and the very first of those barrels was private 67 pennsylvania infantry named william crist men.he was a farmer, he was from one a poor family in he came to serve in the union army. unfortunately he ended up in the hospital in washington, he got a case of german measles which killed many many service members on both sides of the war. he developed peritonitis from his in measles infection and he died in a washington hospital, brought across the potomac with river entirely to as the first military burial. things are so desperate at that time in the civil war there were many people dying that there wasn't much time for ceremony or ritual at arlington. they would bring people over for burial day after day after day and they went to the ground as william crist minted with no flags, no pupils playing, quite often not a chaplain to give him a sendoff. so basically we were just trying to keep up with the carnage from the civil war with arlington began. during the war things were so desperate that there wasn't any time for tombstones. they have had words, they were made out of pine or wal