Navy pallbearers remove flags from the caskets of two sailors
from the USS Monitor for interment at Arlington National
Cemetery. / H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY ARLINGTON, Va. - The Navy
laid two of its own to rest at Arlington National Cemetery on
Friday, 150 years after they died at sea in the sinking by storm
of the USS Monitor, famed for battling a Confederate ironclad to
a draw in 1862. The sailors, whose remains were recovered a
decade ago with excavation of the wreck, were commemorated with
Abraham Lincoln's reference to honored dead giving "the last
full measure of devotion." "We are joined," Navy Secretary Ray
Mabus told a packed chapel service before burial, "as Lincoln
again reminded us, by 'the mystic chords of memory, stretching
from every battlefield, and every patriot grave, to every living
heart and hearthstone.'" The Monitor - with its distinctive,
revolving, "cheesebox" turret - secured a place in naval history
after clashing with the CSS Virginia, formerly the USS
Merrimack, off Hampton Roads,