Westminster Abbey & the Unknown Warrior

[Cody Coyote]

Those of you in Britain are undoubtedly familiar with this.

 

WWI Unknown Warrior

 

 

Great tribute to a fallen warrior.

[Rugbyfan1972]

Cody Coyote,

 

I have a very good book that details how the tomb of the unknown warriour came about. Unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the book, but it explains in detail how the solfier was chosen and brought back to England and the fact that 4 barrells of earth from flanders were brought over with him so he could be interred in the soil that he and his comrades had fought over (and in, in some cases) and the work that the reverend David Railton who was a chaplain in WW1 did to bring it about.

 

It also details how the French, German and Americans followed the lead of the British and chose their own unknown soldiers and the particularly poignant one for me is that the french chose dug up one french soldier from each of the major battles they had fought, giving a total of 9. However the person in charge reinterred one of them as he was not 100% certain that it was a frenchman they had dug up as opposed to a german. It was widely rumoured at least according to the book that the reinterred man had come from the battlefield of Verdun, where the fighting had been so close that french and german dead were intermingled.

 

Just found the name of the book. The Unknown Soldier by Neil Hanson.

[MigBuster]

We are - as fitting tribute you could get - he even got a Medal of Honour from the US.

[Capitaine Vengeur]

It also details how the French, German and Americans followed the lead of the British and chose their own unknown soldiers and the particularly poignant one for me is that the french chose dug up one french soldier from each of the major battles they had fought, giving a total of 9. However the person in charge reinterred one of them as he was not 100% certain that it was a frenchman they had dug up as opposed to a german. It was widely rumoured at least according to the book that the reinterred man had come from the battlefield of Verdun, where the fighting had been so close that french and german dead were intermingled.

The French coffin has been chosen out of 8 by a honoured private from the 132nd Regiment (the regiment of my then devastated home city of Reims), 6th Corps, who as such chose the number 6 (=1+3+2). This moment can be seen in a nice movie by Bertrand Tavernier, "Life and nothing but" (1989). For many times during the movie, we can see a French officer tasked to search for a suitable body, alongside the main plot (a wife searching for traces of her missing husband on the same battlefield). During the ceremony, a general whispers to the officer something like: "I hope you didn't flog me a nigger or a boche!"

[RAF_Louvert]

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The various nations' Unknown Soldier tombs and memorials are the most fitting tribute to all the fallen heros of all the wars around the world, IMHO. There is no need to know their names, they were all a part of us.

 

"No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

(John Donne, 1624)

 

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