech Rader—an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) spy in Soviet-occupied Warsaw, Poland, who tracked Soviet troop movements and collected data—represented World War II. (The OSS was the precursor to the CIA.) Lt. Col. Don Carlos Faith, who died leading his men out of a Communist Chinese trap east of the Chosin Reservoir, represented the Korean War; and the commingled remains of seven soldiers killed in a UH-1H Huey helicopter crash on March 20, 1970, represented the Vietnam War.
The soldiers lost in the helicopter crash were listed as missing in action. In 1995, their remains were recovered and later identified in 2001. At their headstone, Frank read a poem written by Capt. Michael O’Donnell, one of the soldiers lost in the crash. It ended with the lines, “take a moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind.”
The last graves visited were those of three soldiers killed in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Oct. 3-4, 1993. They died while capturing lieutenants for warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid in an operation remembered simply as “Black Hawk Down” for one of the two Army helicopters that crashed that day. One of the soldiers had also fought in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when coalition forces led by the U.S. Army drove Saddam Hussein’s invading army out of Kuwait.
The tour ended with a drive around Section 60, where many casualties from the Global War on Terror are buried. Finkelstein had to stop her presentation when the trolley passed several families at gravesites. It was an appropriate way to end the tour, as everyone remained quiet to honor those grieving a loss.
After the tour, participants praised the experience. “The tour was great,” said Jim Peterso, a former Marine who hopes to be buried at ANC someday. “I loved all the history.” Marina and Julian, a couple from Germany, had been to the cemetery before, yet found that the tour added a new perspective. “It was interesting because we’ve never been to these parts of the cemetery,” said Marina. “We thought it was really informative.” Amy Burrison appreciated the historians’ presentations. “I loved that everyone was knowledgeable,” she said, adding that Finklestein and Frank “really complemented each other.”
Julie Codiga, with the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, became emotional during the tour. “The narrative of the veterans who sacrificed left me speechless,” she said, “and seeing the families mourning their dead brought me to tears.”