Thought for the Week - 13th November 2022
Dear Friends,
If you have ever been
to Victoria Railway Station in London, you may have noticed at the end of
Platform 8 a plaque commemorating the arrival there of the body of the Unknown
Warrior. It was the Revd David Railton, an Anglican vicar and military
chaplain, who thought of the idea of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, and so, on
the 7th November 1920, in strictest secrecy, four unidentified
British bodies were exhumed from the temporary battlefield cemeteries at Ypres,
Arras, Aisne and Somme and taken to the chapel at Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise near
Arras in France where they were received by a welcome party. The remains were
placed in four plain coffins each covered by a Union Flag and then one of the
welcome party, Brigadier L.J. Wyatt who served with the North Staffordshire
Regiment and had commanded forces in France and Flanders, was given the task of
choosing the body of ‘The Unknown Warrior’, a member of the British armed
forces killed on the battlefield during the First World War. The coffin of the
Unknown Warrior stayed overnight in the chapel (the other three bodies were
taken away for reburial), and on the morning of the 8th November a
specially designed casket made of the oak timbers from the trees from Hampton
Court Palace arrived and the Unknown Warrior’s coffin was placed inside the
casket with a 16th Century sword chosen by King George V from the
Royal Collection fixed to the top along with a shield bearing the inscription,
‘A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 for King and Country’.
On the 9th November, the Unknown Warrior was taken by horse-drawn
carriage to the quayside and loaded aboard HMS Verdun bound for Dover, whereupon
arrival the Unknown Warrior was met with a nineteen-gun salute, something that
was normally only reserved for Field Marshalls. The casket was placed onboard a
special train bound for Victoria Station where it remained overnight before
being taken to Westminster Abbey on the 11th November for a state
funeral, the only time this honour has been bestowed on an anonymous person or
a representative of a whole group of people. Revd Railton’s intention for the
Unknown Warrior was that for the relatives of the over half million soldiers
whose bodies could not be identified, they could believe that the Unknown
Warrior could be their lost husband, father, brother or son. On the black
Belgium marble stone which identifies the tomb in Westminster Abbey there is an
inscription composed by the then Dean of Westminster together with four New
Testament quotes: ‘The Lord Knoweth Them That Are His’ (2 Timothy 2:19);
‘Unknown And Yet Well Known, Dying And Behold We Live’ (2 Corinthians 6:9);
‘Greater Love Hath No Man Than This’ (John 15:13); and ‘In Christ Shall All Be
Made Alive’ (1 Corinthians 15:22).
Grace and peace,
Neil
Comments
Post a Comment