If you go to the main entrance of Westminster Abbey in London, just inside the door you ll find
a lone grave. This is of course the grave of the Unknown British Warrior from the First World War.
It s a symbol that represents all of those who fell during the Great War and it really means a
lot, an awful lot to people today but more so back in the day. You see, during the First World War
880,000 British and Dominion troops were killed and around half of those have no known grave.
Their bodies lost or simply unidentifiable. Can you imagine the impact on their families
back then, having lost their loved ones, having no grave to visit, no place to grieve? The idea
for the Unknown Warrior was conceived by the Reverend David Railton way back in 1916, when
he was serving in the British Army as a padre. He was in a rest area near Armentieres in France,
and at the back of the building where he was staying, there was the grave of an Unknown
British Warrior, a member of the Black Watch. He'd been in the territorial army before the war in a
highland regiment and it really kind of got to him and he thought it would be really good if we could
take one of these unknown warriors home yeah? He even wrote to the High Command but got no response
about the idea. After the war it was still with him, still bugging him, so his wife said
"Why don't you write to the Dean of Westminster?" Herbert Ryle, the Right Reverend Herbert Ryle, and
he took on the torch, he got the momentum going writing to all the important people in the land.
So on the 7th November 1920, four separate burial parties were sent out into the main
battlefields of the Western Front; Ypres, Aisne, Arras and of course the Somme and
each one exhumes a body. It has to be well salted down, so that it cannot be recognized, only as an
unknown British soldier. Then it's transported by motor ambulance to general headquarters at St Pol.
There, the burial parties are dismissed, the bodies are placed on stretchers in a makeshift
chapel in a Nissan hut, a tin hut, and union flags are placed over each one. Then Brigadier
General Wyatt and Colonel Gell enter the building and quickly, reverently choose one of the bodies.
The remaining three are re-buried, the Unknown Warrior now is placed into a temporary coffin.
We call him the warrior, you see he may have been an airman, he could've been a sailor fighting
with the naval divisions on land. It's the Unknown British Warrior.
At Boulogne, as the coffin of the Unknown Warrior was loaded onto HMS Verdun, Marshall Foch,
leader of the French armed forces saluted the coffin. On the journey across HMS Verdun and
escorts made their way back towards Dover and as HMS Verdun emerges out of the mist of the channel,
the fog, it's challenged. Who are you? Verdun and escort and Britain's unknown son. Wow.
All the quayside, the harbour, everywhere in Dover was packed full of people, silent,
waiting to get a glimpse of the coffin. So the coffin was disembarked from HMS Verdun
and then placed in a passenger luggage goods van, which the railway workers had painted the roof
white so people could see and they'd lined it inside with purple satin. The coffin was loaded
and it's just an ordinary train that's taking the body up to London Victoria. Every station military
bands played, guards of honour, every foot bridge, every little bit of track that people could stand
near. Back doors were opened of houses and light shone as this train went by, people stood, silent.
When it arrives at Victoria, people are so eager to see the coffin they even buy train tickets
to try to get onto the platform to catch a glimpse. However the carriage was taken to
platform eight which is the Buckingham Palace Road entrance to Victoria Station and there it will
remain overnight under strict honour guard. So, it's the morning of 11th November 1920.
The oak casket of the Unknown Warrior is taken from the parcel van and fastened to a gun carriage
which will be pulled by six black horses of the Royal Horse Artillery. The procession
makes its way to the Cenotaph, the new war memorial for the nation. The King is standing to
one side waiting for the procession to arrive. At 11 o'clock on the 11th of November 1920,
the bells of Big Ben sound and on the 11th chime, the King presses a button and the Union flags,
both of them, fall to the ground. Now the parade forms up. The King, in a field marshal's uniform,
falls in behind the Unknown Warrior. Hundreds of soldiers in uniform, veterans,
medals gleaming. Now orders are barked and the parade makes its way to Westminster Abbey.
Thousands of people lined the route and watched as the Unknown Warrior trundled by
on his way to Westminster Abbey, where on arrival he will be carried in, feet first,
through the door where he will be laid to rest amongst our kings and queens.
Once the funeral was over and all the dignitaries had gone home,
a temporary cover was put on the grave so that people could simply come and view. It
was a silent, sobbing queue that wound around London. Black clad mothers, orphans, widows
carried lilies, yeah, the scent of which filled the air as they shuffled
to view the grave of our unknown fallen son. A policeman who was on duty recalled how he met
an old lady who had travelled down from the north of Scotland, she had lost her son in the war.
In her hands she had a bunch of wilted flowers and she explained to the policeman that she'd
picked these from the garden that her son had planted when he was only six years of age.
The tomb of the Unknown Warrior is still there at Westminster Abbey,
thousands of people visit it every year. It has become a focus of our nation's grief
not just for those who fell in the First World War but also the Second World War, and of course
all of the conflicts ever since. So if you do visit yourself, take a moment, pay your respect.