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THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

Mere Bones - Riassunto

The funeral of the Unknown Warrior was to take place on Armistic Day, 11 November 1920. Brigadier General L.J. Wyatt was put in change of the selection of the body. One of the problem was the identity and origins of the chosen soldier.

The Unknown Warrior may have been a sailor, a soldier or a airman, an English man or a man from other countries, but he was one who give his life for the people of the British Empire.

The church authorities decided to buried the Unknown Soldier without cremation because the public would more readily identify him. Wyatt described the bodies as “mere bones”, but that did not neccessarily preclude the soldiers from having been killed later in the war.

On the 7 November 1920, four ambulances arrived at the cemeteries in the four main british battle areas on the Western Front.

Once the party were satisfied with their choice, the empty grave was filled in and the chosen body placed in a sack loaded into the back of the ambulance and driven at St. Pol Chapel. Each body was recived by the Reverend George Kendal and re-examined to ensure that the corpse was british an that no means of identification could be found upon it. The bodies were covered by union flags. At midnight Wyatt entered in the Chapel and selected one of the corpses at random. Wyatt said that the other bodies were at once re-interred in the military cemeteri at St. Pol inside a pine coffin.

The 8 November 1920, at noon, the Unknown Warrior’s body was sent to Boulogne. It was placed in the castle library, which had been converted into a temporary chapelle ardente.

Two british undertakers entered the chapelle ardente and placed the coffin inside another casket of english oak that they had brought across the Channel during the night. The coffin was placed on a french military wagon drawn by 6 black horses. At 10 the Church bells of Boulogne all sounded as one.

Than the body was travelled from Boulogne to Dover by HMS Verdun. The coffin was travelled from Dover’s port to the train station by an adjoining saloon car with Sir George MacDonogh and the two undertakers. At 8 o’clock, afer stopped in every station, the coffin arrived at Victoria Station, in the end the Unknown Warrior’s body was carried to Westminster Abbey.