The Unknown Soldiers (or Warriors) of the Great War
Introduction
Many people assume that the idea of selecting an Unknown Soldier from the battlefield for a representative ceremonial burial of all the unknown dead was a British initiative. Far from it.
The first recorded occasion was in 1866 when unknown soldiers of the American Union Army of the Civil War were buried at the Arlington Cemetery in Virginia, USA. The relatives of the conscript soldiers who died in the service of the Union expected that the US Government would ensure their men would be buried in individual marked graves. The soldiers buried at Arlington were buried there because they could not be identified and given marked graves in the Civil War cemeteries.
Prior to this, throughout history, the lot of the soldier who fell in battle was simple and straightforward. Usually, if they were buried at all, they would be interred anonymously, in large mass graves on or near the battlefields where they fell. Individuals of high standing were often buried ceremoniously in what might become permanently marked graves. But for the dead common soldier it was more of a sanitary operation and the location of the grave was largely soon forgotten.
The American principle of marked individual soldier's graves soon led to similar trends in Europe. For the French, the considerable proportion of unidentified dead of the Franco-Prussian War posed the ethical problem of how they should be honoured. Various prominent persons suggested that a single unidentified soldier should be selected and buried with state honours. This single representative burial would be to commemorate all of the unidentified soldiers from the war.
The idea was never implemented.
Recording the Fallen
As the Great War remorselessly ground on, with unprecedented casualty rolls, increasing efforts were made to record the identity and burial place of the Fallen. To facilitate this process, every soldier was issued with two identity discs, suspended around the neck on a string. At his death, one would be detached for formal identification and the second left on the body for subsequent identification, if and when the body was recovered. Many soldiers went to what was for them the considerable expense of buying their own more durable aluminium version of the identity discs. Without these 'dog-tags', as they were called, personal identification was often very difficult, although military insignia often made it possible to identify the soldier's regiment or unit. Such was the scale of the carnage and destruction, many bodies were badly disintegrated. Many others were buried by shelling, or buried in unmarked, or shell wrecked, mass graves on, or close to, the battlefield. Overall the number of unidentified dead soldiers was over 30%.
During the Great War a British Army chaplain, Reverend David Railton, MC, who was responsible for the internment of many soldiers killed at the First battle of the Somme in July 1916, first got the idea that a representative unknown soldier should be sent back to Britain and buried there with full military honours. But somehow during the war he never got around to writing the British Expeditionary Force commander, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, with this proposal.
The Imperial War Graves Commission
In the aftermath of the Great War enormous efforts were made by the Imperial Graves Commission to clear the battlefields of the Western Front of the remains of the dead soldiers. The dead were then concentrated into official war cemeteries in individual graves, each with its own uniform head-stone, standard for all ranks. Whenever, feasible, the gravestone was placed in an upright position and ranked in serried lines like soldiers on parade. It was engraved with, if known: the regimental or unit badge, the name of the soldier (sailor or airman), his rank at the time of death, regimental number and dates of birth and death, a religious emblem (or none at all for declared atheist) and a phrase chosen by the dead soldier's nearest relatives. For the unidentified, the head stone bore the legend: A Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God.
The names of The Missing were recorded on collective memorials that were usually located within a War cemetery.
The Luyten's memorial to the Fallen
In 1919, with the official ending of the war by the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, suggested that a national monument, or catafalque, should be quickly erected in Whitehall in time for the official Victory Parade through the streets of London on the 19th July 1919. The passing soldiers would salute their fallen comrades as they marched past.
The renowned architect, Edwin Luytens, was given the commission to erect, in Whitehall, a temporary wood and plaster replica of the monument in time for the July March-By. It was planned from the outset that this replica would be replaced in due course by one in Portland stone.
Luyten proposed that the Whitehall monument be officially named as 'The Cenotaph' - from the Greek meaning 'open grave' i.e. to represent someone who is buried elsewhere. The Centotaph was, and still is, regarded as a distinguished and evocative memorial. It is the centre-piece of the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies on the Sunday falling closest to the 11th November: Armistice Day.
The genesis of the British Unknown Warrior
In 1920, Reverend Railton, now returned to a living in Margate, England, had further thoughts on a his earlier idea and wrote to the Dean of Westminster. He in turn wrote to the British Government who, after some initial doubts, realised that such ceremonial burial of a representative unknown soldier could meet the as yet incompletely fulfilled demand of the general public for something on British soil that would acknowledge the sacrifice of the many hundreds of thousands of British soldiers who perished on the Western Front and whose bodies had never been identified, for whatever reason. It was also thought that this representative serviceman should be called the by the more inclusive name of the 'Unknown Warrior' with which any soldier, sailor or airman could be identified. It also encompassed the servicemen from the Empire.
The commemoration of the British Unknown Warrior
By 1920, both the British and French Governments had made a decision to select from the battlefield one representative unidentified corpse of a soldier to be buried with full honours in a national shrine of remembrance.
Britain decided that a single body of a soldier, airman or sailor* would be exhumed from each of the four main battle areas of the Western Front - i.e. The Aisne, Arras, The Somme, and Ypres. The selected bodies were transported to a Chapel at St. Pol, in Northern France.
There, on the 7th November 1920, the four bodies, laid out on stretchers and each covered by the Union Flag, were viewed by Brigadier-General L. J. Wyatt who chose one of them as the Unknown Warrior.
N.B.:* It may seem strange to some readers that a significant number of sailors were killed on the Western Front. But nearly 40,000 naval personnel who served as infantrymen and gunners in the Naval Division were casualties on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, and a third died.
The chosen body was placed in a coffin and left overnight in the chapel. The remaining three unselected soldiers' bodies were reburied in the military cemetery at St. Pol with full military honours.
It had been decided that the British Unknown Warrior would be buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, just inside the main entrance at the West End of the Abbey. Its black granite grave stone was to be laid horizontally into the floor. Part of the design ensures that no one inadvertently steps on the grave whilst walking down the Nave towards the altar.
It was decided that the inscription on the gravestone would read.' They buried him among the Kings, because he had done good to God and towards his house'.
Before the selected Unknown Warrior was transported on the 8th November 1920, to the French Port of Boulogne, on the French coast, a multi-denominational service was held by the military chaplains of the four major faiths.
On the 9th November 1920, a mile long cortege left from the overnight resting place to the dockside where the Unknown Warrior, now encased in an English oak coffin, was loaded onto HMS Verdun and transported to home to Dover.
The ceremonies at the Cenotaph and Westminister Abbey
On the 11th November 1920, in accordance with the highest levels of military tradition, the Unknown Warrior was borne on a gun carriage through heavily crowded streets of the capital to the Cenotaph, where the King, George V awaited along with members of Parliament and other dignitaries. At exactly 11am the King unveiled the Cenotaph and, as the eleven chimes faded away, the crowd observed the two minutes silence that became the norm on every Remembrance Sunday.
A bugler sounded the Last Post, and then the carriage departed for Westminster Abbey followed by the King, Field Marshal Haig, General French and Admiral Beatty, the King's Ministers and a vast throng. At the cortege entered the Western entrance to the Abbey, the cortege was met by the vanguard of 100 Victoria Cross holders who lined the length of the nave in hommage - an event never to be repeated.
The main body of the Abbey was largely given over to the war-widows of servicemen of all ranks.
The funeral service was held and the Unknown Warrior was laid to rest. Over 40,000 members of the general public filed past the tomb before the doors of the Abbey were closed for the night.
Over the next few days the pilgrimage continued with many members of the public travelling long distances from the provinces and even overseas. It was a singular collective outpouring of national grief on a scale that came as a considerable surprise to the Government and the organisers of the event.
Almost all the population of the country had had a relative who had been declared as missing, or at least knew someone who had. Participation in the event had gone at least some way in declaring, in public, the personal loss felt by the people. In the first week over 125,000 pilgrims visited the site
From the outset the grave of the British Unknown Warrior has been one of the most visited of the Great War graves. It still holds a firm grip on the nation's psyche today appearing at it does in many Royal events, when the participants can be seen reverently negotiating their way around it on their entrance into, and exit from, the Abbey.
The Unknown Soldier of the other combattant nations
The role of the French in the selection of an Unknown Soldier for national recognition has already been mentioned, and on the same day as the British ceremonies, the French Unknown Soldier 'Le Soldat Inconnu' was put to rest under the Arc de Triumph in Paris.
The USA and Italy buried their Unknown Soldiers in 1921.
In an unprecedented accord, on the 4th March 1921, the Congress of the United States awarded the their highest military award - The Congressional Medal of Honour - to 'The Unknown, Unidentified British Soldier' (i.e. the British Unknown Warrior). The Cabinet of the British Government reciprocated on the 21st October 1921 by awarding The Victoria Cross to 'The Unknown Warrior of the United States'.
The Germans, who had always favoured mass graves - and most of the 1914 graves in their war cemeteries contain more than one body - did not have their Unknown Soldier memorial until 1930.
In 1994, the Australians interred their own Unknown Soldier from the Great War at the Australian War Memorial in the capital Canberra, thus indicating the nation no longer accepted that the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey represented their unknown soldiers.
