DAVID RAILTON

The texts analyzed talk about the Reverend David Railton. They are informative texts, so the writers use a simple syntax and language to facilitate the divulgation.

First of all I’m going to say who the Reverend was. Reverend David Railton (13 November 1884 – 13 June 1955) was a Church of England clergyman, a Military chaplain and the originator of the idea of the Tomb of The Unknown Warrior.

After that I’m going to tell his life. He was the son of George Scott Railton, the first Commissioner of The Salvation Army and Second in Command. He was educated in Oxford and in Liverpool. Having joined the Church of England he was ordained in Liverpool in 1908. In 1910 he became temporary chaplain to the British Forces. He received the Military Cross in 1916 for saving an officer and two men under heavy fire.

Then I’m going to talk about his idea of creating a war memorial. Railton first had the idea of disposing for the body of an unknown soldier to be transported back to England, and buried with full honors. In 1916, while he was serving on the Western Front during World War I. He wrote to Lord Douglas Haig to convey a remembrance of the Unknown Soldier. He received no response, but he didn’t want let it go. After the War Railton became the vicar of St. John the Baptist Church at Margate, but he still hoped to convince the authorities with his idea. In August, 1920 he wrote to the Dean of Westminster, about the possibility of giving an unidentified soldier a national burial service in Westminster Abbey and the Dean took up the idea.

In October 1920 Railton heard that his idea had been accepted by the Government. In November one of the four bodies, exhumed from France and Belgium, was chosen by Brigadier General L.J. Wyatt, General Officer Commanding troops in France and Flanders, and thus became the official 'Unknown Warrior', placed in a new coffin with the inscription ‘A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914–1918 for King and Country’.

Railton later tried to explain why it was so important to commemorate the individual in this way. He recalled an incident near Armentières where he came across a grave with a rough wooden cross inscribed "An unknown British soldier, of the Black Watch".

After the war, Railton returned to Folkestone before being successively vicar of St John the Baptist, Margate, curate of Christ Church, Westminster, vicar of St James's, Bolton, Yorkshire, vicar of Shalford, rector of St Nicholas's, Liverpool, and archbishop's visitor to the RAF, before his retirement in 1945. In June 1955 Railton accidentally fell from a moving train at Fort William railway station and died from his injuries.

In conclusion the texts we read have the function of explaining the life of the person who creates the memorial of the Unknown Soldier.