The Professional Mourners of Arlington Cemetery

(via mental_floss) Hoyt Vandenberg, Chief of Staff for the United States Air Force, was driving to his office in the Pentagon in 1948 when he noticed a funeral being conducted at Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery. There was no sea of crisp uniforms or sobbing family members. Aside from the chaplain and the Honor Guard, there was no one there at all.  He didn’t like it.  Soldiers, he felt, deserved the presence of at least one civilian to bear witness to their burial.