Matt White
At exactly 10 p.m. on the warm, last night of May, Maj. Gen. William Zana received his orders and began his final guard shift on the smooth marble stone plaza at the center of Arlington National Cemetery. In two hours it would be midnight, a new day and new month. A new guard would relieve him at his post, he would march off the plaza and suddenly, instantly, be a civilian.
But for the final two hours of his 37-year career, Zana wanted one last chance to stand a shift he had held as a young sergeant: keeping watch over the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
“I was Pvt. Zana when I showed up to the Old Guard,” Zana told Task & Purpose.“You know, all of us who raise our right hand and serve, there’s things that define you. First combat tour, first loss of personnel. For me, volunteering for and serving at the Tomb was absolutely both defining and shaping.”
In the early 1990s, Zana served for two years as a Sentinel, as fully qualified Tomb Guards are known, leaving in March 1991 for the Virginia National Guard. He earned a commission and over the next three decades led units in combat as an infantry officer and, later, led joint task forces as a general, including as the commander of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa in Djibouti. He retired as the National Guard Bureau’s director of strategic plans and policy and international affairs at the Pentagon.
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