Limbers and Caissons - Caissons in American and British Culture

Caissons in American and British Culture

See also: State funerals in the United States and military funeral

The song "The Caissons Go Rolling Along", written during the occupation of the Philippines by the United States of America refers to these; the version adopted as the US Army's official song has, among other changes, replaced the word caissons with Army.

Caissons are also used for burials at Arlington National Cemetery and for state funerals for United States government dignitaries including the President of the United States for the remains to be carried by members of The Old Guard's Caisson Platoon. When the equipage is used in this way for a state funeral in Britain, the coffin is usually placed on a platform mounted on top of the gun and referred to as being carried on a gun carriage. For the funerals of British kings, there is a tradition that the horses be replaced by a detail from the Royal Navy.

Read more about this topic:  Limbers And Caissons

Famous quotes containing the words american, british and/or culture:

    “The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of the irony of the English, none of their cool poise, none of their manner. But they do have friendliness. Where an Englishman would give you his card, an American would very likely give you his shirt.”
    —Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)

    “All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
    —June Jordan (b. 1939)

    “To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
    —Michael Harrington (1928–1989)