>> throughout the weekend, american history tv is featuring ann arbor, michigan. our local content vehicles recently traveled there to learn about its rich history. learn more about ann arbor and c-span's local content vehicles at c-span.org/localcontent. you're watching american history tv, all weekend every weekend on c-span3. each week american history tv's american artifacts takes viewers behind the scenes at archives, museums and historic sites. this week, we visit the third u.s. infancy caisson platoon in arlington, virginia, based in ft. myer, the old guard conducts up to eight honored funerals etch day with horse-drawn caisson teams.

work begins at 4:00 a.m. when the horses are washed and the tack is cleaned and polished. near the horse stables is the caisson platoon leather shop. eugene burkes has worked in the leather shop since 1981. we visited him to learn more about the work involved in preparing funeral caissons according to century-old tradition.

>> i was currently in acting duty here for 16 years. i retired in 1997. and they brought me back as a civilian. at that time, it was candleten light textiles here. i had no experience at all with tack and harness. i was pretty much self-taught. right now, we have two guys here, and that's their mos now, in which they actually come in and i train those guys on mos. and what we do here is we repair all the harness and tacks from scratch from the caissons and all the horses. we also handle all the logistics. ideally, what we do is try to keep on hand a normal stock of items that will break, so if something breaks down, we have what's called a section worker. if something breaks, the section worker will come in and get the replacement part, and there's no down time.

everything is made from scratch, from the hide. only thing we order is the hardware. ideally, up until about six years ago, all of this stuff was handmade. we started using sewing machines probably about six, seven years ago. >> i was watching them from the start at 4:00 a.m. this morning, cleaning the horses and doing all this. so much attention to detail. you have been around here a long time. why is that important? >> well, i guess the biggest thing is first of all, you have to understand, we're in the military, and we're all about detail. and we're in the public's eye every day. we're laying to rest our fallen soldiers. we take a lot of pride in what they do. these soldiers work hard every day. from 4:00 in the morning until 1600, 1700 at night, and sometimes two weeks at a time. they're constantly, seven days a week, somebody is here doing something. and i think -- i think at times they don't even realize the importance of the things they

do. in the platoon, but i'm pretty sure that the parents of the fallen soldiers that we lay to rest greatly appreciate it. ♪ ♪ every morning before they roll out, ideally, the guy, we like

to have a lot of eyes on things because some things can get missed along the way. that is our final check before they roll out. and the biggest thing about horses and the type of horses we have is that they differ in size. so each horse has to be adjusted the right way inside the harness. and that is the biggest thing, if the horse is not comfortable in the harness, it's hard for him to concentrate on what we want him to do. we try to make the horse as comfortable as he can, and not have something pinching him or too tight or too loose and when it's time to break, they can break, and when it's time to pull, they can pull. we check them day in and day out. every moment while they're in the cemetery, we make adjustments to make sure everything is properly adjusted. >> when you look at a caisson, you're looking for flaws. >> pretty much.

didn't want to put it that way, but that's exactly what i'm doing, yes, it is. it works out fine. i mean, the bottom line is the more -- the more i find, i mean, then we know that i'm doing what i'm supposed to do. i'm correcting, making sure that everything is going right. some things make it better. we have the opportunity, me, myself, and then the quadleader and section worker and wheel riders, we're all involved in this, making sure by the time they get ready to pull out, they have everything they need and everything is properly adjusted and ready to go. >> finally, this is the 21st century, obviously, and this tradition goes back a long time. why are we still using horses? why is it important to this ritual? >> i think -- i don't think it will ever change. i think we will always use horsed as long as they're around.

i think it's very important that we use horses. i mean, most people have no idea, the only thing they can relate to when they see this is they think of john f. kennedy. and they see the horse-drawn carriage going down the road there. i think -- i honestly think that's kind of what set it off the chart, and everybody kind of looked forward to seeing that. i doubt if we'll ever get away from it. ♪ but i think people really like seeing it. >> have you ever worked on a caisson for a presidential funeral? >> yes, i have. i actually -- reagan. i think his wife, they sent down

his original boots when they laid him to rest. and they wanted -- ideally, we would have our boots on the horse, but he sent his boots down. they didn't want the boots -- because ideally, the boots would have been black. his boots were brown, so without authoring them, they wanted me to attach the boots to the saddle without stitching or -- so i had to arrange some kind of strap. then the hardest part about that was because the boots were all worn, trying to get something to match it so it didn't stand out. and to save us a lot of time and money by making it here. i would like to use an example. like a set of english leathers like this. this is mcclellan leather. eye teal ideally a set of these would be $45 a pair or more, where we

can buy hide and pay $150 and buy -- make five or six, seven pair out of one hide. we can save a lot of money and a lot of time because we're using sewing machines now, you get a lot more quality of work, also, but the guys ideally get taught how to cut out patterns and hand sew by needle and thread before they actually move the machines, they actually learn the trade and cutting out patterns. i finished this, i want you to find something, a handsaw. i was trying to get that, but -- before we actually start doing this, we used to go out and commercially buy the products. because we went out and bought it commercially, each vendor had his own different version of it. so if something broke inside the cemetery, it wasn't standardized. it wasn't until probably about

ten years ago, we came across this book here in our old guard museum, which is the 1960 harness quarter master drawings. these are the blueprints of -- i can show you. all of the harness and tack we use for the caissons. it tells you stitch count. thickness, type of leather. gives you the measurements on the hardware and everything. everything that we make is made by this book right here. this is all the original equipment. there's some dev yashzs away from it, but not many. ideally, what we ended up doing when i first -- before we got this book, like i said, it was a matter of me taking what we had and just fabricating the same thing over and over. there was nothing standard about it. so it wasn't, like i said, wasn't until we got this book, that this is now our standard. but -- i think it's a good thing because this has been in -- been

using this for years and it still works today the way they originally planned it. we try not to deviate from this. this is our bible for what we do. >> you say you buy hide. what kind of hide is it and where do you get that. >> it's leather, and it's a black harness leather. ideally, we get different grades. depending on what we're making, because the leather goes in thickness and goes from 10 to 11, 11 to 12. depends on how much, if you want length or strength. we go through quite a bit of leather. quite a bit, because ideally, because of we are constantly in the public view, we always try to keep our equipment looking -- maintain it, looking good. so ideally, in the sports world, some of the stuff we use can be used again, but we always want to keep that shine and make it look a little bit above it. we replace things quite a bit.

>> i'm specialist christopher friddel. i'm a senior low rider. >> what does that mean? >> one of the most senior riding positions on the wagon. i have been here a hot minute. actually, i think everybody in this room is a senior low rider. >> where are you from originally? >> from redding, california. definitely a culture shock when you come from the west coast to the coast coast. especially the weather. >> did you know horses? >> a little bit. i mean, not much. i rode them, grew up with them, but not to the depth that i learned here. i mean, when you come here, you get a general knowledge of everything about horses. i mean, by no means an expert, but they try to catch you up to date on everything. so you definitely learn a lot coming here about horses, taking

care of them, grooming them, administering medicine, everything. health care. >> you ride these regardless of weather? >> for the most part, yeah. if it's deemed too dangerous for the soldiers or horses, we'll cancel a mission, but for the most part, snow, rain, sleet, ice, extreme heat in the summer. we're out there all day long. we have our tips and tricks to keep comfortable, but for the most part, we're worried about the horses first. >> what we're doing now is actually using a material called biothane to cover the tracers. we used to cover this with leather but it wore out so fast, this is like a plastic, almost made out of tires, i believe it is. and it seems to wear a lot better. a lot harder to sew, but it does last a lot longer than the leather does.

cut these out. make a set of rings. yeah. it's a shorter one. this is the hardest part about sewing the strips, using this versus leather because it's actually a plastic. and it's hard to fold. >> ideally, this is one of the items that was very time consuming. it's triple fold, and ideally, we would sew this by hand. and we would do that with two needles and thread.

this item would probably take someone anywhere from two to three days. stitching all day, anywhere from five to six hours, to make. now, by the use of the machines that we have now, we can probably put together two to three of these a day. so we definitely save ourselves a lot of time and money by doing it, and we get a better quality. now, the difference is that this is a machine stitch. whereas, when we sew it by hand, it's called a sadler stitch. a machine stitch is like a chain stitch, meaning if one thread breaks and you pull it, it all rips out. whereas a saddler stitch interlocks so things don't rip apart as much as it is with a sewing machine. >> and where on -- what is this

called? >> this is a broadcast collar. this is what goes on the front of the horse. and each horse is -- this is how they pull. it goes up against their chest of the horse. >> back up. back up. back up. back up. >> this right here, this item is only on the wheel team. that is how they brake and start the caisson. >> when they take one of these and use it, how long does it generally last before they need a replacement? >> it depends. these guys actually come in

every day and they clean and maintain the tack. every three weeks, they come in, they strip it, and they go through a process of clean, dyeing, oiling it. and looking for deficiencies and things that need to be repaired. >> you do this every day? >> yes, sir. 04000 every day. unless they're riding. if they are riding, they come in at 06, and we'll have the horses ready for them to ride. so they'll just come in, do their uniforms and prepare for the day, you know, get their breakfast orders in and roll out at 08. into the cemetery. and they'll be out until 16, 1630, and come in, clean their tack, and do it all again the next day. >> you have to polish every -- >> every single piece of brass you see on here needs to be polished with this stuff called semichrome. it's a little time consuming, but when you put it on the horses and the sun hits it just right, it's beautiful. so we take a lot of pride in what we do, so we try to make

sure it's excellent for our fallen brothers and sisters in the cemetery. >> i have seen a collar like this last maybe seven, eight months without being repaired, if it's properly maintained, but ideally at some point, we always keep one on hand so we can also just maintain it. as far as rebuilding it totally, i would probably say about a year. >> this machine here is called a guider. it actually can take the leather from one thickness to another.

this is called a skiver. it does the same thing. but it's hand-pulled. >> this book that you showed, 1916, does it have specific thicknesses for all the -- >> yes, it does tell you the thickness of the leather that you should actually start out with. yes, it does. and all of our equipment, we dye or split. i will show you. this is a strap cutting machine, which is the new version of the draw one back there. kind of helps things out a little more.

so we can take a hide and cut out, and this adjusts to different sizes so we can cut four, five different sizes at one time instead of just pulling it out by hand. so we have a machine here, leather printer. what that does is creases the lines. you can use it as a stitch line also, but all the military equipment is creased, whether it's stitched or not.

and prior to using this machine here, you can see where we save ourselves a lot of time. this was actually done by hand. you can imagine doing that all day. and ideally, because it's leather, when it's cut, it's such a soft edge. we use this and it takes the soft edge off it. this is done top and bottom. top is normally two, bottom is normally four.

then these edges are dyed. we also have a machine that does that also. we're going to be doing bulk, doing a lot of bulk work. going to cut out ten or 20 straps. just machine, and pretty much -- this is an alcohol-based dye. you use some oil dyes, also, but the guys when they maintain the tack during the week, they use the alcohol base because it dries a lot faster. whereas we don't have to worry about a lot of bleeding on the white horses. this machine here, we just got probably about, man, two years ago.

every pattern that we made -- give me that over there. every pattern that we made was drawn out and cut out by hand. thank you. this punches everything out, like a cookie cutter. and we got like 60% of our parts now are like this. we have dies for them like this so we can punch parts out. it makes it a lot easier. we don't have everything. we still cut about 40% of our stuff out by hand entirely, but it definitely makes it easier for us.

just to give you an idea of comparing what we would have to do is this is the same part that i just punched out.

>> guess you have to have a sharp knife. >> yeah, this does not work with a dull knife. you can see, that's obviously something simple. you can see how time consuming that would be versus punching it out. this is pretty -- this is also pretty thin, too. this is where we would use a regular hand punch. some of the straps have any wear from 12 to 14 holes. we would have to punch them out and measure each one of them. what we have now is called a rotary hole punch. like i said, all of this stuff, we just started using this maybe ten years ago, i would say. all this equipment here. and everything's pretty

standardized. and even. makes things a lot better. worked on quite a few inaugurations. presidential inaugurations. did a lot of equipment for that. i've had quite a few of them. >> what's it like working on a big event like that? is it different? do you put more hours in? >> ideally, no, ideally, i don't. i think the biggest thing about that is that, and it's strange you should say that. i was thinking about that this morning. the amount of -- the effort i put in in burying maybe a president, is the same effort i

put in in burying a private. i think that they don't carry these, those titles with them anymore. i think they're just as important. we owe these guys this honor. and i think the standard is the standard. i mean, i understand whether it's a general or it's a sergeant or if it's a president or a private, i think each day that they roll out, the standards should always be the same. >> ready. >> caisson forward. >> okay, gentlemen.

you can view more american artifacts programs online at cspanvideo.org. enter "american artifacts" in the search box. i never saw anything like it when i landed. there was broken equipment. there was bodies all over the place. they hadn't yet to bury anybody, either the japanese or the american marines.

there were bodies without arms, without heads, completely e vis rated. there's a smell that you never get over. to this day, when i drive by a cemetery, if they're using recycled water, i really think i can smell the dead bodies. on iwo, the japanese had spigot mortars. a little bigger than a 45 gallon oil drum. it's 168 meters and it weighs 675 pounds. and the japanese would send these mortars -- they would set them up on railway ties and they were rocket propelled. at night, you could see them coming. he had submarines almost every

50 miles. >> the battle for iwo jima told by the men who were there today at 5:00 eastern, part of american history tv this weekend on c-span3. this november 22nd marks the 50th anniversary of president john f. kennedy's assassination. this month on the presidency we'll look back at jfk's policies. on september 12th, 1962, president kennedy delivered a speech on the u.s. space program arguing that america should be the leader in space exploration and the first to land a man on the moon. this 20-minute address took place at rice university in houston.