• Home
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Community Involvement
    • Mission and Values
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Services
    • Public Relations
    • Content
    • Chambers Law Firm Rankings
    • Crisis & Litigation PR
    • Supreme Court Litigation
    • Media Training
    • Digital
    • Video
    • Poston Programs and Webinars
    • Podcasts
    • Public Affairs
    • CEO and Executive Leadership Communications
    • Internal and Employee Communications
  • Industries
    • Legal
    • Financial Services
    • Real Estate
    • Health Care
    • Architecture, Engineering and Construction
    • Associations & Professional Societies
    • Other Professional Services
  • Results
  • Blog
  • Careers
    • Openings
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Contact
  • Search
  • Home
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Community Involvement
    • Mission and Values
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Services
    • Public Relations
    • Content
    • Chambers Law Firm Rankings
    • Crisis & Litigation PR
    • Supreme Court Litigation
    • Media Training
    • Digital
    • Video
    • Poston Programs and Webinars
    • Podcasts
    • Public Affairs
    • CEO and Executive Leadership Communications
    • Internal and Employee Communications
  • Industries
    • Legal
    • Financial Services
    • Real Estate
    • Health Care
    • Architecture, Engineering and Construction
    • Associations & Professional Societies
    • Other Professional Services
  • Results
  • Blog
  • Careers
    • Openings
    • PRecision Curriculum
  • Contact
  • Search

The Tragic Story of a Lawyer Lies Behind the 100th Anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

  • Posted by Jonathan Ringel
  • On December 6, 2021
  • Arlington National Cemetery, White & Case

Share This...

Jonathan Ringel

Jonathan Ringel

On Veterans Day last month, the United States commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where a fallen serviceman from World War I is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

One of the pallbearers in those 1921 ceremonies was an associate from White & Case, and his story illustrates how far mental health treatment for veterans has come—and how far it still needs to go.

Charles Whittlesey, a graduate of Williams College and Harvard Law School, was 33 when he joined the Army after the U.S. entered the war in 1917. By October 1918, then-Major Whittlesey was commanding a battalion and was ordered to advance in the Argonne Forrest against German troops. His group succeeded, but other Allied units failed, leaving Whittlesey and his comrades surrounded.

Whittlesey would receive the Medal of Honor for his leadership of what became known as “The Lost Battalion,” which held its position as ordered despite constant attacks from the enemy, friendly fire from American artillery, cold rains and only carrier pigeons to relay messages for help. The soldiers went 104 hours without food before they were relieved, according to a 2017 account published in The Washington Post.

The war ended a month after the Argonne ordeal. Whittlesey, who had run a law partnership with a classmate before the war, joined White & Case’s banking practice in 1920, but also spent considerable efforts on veterans and Red Cross causes. In 1921, he was selected to be a pallbearer for the Unknown Soldier, an unidentified American exhumed from France and re-interred at the cemetery overlooking Washington as a symbol of national grief.

Two weeks later, Whittlesey boarded a ship bound from New York to Havana and was missing the next day, apparently having jumped overboard. In his room he’d left nine letters for friends and family.

In a front page article reporting his disappearance, The New York Times said that the ship’s captain sent a wireless message to one White & Case lawyer saying that Whittlesey had left him a message: “Look in upper-left hand draw of my desk for memoranda law matter I have been attending to. I shall not return.”

White & Case’s online history of the firm devotes a page to Whittlesey’s story. It notes that his friends were reported to believe that “his mind broke down through the misery he had seen as a result of the war.”

“He was very sentimental and those distressing appeals made him most anxious and worried,” a colleague noted, according to the firm history.

The 2017 Washington Post article quotes a contemporary veterans services director declaring that Whittlesey undoubtedly “suffered a lot of what we now call PTSD” (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which didn’t exist in Whittlesey’s era, has a National Center for PTSD. It reports that about 30% of Vietnam veterans have suffered PTSD during their lifetimes, while between 10% and 20% of veterans from both Iraq wars and the Afghanistan war show PTSD symptoms each year.

Clearly, there are many services available to veterans today that weren’t there for Whittlesey and others. But suicide remains a huge problem in the military. According to a recent study by Brown University, four times as many service members and veterans since 9/11 have taken their own lives than died in combat.

If you are a veteran or anyone else in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 for free, confidential help.

0 Comments

Recent Posts
  • Poston Adds Award Winning PR Professional to Growing Team
  • House of Content Horrors: Content Writing That Will “Scare” Off Your SEO
  • House of Content Horrors: Five “Deadliest” Legal Marketing Content Boo-Boos
  • House of Content Horrors: The Spooky Font that Haunts Our Nightmares – Hellvetica
  • How to Create Social Media Content in Support of Your Business Goals
Archives
  • December 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • April 2016

Poston Is Committed To Our Community

Previous thumb

Poston Communications Awarded 2021 Phoenix Award by PRSA Georgia

Next thumb
Scroll

What We Do

  • Services
  • Industries
  • Results
  • Blog

Who We Are

  • Our Team
  • Community Involvement
  • Mission and Values

Poston Communications is a public relations agency focused on professional services companies including law, accounting, architecture, associations, construction, engineering, financial services, health care, human resources, interior design, investment banking, management consulting, real estate, recruiting, technology and venture capital.

404-875-3400 | [email protected]

  • Sitemap
  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

©2022 Poston Communications LLC - All rights reserved