Léonie

On November 7, 1920, in the strictest secrecy, the bodies of four unidentified British soldiers were exhumed from temporary cemeteries in Ypres, Arras, the Aisne, and the Somme. None of the soldiers who dug up the bodies were told why. The remains were taken to military headquarters at Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise, France. There, the bodies were covered with Union Jack flags. A guard was posted, and Brigadier General Wyatt and Colonel Gell randomly selected one of the four fallen soldiers. The other three bodies were reburied. A French guard of honour was appointed to stand beside the coffin of the chosen soldier throughout the night. On the morning of November 8, a specially designed oak coffin arrived, made from timber grown in the grounds of Hampton Court Palace. The remains of the Unknown Warrior were placed inside. A Crusader's sword was mounted on top, along with a shield bearing the inscription: "A British Warrior who fell in the GREAT WAR 1914–1918 for King and Country." On November 9, the Unknown Warrior, accompanied by a guard of honour, was transported on a horse-drawn carriage. He was received by Marshal Ferdinand Foch before being taken aboard HMS Verdun for the journey to Dover. The coffin rested on the deck, covered with wreaths and surrounded by a French guard of honour. Upon arrival in Dover, the Unknown Warrior was greeted with a nineteen-gun salute — an honour normally reserved for field marshals. A special train then carried the coffin to Victoria Station in London, where it remained overnight. On the morning of November 11, 1920, exactly two years after the guns fell silent on the Western Front, the Unknown Warrior was finally taken to Westminster Abbey. The idea of honouring an unidentified fallen soldier came from a British Army chaplain named David Railton, who had served on the front lines during the Great War. The Union Jack he had used as an altar cloth during the war was the same flag that covered the coffin. Railton wanted the families of the hundreds of thousands of servicemen whose remains had never been identified to believe that the Unknown Warrior might be their own lost husband, father, brother, or son. A man without a name became a symbol of every soldier who never returned home. A single grave became a place where an entire nation could mourn. Every year on November 11, Britain remembers the Unknown Warrior and all those who gave their lives in war. They had names. They had families. They had dreams. They had futures that war took away. We may never know who lies beneath that stone. But we know what he represents. Lest we forget. 🌹 P.S. I'm moving from Twitter/X to Substack. Join me there and follow my work. mykhailorohoza.substack.com