London, 1920.

[camrogers]

I'm working on the last, new chapter for Fateless, which needs inserting toward the middle. Somehow I wound up looking into the idea behind that of the Unknown Warrior (possibly better known as the Unknown Soldier, depending on where you're from.) This isn't an entry lingering on the atrocity of war, but something else entirely: love.

I came back from the line at dusk. We had just laid to rest the mortal remains of a comrade. I went to a billet in front of Erkingham, near Armentieres. At the back of the billet was a small garden, and in the garden only six paces from the house, there was a grave. At the head of the grave there stood a rough cross of white wood. On the cross was written in deep black-pencilled letters, "An Unknown British Soldier" and in brackets beneath, "of the Black Watch". It was dusk and no one was near, except some officers in the billet playing cards. I remember how still it was. Even the guns seemed to be resting.

How that grave caused me to think. Later on I nearly wrote to Sir Douglas Haig to ask if the body of an "unknown" comrade might be sent home...

- Reverend David Railton MC

Railton wrote to the Dean of Westminster Abbey, and to cut it short the idea of a single burial standing in for the burials of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers left on the fields of WWI took root almost overnight - despite the King's initial misgivings about reopening the wounds of a War just ended. It needs to be understood that pretty much no-one had a family left intact after WWI. Everyone had lost someone, especially the smaller towns from which so many of their young men and had signed up to one of Kitchener's worse ideas: Pals Battalions.

Once the notion of a symbolic burial had been raised, there was no way the widows of England weren't going to give their men the burial they needed, King's misgivings or no.

On the night of the 7th November one body was exhumed from each of the four major battle areas, placed in a pine coffin, and an officer chose one coffin at random. That coffin was then placed in a larger coffin made of wood hewn from the trees at Hampton Court Palace, and inside the iron bands was placed a 16th-century Crusader's sword taken from the collection at the Tower of London.

Every step from France to England, from Dover to London, was one long, solemn ceremony. The following, I think, evokes the feeling of the time perfectly:

The train thundered through the dark, wet, moonless night. At the platforms by which it rushed could be seen groups of women watching an d silent, many dressed in deep mourning. Many an upper window was open and against the golden square of light was silhouetted clear cut and black the head and shoulders of some faithful watcher

.... In the London suburbs there were scores of homes with back doors flung wide, light flooding out and in the garden figures of men women and children gazing at the great lighted train rushing past.

- from the Daily Mail 11 November 1920

During the ceremony on the 11th, the guard of honour comprised one hundred recipients of the Victoria Cross. The guests of honour were around one hundred women who had lost both their husband and all of their sons. "Every woman so bereft who applied for a place got it."

The tombstone is the only stone in the Abbey which is not permitted to be walked on.

Comments

[morgan303.livejournal.com]

You have a gift for lifting the humanity out of history and showing it to us, right next to all the majesty of symbolism. I'm still staggered by it, even after all these years.

And I still can't stop thinking of that train in the night and all the silent eyes wishing it godspeed, and all the love given to that one man, whoever he is, who stood in for every son and husband lost. We've just as much tragedy, today, but less poetry; and there's the vicious circle.