📰 Newspapers

Military cemetery decorum: The tradition behind Hegseth's Veterans Day reprimand

Military cemetery decorum: The tradition behind Hegseth's Veterans Day reprimand

BBC's Bernd Debusmann breaks down why Defence Secretary Hegseth's group was reprimanded at Arlington National Cemetery and the history behind its strict rules of conduct.

Earlier this week, a sentinel reprimanded a group that included US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth at Arlington National Cemetery. The incident followed a wreath-laying ceremony marking Veterans Day.

The Pentagon have since announced that Hegseth has given the soldier, Specialist Thomas Iglesias, a Joint Service Commendation Medal "for the execution of his duties at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier".

BBC's Bernd Debusmann breaks down why Hegseth's group was reprimanded, the history behind the strict rules governing visitor behaviour and the importance of maintaining an atmosphere of silence at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

In brief

Earlier this week, a sentinel reprimanded a group that included US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth at Arlington National Cemetery. The incident followed a wreath-laying ceremony marking Veterans Day. BBC's Bernd Debusmann breaks down why Hegseth's group was reprimanded, the history behind the strict rules governing visitor behaviour and the importance of maintaining an atmosphere of silence at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

This is the opening of the story, shared with credit to BBC News — US & Canada. The rest of the report — with every detail — continues on the publisher’s website.

Continue reading at BBC News — US & Canada ↗

Cookie settings

Choose which cookies we may use. You can change this at any time from Cookie settings in the footer. Details of each cookie are in the Cookie Policy.

Strictly necessary

Needed for sign-in, security, payments and remembering these choices. Always on.

Preferences

Remember settings such as dark mode.

Analytics & performance

Help us count visits, understand which pages, devices and countries our readers use, and measure how well the site performs – anonymous and aggregated.

Advertising & marketing

Lets advertising partners show and personalise adverts, measure impressions, clicks and visits, prevent ad fraud and pay us – this is how the free site is funded.

🔔 News notifications

Get headlines from NewsHub on this device — even when the site is closed.

You can switch this off at any time. Works on Android, Windows, Mac and Linux browsers; on iPhone/iPad add the site to your Home Screen first.