For the last six weeks, teams of six immaculately groomed horses with three soldiers riding them have been quietly walking the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The quiet patrols are a key final step in the return of caisson ceremonies to Arlington, familiarizing a new generation of horses at Arlington with the sights, sounds and distractions of life there.
“You think it might be big crowds or the trolleys,” said Army Major John Strickland, a spokesperson for the 3rd Infantry Regiment, which oversees ceremonies at Arlington. “They generally can handle those fine, but it could be, like, an umbrella. Or a bag, the way bags sound when you open them.”
The caisson teams, one of Arlington’s most hallowed traditions for laying veterans to rest, were pulled from duty in 2023, after a scathing Army report on the health of horses in the program and the death of two.
But next week, caisson ceremonies will restart, with the first scheduled for Monday, June 2.
“We’ll be limited [to] two services per day, with a maximum of 10 per week,” Strickland said. “We’ll increase that over time as we build capacity.”
In the two years since the program was shuttered, the Army has rebuilt the caisson unit from top to bottom. Close to 50 aging horses were retired to farms around the country, while professional breeders and trainers were hired to help rebuild the program’s roster by purchasing younger horses. Facilities at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall were rebuilt, and the Army now leases a 50-acre facility in rural Virginia where horses are kept during their off-weeks.
“They’ll be on sort of work-rest cycle, 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off,” said Strickland. As the herd grows, he said, the Army hopes to increase the number of weeks off.
The revamp of the caisson corps includes new training for its soldiers and a major organizational upgrade.
The caisson unit was previously a platoon in one of the regiment’s companies that focused on Arlington duties, with a junior officer in charge. Now, the horse unit is a formal detachment, with a lieutenant colonel serving as the commander and reporting directly to the regiment’s top leaders.
The individual soldiers who care for the horses are the same as those who ride the horses for ceremonies — three soldiers for each team, each on one mount, leading a second riderless horse. But while those soldiers previously underwent several weeks of familiarization training, now soldiers hoping to join the caisson unit must go through a formal selection process, then undergo 20 weeks of training — 12 in Virginia with the regiment, then six weeks of “immersion” at a large horse farm and training facility in Ocala, Florida, then two weeks of final certifiation back at Arlington.
The demand for caisson ceremonies is high. The first ceremonies in June will be for veterans whose families were on the waiting list for a caisson-led interment before the program was halted and who asked to remain on a waitlist during the two-year wait. New requests will be initially limited to distinguished veterans, like those killed in combat, Medal of Honor recipients, and high-ranking officials.
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