Story of America’s Known Soldier highlights Rome’s Veterans Day ceremony

It’s emotional just to know that an ordinary person can make an extraordinary difference.”

Scores of veterans packed into the Shanklin-attaway American Legion Post 5 hall Wednesday as the threat of bad weather moved the annual Veterans Day service indoors this year.

Rome Office of Tourism Director Lisa Smith related, as the keynote address, the story of Private Charles W. Graves, America’s Known Soldier, who is interred at Myrtle Hill Cemetery.

Smith said that Graves was among the last of the soldiers who died during World War I to have his body brought home from Europe. During that journey, he was randomly selected to be the Known Soldier recognized by the nation for his sacrifice in the war.

The Unknown Soldier had already been selected from among three veterans who had been killed but never identified.

Graves served for 14 months before losing his life. He was originally buried in France along the Hindenburg Line, then buried in the old Antioch Cemetery off Callier Springs Road when he was returned to the U.S. in 1922. Some in Rome felt like the Antioch Cemetery was not a befitting place of final rest

for America’s Known Soldier so, in defiance of the Graves family’s wishes, he was reinterred at Myrtle Hill in the middle of the night.

“When they dug that grave and laid that steel gray coffin into it, they didn’t only cover it up, they covered it permanently,” Smith said. “He would permanently, forever to this day, still be honored as America’s Known Soldier, Private Charles W. Graves, in our Myrtle Hill Cemetery.”

The tradition of honoring Graves with the laying of wreaths at his tomb started in 1923 and has been continuing ever since.

“It’s emotional just to know that an ordinary person can make an extraordinary difference,” Smith said.

Wednesday, due to the threat of rain, representatives from veterans organizations laid wreaths around a flag draped over a table in the middle of the Legion hall.

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Robert Rakestraw, one of two men at the ceremony who fought in World War II, said the campaign at Okinawa was the toughest battle of World War II in Europe or Asia.

For the Navy, Rakestraw said, it was bad because of the kamikaze pilots that crashed into the ships.

Rakestraw served in the Marine Corps from November 1942 through Novem

ber of 1945. In addition to Okinawa, Rakestraw served on the Marshall Islands and Guam.

An estimated 110,000 Japanese soldiers were killed at Okinawa and close to that many civilian residents of the island perished. The United States lost more than 12,000 soldiers in that battle.

Doug Walker Marine Corps veteran Robert Rakestraw, 97, was one of two World War II veterans at the Veterans Day ceremonies. Top: U.S. Air Force veteran Jerry Kichler sounded taps.

Photos by Doug Walker Above: American Legion Post 506 Commander Rodney Dillard salutes after placing a wreath around a giant American flag. Right. Rome tourism director Lisa Smith relates the story of Charles W. Graves, buried at the Tomb of the Known Soldier in Myrtle Hill. Below: The American Legion Post 5 Honor Guard fires a 21-gun volley at the end of the Veterans Day ceremony at the Legion post on Shorter Avenue.

Doug Walker Youngsters got a chance to handle one of the American Legion Honor Guard rifles prior to the Veterans Day ceremony Wednesday. Theo Swanigan (from left), Harold David III, Toby Swanigan and Carol Green were greeted by Dan Emerick.