The Unknown Warrior The British tomb of The Unknown Warrior holds an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during the First World War . He was buried in Westminster Abbey , London on 11 November 1920 , simultaneously with a similar interment of a French unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in France , making both tombs the first to honour the unknown dead of the First World War . It is the first example of a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier . History . Origins . The idea of a Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was first conceived in 1916 by the Reverend David Railton , who , while serving as an army chaplain on the Western Front , had seen a grave marked by a rough cross , which bore the pencil - written legend ' An Unknown British Soldier ' . He wrote to the Dean of Westminster in 1920 proposing that an unidentified British soldier from the battlefields in France be buried with due ceremony in Westminster Abbey " amongst the kings " to represent the many hundreds of thousands of Empire dead . The idea was strongly supported by the Dean and the then Prime Minister David Lloyd George . Selection , arrival and ceremony . Arrangements were placed in the hands of Lord Curzon of Kedleston who prepared in committee the service and location . Suitable remains were exhumed from various battlefields and brought to the chapel at Saint - Pol - sur - Ternoise near Arras , France on the night of 7 November 1920 . The bodies were received by Rev George Kendall OBE . Brigadier General L . J . Wyatt and Lieutenant Colonel E . A . S . Gell of the Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries went into the chapel alone . The remains were on stretchers each covered by Union Flags : the two officers did not know from which battlefield any individual body had come . General Wyatt with closed eyes rested his hand on one of the bodies . The two officers placed the body in a plain coffin and sealed it . The other bodies were then taken away for reburial by Mr Kendall . It seems highly likely that the bodies were carefully selected and it is almost certain that the Unknown Warrior was a soldier serving in Britain ' s pre - war regular army and not a sailor , airman , or Empire Serviceman . The coffin stayed at the chapel overnight and on the afternoon of 8 November , it was transferred under guard and escorted by Rev Mr Kendall , with troops lining the route , from Ste Pol to the medieval castle within the ancient citadel at Boulogne . For the occasion , the castle library was transformed into a chapelle ardente : a company from the French 8th Infantry Regiment , recently awarded the Légion d ' Honneur en masse , stood vigil overnight . The following morning , two undertakers entered the castle library and placed the coffin into a casket of the oak timbers of trees from Hampton Court Palace . The casket was banded with iron and a medieval crusader ' s sword , chosen by the king personally from the Royal Collection , was affixed to the top and surmounted by an iron shield bearing the inscription ' A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914 – 1918 for King and Country ' . The casket was then placed onto a French military wagon , drawn by six black horses . At 10 . 30 am , all the church bells of Boulogne tolled ; the massed trumpets of the French cavalry and the bugles of the French infantry played " Aux Champs " ( the French " Last Post " ) . Then , the mile - long procession — led by one thousand local schoolchildren and escorted by a division of French troops — made its way down to the harbour . At the quayside , Marshal Foch saluted the casket before it was carried up the gangway of the destroyer , , and piped aboard with an admiral ' s call . The " Verdun " slipped anchor just before noon and was joined by an escort of six battleships . As the flotilla carrying the casket closed on Dover Castle it received a 19 - gun Field Marshal ' s salute . It was landed at Dover Marine Railway Station at the Western Docks on 10 November . The body of the Unknown Warrior was carried to London in South Eastern and Chatham Railway General Utility Van No . 132 , which had previously carried the bodies of Edith Cavell and Charles Fryatt . The van has been preserved by the Kent and East Sussex Railway . The train went to Victoria Station , where it arrived at platform 8 at 8 . 32 pm that evening and remained overnight . ( A plaque at Victoria Station marks the site : every year on 10 November , a small Remembrance service , organised by The Western Front Association , takes place between platforms 8 and 9 . ) On the morning of 11 November 1920 , the casket was placed onto a gun carriage of the Royal Horse Artillery and drawn by six horses through immense and silent crowds . As the cortege set off , a further field marshal ' s salute was fired in Hyde Park . The route followed was Hyde Park Corner , The Mall , and to Whitehall where the Cenotaph , a " symbolic empty tomb " , was unveiled by King - Emperor George V . The cortège was then followed by the king , the Royal Family and ministers of state to Westminster Abbey , where the casket was borne into the West Nave of the Abbey flanked by a guard of honour of one hundred recipients of the Victoria Cross . The guests of honour were a group of about one hundred women . They had been chosen because they had each lost their husband and all their sons in the war . " Every woman so bereft who applied for a place got it " . The coffin was then interred in the far western end of the nave , only a few feet from the entrance , in soil brought from each of the main battlefields , and covered with a silk pall . Servicemen from the armed forces stood guard as tens of thousands of mourners filed silently past . The ceremony appears to have served as a form of catharsis for collective mourning on a scale not previously known . The grave was then capped with a black Belgian marble stone ( the only tombstone in the Abbey on which it is forbidden to walk ) featuring this inscription , composed by Dean Ryle , Dean of Westminster , engraved with brass from melted down wartime ammunition : Around the main inscription are four texts : Later history . A year later , on 17 October 1921 , the unknown warrior was given the United States ' highest award for valour , the Medal of Honor , from the hand of General John Pershing ; it hangs on a pillar close to the tomb . On 11 November 1921 , the American Unknown Soldier was reciprocally awarded the Victoria Cross . When Elizabeth Bowes - Lyon married the future King George VI on 26 April 1923 , she laid her bouquet at the Tomb on her way into the Abbey , as a tribute to her brother Fergus who had died at the Battle of Loos in 1915 ( and whose name was then listed among those of the missing on the Loos Memorial , although in 2012 a new headstone was erected in the Quarry Cemetery , Vermelles ) . Royal brides married at the Abbey now have their bouquets laid on the tomb the day after the wedding and all of the official wedding photographs have been taken . It is also the only tomb not to have been covered by a special red carpet for the wedding of Prince Albert , Duke of York , and Elizabeth Bowes - Lyon . When Alfred Rosenberg , the Nazi ideologist , visited Britain on a diplomatic mission in 1933 he laid a wreath with a Swastika on it at the tomb . A British war veteran threw it into the Thames . Before she died in 2002 , Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother ( the same Elizabeth who first laid her wedding bouquet at the tomb ) expressed the wish for her wreath to be placed on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior . Her daughter , Queen Elizabeth II , laid the wreath the day after the funeral . The British Unknown Warrior came 76th in the 100 Great Britons poll . The LMS - Patriot Project , a charitable organisation , is building a new steam locomotive that will carry the name " The Unknown Warrior " . The new loco has been endorsed by the Royal British Legion as the new National Memorial Engine . A public appeal to build the locomotive was launched in 2008 . " The Unknown Warrior " is expected to be complete by 2018 — the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice , if sufficient funds can be raised . The day after the wedding of William and Catherine Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on 29 April 2011 , the Duchess ' wedding bouquet was laid on the tomb . On 24 May 2011 the President of the United States Barack Obama laid a wreath at the memorial during his first official visit to the UK . Heads of state from over 70 countries have now given the Unknown Warrior this honour . Related memorials . There have been three related memorials erected since 1920 for the Unknown Warrior :