It was a wonderfully humane idea, created from the inhumanity of war: the Unknown Soldier, or the Unknown Warrior, whose bones are buried in national monuments throughout the world. He or she is always nameless but clearly identifiable, and is easily my favourite historical figure. This is not because, as a novelist, the concept of an unknown soldier is so rich with possibilities. Certainly, that’s true. The Unknown Soldier can be the hero of a story of conflict from any time or place. But the real, irresistible pull of the Unknown Soldier is that he or she was just like you or me. In a way, it's our own tomb, had we been called on to sacrifice our lives for a greater good. In this way, it's much more moving than the great statues of war heroes. Most of us are not heroes. We are like the Unknown Soldier - caught up in events beyond our control.
But like all good memorials, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier serves a very practical purpose too. For families whose loved ones have been killed in the service of their country, the tomb is public recognition of their loss. For those with no body to bury, the tomb is the place to mourn their husband, wife or child. The mourners tell their own story as they stand by the tomb, and their story merges with the stories of others to create something huge and powerful - not in a political sense, but in the sense of something shared. If you visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, you and the other visitors are one.
I think of our Unknown Soldier as male. This isn't because I don’t recognise that women are also soldiers: it's because the bones were buried just after the First World War (Armistice Day 1920) when only men served in the front line. But the man may not be British, since although an attempt was made to identify the bones of a British soldier for the Westminster Abbey tomb, and of a French soldier for the French equivalent, extricating bones from the great mush of the trenches was not an exact business. No nation can never be completely sure that 'their' bones are 'theirs’. This is an interesting notion: does the Tomb pay homage to dead soldiers, or our dead soldiers? I think of the Westminster Abbey tomb housing a British soldier. Yet such is the power of the concept of the Unknown Soldier that I feel no less moved when visiting the Arc de Triomphe or the Kremlin.
The story of the idea of honouring an unknown soldier, and how the idea spread, is well told on Wikipedia, so I won’t repeat it here, only to say that Lord Curzon of Kedleston, a controversial figure worthy of a modern biography, organised the return of the British Unknown Soldier’s remains with imaginative dignity. The guests of honour at the interment were women who had lost their husbands and all their sons. Such a little word 'all'. Yet imagine the weight of grief in the Abbey on that day. I don’t expect, at that moment, these bereaved women were much comforted by the medieval crusader’s sword, chosen by the king from the royal collection, fixed to the coffin lid. I expect the inscription on the iron shield - ‘A British Warrior who fell in the Great War from 1914-1918 for King and Country’ - was washed in tears.
I think of our Unknown Soldier as male. This isn't because I don’t recognise that women are also soldiers: it's because the bones were buried just after the First World War (Armistice Day 1920) when only men served in the front line. But the man may not be British, since although an attempt was made to identify the bones of a British soldier for the Westminster Abbey tomb, and of a French soldier for the French equivalent, extricating bones from the great mush of the trenches was not an exact business. No nation can never be completely sure that 'their' bones are 'theirs’. This is an interesting notion: does the Tomb pay homage to dead soldiers, or our dead soldiers? I think of the Westminster Abbey tomb housing a British soldier. Yet such is the power of the concept of the Unknown Soldier that I feel no less moved when visiting the Arc de Triomphe or the Kremlin.
The story of the idea of honouring an unknown soldier, and how the idea spread, is well told on Wikipedia, so I won’t repeat it here, only to say that Lord Curzon of Kedleston, a controversial figure worthy of a modern biography, organised the return of the British Unknown Soldier’s remains with imaginative dignity. The guests of honour at the interment were women who had lost their husbands and all their sons. Such a little word 'all'. Yet imagine the weight of grief in the Abbey on that day. I don’t expect, at that moment, these bereaved women were much comforted by the medieval crusader’s sword, chosen by the king from the royal collection, fixed to the coffin lid. I expect the inscription on the iron shield - ‘A British Warrior who fell in the Great War from 1914-1918 for King and Country’ - was washed in tears.
For future generations, however, the symbolism accompanying the coffin is wonderful. Through the crusading sword, one unknown soldier greets the other from across the centuries, and the word ‘warrior’, chosen above ‘soldier’, harks back further, to heroic times of myth and fable. Yet this soldier is real. Whether a young aristocrat from Eton or a ‘Pal’ from the Gorbals, he was a mother’s son turned into cannon-fodder.
The symbolism doesn't stop there. Placing the tomb bang in the middle of the western end of the nave of Westminster Abbey means that everybody, whether tourist or royal bride, has to walk round it. Thus does the Unknown Warrior, whether Tom, Dick, Harry, Harry’s horse, the carrier pigeon, the wife left coping at home, the girlfriend in the munitions factory, the man or woman in the unsung corps that has no fancy uniform, the Military Wife or Mililtary Husband, make his quiet presence felt every single day.
If everything we’ve created in the world was destroyed, I’d like the Unknown Soldier rather than any artefact to remain. I think it would show aliens arriving to take over the planet that although man was aggressive and destructive, he was capable of emotional greatness, and when he decided to be emotionally great, he did it pretty well.
BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY OF A BRITISH WARRIOR UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK BROUGHT FROM FRANCE TO LIE AMONG THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS OF THE LAND AND BURIED HERE ON ARMISTICE DAY 11 NOV: 1920, IN THE PRESENCE OF HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE V HIS MINISTERS OF STATE THE CHIEFS OF HIS FORCES AND A VAST CONCOURSE OF THE NATION
THUS ARE COMMEMORATED THE MANY MULTITUDES WHO DURING THE GREAT WAR OF 1914 - 1918 GAVE THE MOST THAT MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF FOR GOD FOR KING AND COUNTRY FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD
THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD HIS HOUSE
In 1938, at the time of the Munich crisis, my father was a Church Army cadet (which meant he did social work in poor areas of London. He wrote in his unpublished memoir that the cadets were asked to join a vigil of continuous prayer at the Unknown Soldier's tomb. He said: Together with two or three others I covered the period during the hours immediately before dawn. To be practically alone in the small hours of the morning at such a place was very moving.' It moves me to think of those young men, some of whom must have themselves been destined to be killed in battle, pitting their prayers against Hitler's monstrous determination to thrust the world into another war.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, it is a humane monument, and to me, it has always pointed up the human cost of war, as opposed to the grandiose statues and paintings of commanders on horseback and sporting all their braid and medals. Thank you for this post.
Thanks to frequent power cuts I've only just been able to read this but it was worth the wait. A moving, informative tribute to the concept of the Unknown Soldier. I agree with K M Grant's analysis of how the pathos of a soldier so mutilated by war as to be unrecognisable transcends all national and historical boundaries. Wonderful article, thank you.
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