ONE HUNDRED YEARS WAR, UNFINISHED. 4/4: The Unknowns: The Untold Story of America’s Unknown Soldier and WWI’s Most Decorated Heroes Who Brought Him Home, by Patrick K. O'Donnell
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2024
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Unknowns-Americas-Soldier-Decorated-Brought/dp/0802128335
When the first Unknown Soldier was laid to rest in Arlington, General John Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in WWI, selected eight of America’s most decorated, battle-hardened veterans to serve as Body Bearers. For the first time, O’Donnell portrays their heroics on the battlefield one hundred years ago, thereby animatingÅÇ the Tomb by giving voice to all who have served. The Body Bearers appropriately spanned America’s service branches and specialties. Their ranks include a cowboy who relived the charge of the light brigade, an American Indian who heroically breached mountains of German barbed wire, a salty New Englander who dueled a U-boat for hours in a fierce gunfight, a tough New Yorker who sacrificed his body to save his ship, and an indomitable gunner who, though blinded by gas, nonetheless overcame five machine-gun nests. Their stories slip easily into the larger narrative of America’s involvement in the conflict, transporting readers into the midst of dramatic battles during 1917–1918 that ultimately decided the Great War
1937 TOM OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER WARSAW, POLAND
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is CBS. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm John Bachelor with Patrick O'Donnell. |
| 0:09.0 | The book is The Unknowns. |
| 0:10.0 | And we're watching now, |
| 0:13.4 | 21, 100 years before, the U.S.S. Olympia has arrived at Kayside, |
| 0:20.4 | Potomac Basin. |
| 0:22.4 | Eight body bears, and we've gone through their names, Delaney, Janssen, |
| 0:26.1 | Deles, Saunders, O'Connor, Taylor, Woodful, and Roscoe. Carry the coffin, but the next two days are ceremonies watched by the whole nation. |
| 0:36.0 | Certainly the newspaper is covered very carefully. |
| 0:39.0 | The leadership of the country greets the coffin. |
| 0:42.0 | A couple of details. How was the body chosen? All these |
| 0:46.0 | thousands of men who have been destroyed and there's no record of their names and |
| 0:51.5 | their origins. The choice of the body itself was was designed |
| 0:59.1 | by a main name Quackenbush. How did he imagine it, Patrick? Well, Quackenbush is part of what's known as the |
| 1:06.4 | Grace Registration Service and his task is to find several American unknown. |
| 1:13.5 | And they go to the major battlefields |
| 1:16.7 | of the American Expeditionary Forces, |
| 1:19.7 | which also corresponds |
| 1:21.7 | with the major cemeteries of the AIF where tens of thousands of Americans |
| 1:26.3 | are buried. |
| 1:27.8 | And Quackenbush and his detail go to each, they go to several cemeteries and they exhum what are believed to be unknown soldiers. |
| 1:39.6 | They carefully exhum them and then carefully check the bodies for dog tags, diaries, letters, anything |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.