The Unknown Warrior
Encyclopedia
The British
tomb of The Unknown Warrior holds an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during the First World War. He was buried in Westminster Abbey
, London
on 11 November 1920, simultaneously with a similar interrment of a French unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe
in France
, making both tombs the first to honour the unknown dead of the First World War. It is the first example of a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
.
on the Western Front
, had seen a grave marked by a rough cross, which bore the pencil-written legend 'An Unknown British Soldier'.
He wrote to the Dean of Westminster in 1920 proposing that an unidentified British soldier from the battlefields in France
be buried with due ceremony in Westminster Abbey "amongst the kings" to represent the many hundreds of thousands of Empire
dead. The idea was strongly supported by the Dean and the then Prime Minister
David Lloyd George
.
Arrangements were placed in the hands of Lord Curzon of Kedleston
who prepared in committee the service and location. Suitable remains were exhumed from various battlefields and brought to the chapel at Ste Pol near Arras
, France on the night of 7 November 1920. The bodies were received by Rev George Kendall OBE. Brigadier General L.J. Wyatt and Lieutenant Colonel E.A.S. Gell of the Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries went into the chapel alone. The remains were on stretchers each covered by Union Flags: the two officers did not know from which battlefield any individual body had come. General Wyatt with closed eyes rested his hand on one of the bodies. The two officers placed the body in a plain coffin and sealed it. The other bodies were then taken away for reburial by Rev Kendall. It seems highly likely that the bodies were carefully selected and it is almost certain that the Unknown Warrior was a soldier serving in Britain's pre-war regular army and not a sailor, territorial, airman, or Empire Serviceman.
The coffin stayed at the chapel overnight and on the afternoon of November 8, it was transferred under guard and escorted by Rev Kendall, with troops lining the route, from Ste Pol to the medieval castle within the ancient citadel at Boulogne
. For the occasion, the castle library was transformed into a chapelle ardente
: a company from the French 8th Infantry Regiment, recently awarded the Légion d'Honneur
en masse, stood vigil overnight.
The following morning, two undertakers entered the castle library and placed the coffin into a casket of the oak timbers of trees from Hampton Court Palace
. The casket was banded with iron and a medieval crusader's sword, chosen by the king personally from the Royal Collection, was affixed to the top and surmounted by an iron shield bearing the inscription 'A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 for King and Country'.
The casket was then placed onto a French military wagon, drawn by six black horses. At 10.30 am, all the church bells of Boulogne tolled; the massed trumpets of the French cavalry and the bugles of the French infantry played Aux Champs (the French "Last Post
"). Then, the mile-long procession – led by one thousand local schoolchildren and escorted by a division of French troops – made its way down to the harbour.
At the quayside, Marshal Foch
saluted the casket before it was carried up the gangway of the destroyer, HMS Verdun (L93)
, and piped aboard with an admiral's call. The Verdun slipped anchor just before noon and was joined by an escort of six battleships. As the flotilla carrying the casket closed on Dover Castle
it received a 19-gun
Field Marshal
's salute. It was landed at Dover Marine Railway Station at the Western Docks on 10 November. The body of the Unknown Warrior was carried to London in South Eastern and Chatham Railway
General Utility Van
No.132
, which had previously carried the bodies of Edith Cavell
and Charles Fryatt
. The van has been preserved
by the Kent and East Sussex Railway
The train went to Victoria Station
, where it arrived at platform 8 at 8.32 pm that evening and remained overnight. (A plaque at Victoria Station marks the site: every year on 10 November, a small Remembrance service takes place between platforms 8 and 9.)
On the morning of 11 November 1920, the casket was placed onto a gun carriage of the Royal Horse Artillery
and drawn by six horses through immense and silent crowds. As the cortege set off, a further field marshal's salute was fired in Hyde Park. The route followed was Hyde Park Corner
, The Mall
, and to Whitehall
where the Cenotaph
, a "symbolic empty tomb", was unveiled by King-Emperor George V
. The cortège was then followed by the king, the Royal Family
and ministers of state to Westminster Abbey, where the casket was borne into the West Nave of the Abbey flanked by a guard of honour of one hundred recipients of the Victoria Cross
.
The guests of honour were a group of about one hundred women. They had been chosen because they had each lost their husband and all their sons in the war. "Every woman so bereft who applied for a place got it".
The coffin was then interred in the far western end of the nave, only a few feet from the entrance, in soil brought from each of the main battlefields, and covered with a silk pall. Servicemen from the armed forces stood guard as tens of thousands of mourners filed silently past. The ceremony appears to have served as a form of catharsis for collective mourning on a scale not previously known.
The grave was then capped with a black Belgian marble stone (the only tombstone in the Abbey on which it is forbidden to walk) featuring this inscription, composed by Dean Ryle
, Dean of Westminster, engraved with brass from melted down wartime ammunition:
BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY
OF A BRITISH WARRIOR
UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK
BROUGHT FROM FRANCE TO LIE AMONG
THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS OF THE LAND
AND BURIED HERE ON ARMISTICE DAY
11 NOV: 1920, IN THE PRESENCE OF
HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE V
HIS MINISTERS OF STATE
THE CHIEFS OF HIS FORCES
AND A VAST CONCOURSE OF THE NATION
THUS ARE COMMEMORATED THE MANY
MULTITUDES WHO DURING THE GREAT
WAR OF 1914 - 1918 GAVE THE MOST THAT
MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF
FOR GOD
FOR KING AND COUNTRY
FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE
FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD
THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE
HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD
HIS HOUSE
Around the main inscription are four texts:
THE LORD KNOWETH THEM THAT ARE HIS (top)
UNKNOWN AND YET WELL KNOWN, DYING AND BEHOLD WE LIVE (side)
IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE (base)
GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS (side)
, from the hand of General John Pershing
; it hangs on a pillar close to the tomb. On 11 November 1921, the American Unknown Soldier
was reciprocally awarded the Victoria Cross
.
When Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
married the future King George VI
on 26 April 1923, she laid her bouquet at the Tomb on her way into the Abbey, as a tribute to her brother Fergus
who had died at the Battle of Loos
in 1915. Royal brides married at the Abbey now have their bouquets laid on the tomb the day after the wedding and all of the official wedding photographs have been taken. It is also the only tomb not to have been covered by a special red carpet for the wedding of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons, wife of King George VI
.
When Alfred Rosenberg
, the Nazi ideologist, visited Britain on a diplomatic mission in 1933 he laid a wreath with a Swastika on it at the tomb. A British war veteran threw it into the Thames.
Before she died in 2002, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (the same Elizabeth who first laid her wedding bouquet at the tomb) expressed the wish for her wreath to be placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. Her daughter, The Queen, laid the wreath the day after the funeral.
The British Unknown Warrior came 76th in the 100 Great Britons poll. The LMS-Patriot Project, a charitable organisation, is building a new steam locomotive engine that will carry the name 'The Unknown Warrior'. The new loco has been endorsed by The Royal British Legion as the new National Memorial Engine. A public appeal to build the locomotive was launched in 2008. 'The Unknown Warrior' is expected to be complete by 2018 - the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice, if sufficient funds can be raised.
On 24 May 2011 the President of the United States Barack Obama
laid a wreath at the memorial during his first official visit to the UK, now one of the many heads of state to do so.
.
There have been three memorials erected since 1920 for the Unknown Warrior: St. Pol where the Unknown Warrior was selected; Dover harbour at the cruise terminal where the Unknown Warrior was brought ashore and Victoria station, London, where the Unknown Warrior rested before his burial on 11 November.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
tomb of The Unknown Warrior holds an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during the First World War. He was buried in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
on 11 November 1920, simultaneously with a similar interrment of a French unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe
Arc de Triomphe
-The design:The astylar design is by Jean Chalgrin , in the Neoclassical version of ancient Roman architecture . Major academic sculptors of France are represented in the sculpture of the Arc de Triomphe: Jean-Pierre Cortot; François Rude; Antoine Étex; James Pradier and Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire...
in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, making both tombs the first to honour the unknown dead of the First World War. It is the first example of a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier refers to a grave in which the unidentifiable remains of a soldier are interred. Such tombs can be found in many nations and are usually high-profile national monuments. Throughout history, many soldiers have died in wars without their remains being identified...
.
Origins
The idea of a Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was first conceived in 1916 by the Reverend David Railton, who, while serving as an army chaplainMilitary chaplain
A military chaplain is a chaplain who ministers to soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and other members of the military. In many countries, chaplains also minister to the family members of military personnel, to civilian noncombatants working for military organizations and to civilians within the...
on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
, had seen a grave marked by a rough cross, which bore the pencil-written legend 'An Unknown British Soldier'.
He wrote to the Dean of Westminster in 1920 proposing that an unidentified British soldier from the battlefields in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
be buried with due ceremony in Westminster Abbey "amongst the kings" to represent the many hundreds of thousands of Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
dead. The idea was strongly supported by the Dean and the then Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
.
Selection, arrival and ceremony
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston
George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, KG, GCSI, GCIE, PC , known as The Lord Curzon of Kedleston between 1898 and 1911 and as The Earl Curzon of Kedleston between 1911 and 1921, was a British Conservative statesman who was Viceroy of India and Foreign Secretary...
who prepared in committee the service and location. Suitable remains were exhumed from various battlefields and brought to the chapel at Ste Pol near Arras
Arras
Arras is the capital of the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. The historic centre of the Artois region, its local speech is characterized as a Picard dialect...
, France on the night of 7 November 1920. The bodies were received by Rev George Kendall OBE. Brigadier General L.J. Wyatt and Lieutenant Colonel E.A.S. Gell of the Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries went into the chapel alone. The remains were on stretchers each covered by Union Flags: the two officers did not know from which battlefield any individual body had come. General Wyatt with closed eyes rested his hand on one of the bodies. The two officers placed the body in a plain coffin and sealed it. The other bodies were then taken away for reburial by Rev Kendall. It seems highly likely that the bodies were carefully selected and it is almost certain that the Unknown Warrior was a soldier serving in Britain's pre-war regular army and not a sailor, territorial, airman, or Empire Serviceman.
The coffin stayed at the chapel overnight and on the afternoon of November 8, it was transferred under guard and escorted by Rev Kendall, with troops lining the route, from Ste Pol to the medieval castle within the ancient citadel at Boulogne
Boulogne-sur-Mer
-Road:* Metropolitan bus services are operated by the TCRB* Coach services to Calais and Dunkerque* A16 motorway-Rail:* The main railway station is Gare de Boulogne-Ville and located in the south of the city....
. For the occasion, the castle library was transformed into a chapelle ardente
Chapelle Ardente
Chapelle Ardente is the chapel or room in which the corpse of a sovereign or other exalted personage lies in state pending the funeral service. The name is in allusion to the many candles which are lighted round the catafalque. This custom is first chronicled as occurring at the obsequies of...
: a company from the French 8th Infantry Regiment, recently awarded the Légion d'Honneur
Légion d'honneur
The Legion of Honour, or in full the National Order of the Legion of Honour is a French order established by Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Consulat which succeeded to the First Republic, on 19 May 1802...
en masse, stood vigil overnight.
The following morning, two undertakers entered the castle library and placed the coffin into a casket of the oak timbers of trees from Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court Palace
Hampton Court Palace is a royal palace in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, Greater London; it has not been inhabited by the British royal family since the 18th century. The palace is located south west of Charing Cross and upstream of Central London on the River Thames...
. The casket was banded with iron and a medieval crusader's sword, chosen by the king personally from the Royal Collection, was affixed to the top and surmounted by an iron shield bearing the inscription 'A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 for King and Country'.
The casket was then placed onto a French military wagon, drawn by six black horses. At 10.30 am, all the church bells of Boulogne tolled; the massed trumpets of the French cavalry and the bugles of the French infantry played Aux Champs (the French "Last Post
Last Post
The "Last Post" can be either a B♭ bugle call within British Infantry regiments or an E♭ cavalry trumpet call in British Cavalry and Royal Regiment of Artillery used at Commonwealth military funerals and ceremonies commemorating those who have been killed in war.The two regimental traditions have...
"). Then, the mile-long procession – led by one thousand local schoolchildren and escorted by a division of French troops – made its way down to the harbour.
At the quayside, Marshal Foch
Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch , GCB, OM, DSO was a French soldier, war hero, military theorist, and writer credited with possessing "the most original and subtle mind in the French army" in the early 20th century. He served as general in the French army during World War I and was made Marshal of France in its...
saluted the casket before it was carried up the gangway of the destroyer, HMS Verdun (L93)
HMS Verdun (L93)
HMS Verdun was an Admiralty V destroyer of the Royal Navy which saw service in the First and Second World Wars. So far she has been the only ship of the navy to bear the name Verdun, after the Battle of Verdun...
, and piped aboard with an admiral's call. The Verdun slipped anchor just before noon and was joined by an escort of six battleships. As the flotilla carrying the casket closed on Dover Castle
Dover Castle
Dover Castle is a medieval castle in the town of the same name in the English county of Kent. It was founded in the 12th century and has been described as the "Key to England" due to its defensive significance throughout history...
it received a 19-gun
21-gun salute
Gun salutes are the firing of cannons or firearms as a military or naval honor.The custom stems from naval tradition, where a warship would fire its cannons harmlessly out to sea, until all ammunition was spent, to show that it was disarmed, signifying the lack of hostile intent...
Field Marshal
Field Marshal
Field Marshal is a military rank. Traditionally, it is the highest military rank in an army.-Etymology:The origin of the rank of field marshal dates to the early Middle Ages, originally meaning the keeper of the king's horses , from the time of the early Frankish kings.-Usage and hierarchical...
's salute. It was landed at Dover Marine Railway Station at the Western Docks on 10 November. The body of the Unknown Warrior was carried to London in South Eastern and Chatham Railway
South Eastern and Chatham Railway
The South Eastern and Chatham Railway Companies Joint Management Committee , known by its shorter name of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway was a working union of two neighbouring rival railways, the South Eastern Railway and London, Chatham and Dover Railway , that operated services between...
General Utility Van
General Utility Van
A General Utility Van is a type of rail vehicle built by British Rail and its predecessors, which was primarily used for transporting mail and parcels. They were used by both Express Parcels Systems, the British Post Office and Railtrack. National Rail and some Train Operating Companies still use...
No.132
Cavell Van
The Cavell Van is the prototype Parcels and Miscellaneous Van built by the South Eastern and Chatham Railway in 1919. It is so named because it was the van which carried the body of Edith Cavell when it was repatriated to the United Kingdom following the end of the First World War...
, which had previously carried the bodies of Edith Cavell
Edith Cavell
Edith Louisa Cavell was a British nurse and spy. She is celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers from all sides without distinction and in helping some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium during World War I, for which she was arrested...
and Charles Fryatt
Charles Fryatt
Charles Algernon Fryatt was a British mariner who attempted to ram a German U-boat in 1915. His ship, the was captured by the Germans in 1916. When it became clear who he was, Fryatt was court-martialled and executed, although he was a civilian. There was international outrage following his...
. The van has been preserved
Rolling stock of the Kent & East Sussex Railway (heritage)
The Kent & East Sussex Railway has hosted a variety of heritage rolling stock since the line was closed by British Railways in 1961.-Steam locomotives:-Diesel locomotives:-Railcars and multiple units:-Passenger stock:-Non-Passenger stock:...
by the Kent and East Sussex Railway
Kent and East Sussex Railway
The Kent & East Sussex Railway refers to both an historical private railway company in Kent and Sussex in England, as well as a heritage railway currently running on part of the route of the historical company.-Historical Company:-Background:...
The train went to Victoria Station
Victoria station (London)
Victoria station, also known as London Victoria, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. It is named after nearby Victoria Street and not Queen Victoria. It is the second busiest railway terminus in London after Waterloo, and includes an air terminal for passengers...
, where it arrived at platform 8 at 8.32 pm that evening and remained overnight. (A plaque at Victoria Station marks the site: every year on 10 November, a small Remembrance service takes place between platforms 8 and 9.)
On the morning of 11 November 1920, the casket was placed onto a gun carriage of the Royal Horse Artillery
Royal Horse Artillery
The regiments of the Royal Horse Artillery , dating from 1793, are part of the Royal Regiment of Artillery of the British Army...
and drawn by six horses through immense and silent crowds. As the cortege set off, a further field marshal's salute was fired in Hyde Park. The route followed was Hyde Park Corner
Hyde Park Corner
Hyde Park Corner is a place in London, at the south-east corner of Hyde Park. It is a major intersection where Park Lane, Knightsbridge, Piccadilly, Grosvenor Place and Constitution Hill converge...
, The Mall
The Mall (London)
The Mall in central London is the road running from Buckingham Palace at its western end to Admiralty Arch and on to Trafalgar Square at its eastern end. It then crosses Spring Gardens, which was where the Metropolitan Board of Works and, for a number of years, the London County Council were...
, and to Whitehall
Whitehall
Whitehall is a road in Westminster, in London, England. It is the main artery running north from Parliament Square, towards Charing Cross at the southern end of Trafalgar Square...
where the Cenotaph
Cenotaph
A cenotaph is an "empty tomb" or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been interred elsewhere. The word derives from the Greek κενοτάφιον = kenotaphion...
, a "symbolic empty tomb", was unveiled by King-Emperor George V
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
. The cortège was then followed by the king, the Royal Family
British Royal Family
The British Royal Family is the group of close relatives of the monarch of the United Kingdom. The term is also commonly applied to the same group of people as the relations of the monarch in her or his role as sovereign of any of the other Commonwealth realms, thus sometimes at variance with...
and ministers of state to Westminster Abbey, where the casket was borne into the West Nave of the Abbey flanked by a guard of honour of one hundred recipients of the Victoria Cross
Victoria Cross
The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" to members of the armed forces of various Commonwealth countries, and previous British Empire territories....
.
The guests of honour were a group of about one hundred women. They had been chosen because they had each lost their husband and all their sons in the war. "Every woman so bereft who applied for a place got it".
The coffin was then interred in the far western end of the nave, only a few feet from the entrance, in soil brought from each of the main battlefields, and covered with a silk pall. Servicemen from the armed forces stood guard as tens of thousands of mourners filed silently past. The ceremony appears to have served as a form of catharsis for collective mourning on a scale not previously known.
The grave was then capped with a black Belgian marble stone (the only tombstone in the Abbey on which it is forbidden to walk) featuring this inscription, composed by Dean Ryle
Herbert Edward Ryle
Herbert Edward Ryle KCVO DD , was an author, Old Testament scholar, and the Dean of Westminster.-Early life:Dr Ryle was born in Onslow Square, South Kensington, London, on 25 May 1856, the second son of John Charles Ryle , the first Bishop of Liverpool, and his second wife, Jessie Elizabeth Walker...
, Dean of Westminster, engraved with brass from melted down wartime ammunition:
BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY
OF A BRITISH WARRIOR
UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK
BROUGHT FROM FRANCE TO LIE AMONG
THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS OF THE LAND
AND BURIED HERE ON ARMISTICE DAY
11 NOV: 1920, IN THE PRESENCE OF
HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE V
HIS MINISTERS OF STATE
THE CHIEFS OF HIS FORCES
AND A VAST CONCOURSE OF THE NATION
THUS ARE COMMEMORATED THE MANY
MULTITUDES WHO DURING THE GREAT
WAR OF 1914 - 1918 GAVE THE MOST THAT
MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF
FOR GOD
FOR KING AND COUNTRY
FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE
FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD
THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE
HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD
HIS HOUSE
Around the main inscription are four texts:
THE LORD KNOWETH THEM THAT ARE HIS (top)
UNKNOWN AND YET WELL KNOWN, DYING AND BEHOLD WE LIVE (side)
IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE (base)
GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS (side)
Later history
A year later, on 17 October 1921, the unknown warrior was given the United States' highest award for valour, the Medal of HonorMedal of Honor
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is bestowed by the President, in the name of Congress, upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her...
, from the hand of General John Pershing
John J. Pershing
John Joseph "Black Jack" Pershing, GCB , was a general officer in the United States Army who led the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I...
; it hangs on a pillar close to the tomb. On 11 November 1921, the American Unknown Soldier
Tomb of the Unknowns
The Tomb of the Unknowns is a monument dedicated to American service members who have died without their remains being identified. It is located in Arlington National Cemetery in the United States...
was reciprocally awarded the Victoria Cross
Victoria Cross
The Victoria Cross is the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" to members of the armed forces of various Commonwealth countries, and previous British Empire territories....
.
When Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...
married the future King George VI
George VI of the United Kingdom
George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death...
on 26 April 1923, she laid her bouquet at the Tomb on her way into the Abbey, as a tribute to her brother Fergus
Fergus Bowes-Lyon
Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon was an older brother of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.He was born at Glamis Castle in Angus and educated at Eton College, Berkshire. Just a fortnight after the start of World War I, he married Lady Christian Norah Dawson-Damer , daughter of the 5th Earl of...
who had died at the Battle of Loos
Battle of Loos
The Battle of Loos was one of the major British offensives mounted on the Western Front in 1915 during World War I. It marked the first time the British used poison gas during the war, and is also famous for the fact that it witnessed the first large-scale use of 'new' or Kitchener's Army...
in 1915. Royal brides married at the Abbey now have their bouquets laid on the tomb the day after the wedding and all of the official wedding photographs have been taken. It is also the only tomb not to have been covered by a special red carpet for the wedding of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons, wife of King George VI
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon was the queen consort of King George VI from 1936 until her husband's death in 1952, after which she was known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, to avoid confusion with her daughter, Queen Elizabeth II...
.
When Alfred Rosenberg
Alfred Rosenberg
' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
, the Nazi ideologist, visited Britain on a diplomatic mission in 1933 he laid a wreath with a Swastika on it at the tomb. A British war veteran threw it into the Thames.
Before she died in 2002, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (the same Elizabeth who first laid her wedding bouquet at the tomb) expressed the wish for her wreath to be placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. Her daughter, The Queen, laid the wreath the day after the funeral.
The British Unknown Warrior came 76th in the 100 Great Britons poll. The LMS-Patriot Project, a charitable organisation, is building a new steam locomotive engine that will carry the name 'The Unknown Warrior'. The new loco has been endorsed by The Royal British Legion as the new National Memorial Engine. A public appeal to build the locomotive was launched in 2008. 'The Unknown Warrior' is expected to be complete by 2018 - the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice, if sufficient funds can be raised.
On 24 May 2011 the President of the United States Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
laid a wreath at the memorial during his first official visit to the UK, now one of the many heads of state to do so.
Other nations
Several other nations would follow the example and have their own Tomb of the Unknown SoldierTomb of the Unknown Soldier
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier refers to a grave in which the unidentifiable remains of a soldier are interred. Such tombs can be found in many nations and are usually high-profile national monuments. Throughout history, many soldiers have died in wars without their remains being identified...
.
There have been three memorials erected since 1920 for the Unknown Warrior: St. Pol where the Unknown Warrior was selected; Dover harbour at the cruise terminal where the Unknown Warrior was brought ashore and Victoria station, London, where the Unknown Warrior rested before his burial on 11 November.
External links
- The Unknown Warrior (Westminster Abbey)
- What is Grave of the Unknown Warrior? (The Dean of Westminster Abbey, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall explains its significance)
- The LMS-Patriot Project.
- Articles in the French language concerning the 'soldat inconnu' as buried under the French flag in the Arc-de-Triomphe; the Union Flag or 'Jack' was originally placed within Westminster Abbey in a similar position in relation to the British 'Unknown Warrior' but was moved elsewhere within the Abbey after the Second World War for reasons said to relate to its preservation.