you'll see many unknowns in the civil war section of arlington, like these graves, greystone to. one after another, row after row. and that is significant because so many people in the civil war on both sides went to the graves without names. more than 42%, which is bad enough to get killed in a war, but also to lose your identity for your family to have no trace of you left. what could be worse than that? we did learn from the civil war and subsequent wars, we worked very hard to identify our service members as soon as the fighting was over. we would send specialty teams and to make ids, to provide a name for the fallen warriors and to give them a decent burial. but it took a while. it took a few boards to perfect it. the rate of unknowns went to something like 10 percent in the next big war, the spanish-american war, and then 3% became the standard in world war ii. world war i and world war ii. and we have gotten so good at this particular part of warfare, that by the time the amount came along, there was only a handful of unknowns at the end of that war. this is a headstone th