page_title: David Railton
section_title: The Unknown Warrior
hierarchical_section_title: David Railton / The Unknown Warrior
caption_attribution_description: English: We paid our respects on the 90th anniversary of Unknown Warrior being laid to rest in Westminster Abbey. www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11710660 The grave featuring this inscription, composed by Herbert Edward Ryle, Dean of Westminster, engraved with brass from melted down wartime ammunition: 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 Around the main inscription are four texts: THE LORD KNOWETH THEM THAT ARE HIS (top) UNKNOWN AND YET WELL KNOWN, DYING AND BEHOLD WE LIVE (side) IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE (base) GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS (side) This tombstone is the only tombstone in the Abbey on which it is forbidden to walk.
context_page_description: The Reverend David Railton MC was a Church of England clergyman, a military chaplain and the originator of the idea of the Tomb of The Unknown Warrior in Britain.
context_section_description: After the War Railton became the vicar of St. John the Baptist Church at Margate, but he still hoped to impress the authorities with his idea. In August, 1920 he wrote to Bishop Ryle, the Dean of Westminster, about the possibility of giving an unidentified soldier a national burial service in Westminster Abbey. Ryle took up the idea and his and Lloyd George's enthusiasm won over the initially hesitant King George V.
  In October 1920 Railton heard that his idea had been accepted by the Government. A committee headed by Lord Curzon, the then Foreign Secretary, was arranging for an unknown "warrior" to be disinterred in France and brought to Westminster Abbey. On 7 November 1920 six, or according to other accounts four, working parties visited the battlefields of Ypres, the Marne, Cambrai, Arras, the Somme, and the Aisne, where units of the Royal Naval division as well as the Army had died: each party exhumed an unidentified body which was examined to ensure that it was British before being placed in a plain coffin.
  At midnight one of these coffins 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 bearing the inscription "A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914–1918 for King and Country".
  In 1916 Railton was an experienced and mature man in his thirties and was appalled at the sufferings and loss caused by the War. He later tried to explain why he had felt 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":
  How that grave caused me to think!... But, who was he, and who were they [his folk]?... Was he just a laddie... . There was no answer to those questions, nor has there ever been yet. So I thought and thought and wrestled in thought. What can I do to ease the pain of father, mother, brother, sister, sweetheart, wife and friend? Quietly and gradually there came out of the mist of thought this answer clear and strong, "Let this body – this symbol of him – be carried reverently over the sea to his native land". And I was happy for about five or ten minutes.
caption: The Tomb of The Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey
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