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

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Week - 28th January 2024

Thought for the Week - 29th October 2023

Thought for the Week - 14/11/2021