Burial of the Unknown Warrior (1920) in Westminster Abbey

The burial of the Unknown Warrior took place in Westminster Abbey, London, on 11 November 1920, the second anniversary of the Armistice that ended the fighting of the First World War. An unidentified British serviceman, chosen at random from bodies exhumed on the Western Front, was buried among kings and statesmen to stand for all the dead who had no known grave. On the same day France laid its own Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe, and the idea soon spread around the world.

Background

The First World War killed around 880,000 servicemen from the United Kingdom and over 1.1 million from the British Empire as a whole. Hundreds of thousands of them had no known grave: their bodies were never found or could not be identified. The government decided early in the war not to bring the dead home, so grieving families had no body to bury and often no grave to visit.

The idea of a symbolic burial came from the Reverend David Railton, a chaplain on the Western Front. In 1916, in a garden at Armentières, he saw a grave with a rough cross inscribed “An Unknown British Soldier”. In August 1920 he wrote to Herbert Ryle, the Dean of Westminster, proposing that an unknown soldier be buried in the Abbey. Ryle took the idea to the government. Prime Minister David Lloyd George supported it, and King George V, initially hesitant, agreed.

Choosing the Warrior

Great care was taken that the soldier could never be identified. Bodies of unidentified British servicemen were exhumed from several of the main battle areas, usually said to be the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres, although some accounts give a different number. They were brought to a chapel at Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise, near Arras. On the night of 7 November 1920 Brigadier General L. J. Wyatt, who did not know where each had come from, chose one; the others were reburied.

The body was placed in a coffin of English oak from Hampton Court, bound with iron and bearing a sword from the Royal Collection. It was taken to Boulogne, where French troops paid honours, and carried across the Channel on the destroyer HMS Verdun to Dover on 10 November. A train took it to Victoria Station in London, where it rested overnight.

The ceremony

On the morning of 11 November the coffin, draped with a Union Flag that Railton had used as an altar cloth at the front, was carried on a gun carriage through crowded streets to Whitehall. There King George V unveiled the permanent stone Cenotaph designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and the crowds kept two minutes’ silence at 11 o’clock.

The King then followed the coffin on foot to Westminster Abbey. The guard of honour included around 100 holders of the Victoria Cross, and places in the congregation were given to women who had lost husbands or sons in the war. The coffin was lowered into a grave at the west end of the nave and covered with soil brought from the battlefields of France.

Over the following days huge crowds filed past the grave, with contemporary estimates running to around a million people within a week. A slab of black Belgian marble was laid over it on 11 November 1921. Its inscription, in letters made from melted wartime ammunition, begins: “Beneath this stone rests the body of a British warrior unknown by name or rank”.

The French Unknown Soldier and others

France pursued the same idea at the same time. At the citadel of Verdun on 10 November 1920, a young soldier, Auguste Thin, chose one of eight coffins by placing a bouquet on it. On 11 November the coffin was taken to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and it was buried beneath the arch on 28 January 1921. From 11 November 1923 a flame of remembrance was lit there, and it has been rekindled every evening since.

The United States buried its Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on 11 November 1921, and Italy, Belgium, Portugal and other countries followed. The British and American unknowns exchanged honours: the British Warrior received the US Medal of Honor in 1921, and the American Unknown the Victoria Cross.

Timeline

• 1916: David Railton sees the grave of an unknown soldier at Armentières.
• 1920, August: Railton writes to the Dean of Westminster proposing the burial.
• 1920, 7 November: The Warrior is chosen at Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise.
• 1920, 10 November: The coffin arrives at Dover; in France, the French Unknown Soldier is chosen at Verdun.
• 1920, 11 November: The Cenotaph is unveiled and the Warrior is buried in Westminster Abbey.
• 1921, 28 January: The French Unknown Soldier is buried under the Arc de Triomphe.
• 1921, 11 November: The black marble gravestone is laid in the Abbey.

Why it matters

The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior gave a nation in mourning a single place to grieve for men who had no grave, and its anonymity allowed every family to imagine it might hold their own son or husband. With the Cenotaph and the two minutes’ silence, it shaped the rituals of Remembrance that still mark 11 November. Its story is bound up with the Armistice of 11 November 1918 and with battles such as the Somme and Verdun, whose missing it was meant to honour.