The unknown warrior was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey on Armistice Day, 11th November, 1920, in an impressive ceremony which included the unveiling of the Cenotaph. The body, borne on a gun carriage was covered with a Union Jack, on which were laid a steel trench helmet, a khaki belt and a crusader’s sword. As the procession reached the Cenotaph it was joined by George V, who became chief mourner. At the memorial service held in the Abbey the coffin was presided over by a guard of honour comprising Victoria Cross holders. The King scattered French soil, which had been specially brought from Flanders, over the coffin as it was laid to rest. A long drum roll followed by the Last Post and Reveille signalled the end of the ceremony as the VC award winners filed out on either side. That night the King noted in his diary:

A fine bright day, not cold, no wind. Today I unveiled the Cenotaph in memory of the “Glorious Dead” in Whitehall & was Chief Mourner at the burial of the “Unknown Warrior” in Westminster Abbey...At 11.0 I unveiled the Cenotaph & then followed two minutes silence throughout the Empire. The whole ceremony was most moving and impressive...The Service was beautiful & conducted by the Dean...Got home at 12.0 everything was most beautifully arranged & carried out.
(Royal Archives, Windsor)

For days people continued to stream past the grave and pay their respects in an overwhelming response to a personal tragedy universally shared. The grave was finally closed on November 18.

The Unknown Warrior’s journey to London had begun several days earlier. Great care was taken to ensure the complete anonymity of the unknown warrior. Four unmarked graves containing the unrecognisable bodies of victims of the war from the separate battlefields of the Aisne, Somme, Arras and Ypres were identified and the bodies disinterred and placed in identical, plain coffins before being brought to the chapel at St. Pol. After night had fallen a blindfolded officer, Brigadier-General L J Wyatt DSO, GOC British Troops in France and Flanders, was led into the chapel where the four coffins lay, and the coffin he eventually touched was chosen to represent all these individuals in all of the armed forces who had died in battle. This warrior then began his last journey travelling by road in a military wagon. When the plain deal shell arrived at Boulogne it was replaced by a massive oak coffin made from a tree that had once grown in the park of Hampton Court Palace. This oak casket is bound with heavy bands of iron. In the centre of the lid the following inscription was made in gothic letters:

A BRITISH WARRIOR
WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR
1914-1918
FOR KING AND COUNTRY

Below the lettering there rests a fine sword of antique design selected by the King from his private collection.

On the morning of the 10th November the coffin was placed on a French military wagon drawn by six horses and, accompanied by a procession a mile long, it was carried to the Quai Carnot, where it was met by the British destroyer, HMS Verdun. At the quayside Marshal Foch paid an eloquent tribute to the Unknown Warrior before the Verdun steamed out of the harbour. A naval convoy comprising six destroyers of the Third Flotilla of the Atlantic Fleet met the Verdun mid-channel to escort her to Dover. After receiving a nineteen-gun salute from Dover Castle the coffin was borne ashore by six warrant officers representing the Navy, Army, Marines and Air Force. It was then placed in a funeral coach and taken by train to London for ceremonial burial the following day.

The Idea
The idea of arranging for the body of one, unknown serviceman to be transported back to England, and buried with full honours, first occurred to the Reverend David Railton M.C., M.A. in 1916, while he was on the Western Front. Later in the war he wrote to Lord Douglas Haig expressing this idea. He received no response, but felt reluctant to let it go. After the war he became the vicar of St. John the Baptist Church at Margate, but he still hoped to impress the authorities with his idea. In August, 1920 he wrote to Bishop Ryle, the Dean of Westminster about the possibility of giving an unidentified soldier a national burial service in Westminster Abbey. The Dean approved of this suggestion, and set about the task of bringing it into being. In October David Railton heard that his idea had been accepted by the Government. A committee headed by Lord Curzon, the Foreign Secretary, was arranging for an unknown “warrior” to be disinterred in France and brought to Westminster Abbey.

David Railton, an experienced, mature man in his thirties by 1916 appalled at the sufferings and loss caused by the war, later tried to explain why he had felt it was so important to commemorate the individual in this way. He recalled an incident near Armentieres where he came across a grave with a rough wooden cross inscribed “An unknown British soldier, of the Black Watch”:

How that grave caused me to think!... But, who was he, and who were they [his folk]?... Was he just a laddie... . There was no answer to those questions, nor has there ever been yet.

So I thought and thought and wrestled in thought. What can I do to ease the pain of father, mother, brother, sister, sweetheart, wife and friend? Quietly and gradually there came out of the mist of thought this answer clear and strong, “Let this body - this symbol of him - be carried reverently over the sea to his native land”. And I was happy for about five or ten minutes.

Padre Railton died in July 1955, but his chief ambition had been fulfilled.

It should be added that the claim that Rev. Railton started the idea has been contested. The Daily Express declared that their news editor, J B Wilson, first made the suggestion in the edition of the paper printed on September 16th, 1919, and this proposal was taken up by Wilfred Ashley MP and subsequently adopted by the Government. It should also be remembered that at the same time that the British Unknown Warrior was being honoured in the United Kingdom, the French Soldat Inconnu was being interred at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Published literature in France from the 1930s claims the idea as wholly French, with the name of Francois Simon, a printer, prominent. His suggestion was made in 1916, but references are also made to precedents in antiquity, namely the ancient Greek wars.

Sources
For further information on the Unknown Warrior the sources listed below are recommended, but it should be pointed out that there are inconsistencies in the journal articles quoted. The papers of Brigadier-General Wyatt, deposited at the Imperial War Museum, state categorically that there were only four bodies chosen from - not six or eight. Other reports are obviously second or third hand and may be somewhat embroidered. Tisdall’s account is particularly untrustworthy.

Garrett, Richard The final betrayal:the Armistice 1918...and afterward
Southampton: Buchan and Enright, 1989

Gavaghan, Michael The story of the Unknown Warrior : 11 November 1920
Preston, Lancashire: M & L Publications, 1995

Gregory, Adrian The silence of memory - Armistice Day 1919-1946
Oxford; Berg, 1994

Hundevad, John The Unknown Warrior
see The Legionary; Vol. 30, no. 3 August 1955

Jeans, Herbert In death’s Cathedral Palace : the story of the Unknown Warrior
see The British Legion Journal; Vol. 9, no. 5 November 1929

King, Alex Memorials of the Great War in Britain- the symbolism and politics of remembrance
Oxford: Berg, 1998

Railton, David The origin of the Unknown Warrior’s grave
see Our Empire; Vol. 7 November 1931

Tisdall, E E P How they chose the Unknown Warrior
see The British Legion Journal; Vol. 19, no. 5 November 1939

The Royal British Legion can be contacted at 48 Pall Mall, London SW1Y 5JY
Tel: 0345 725 725
Website: www.britishlegion.org.uk