7. The Unknown Soldier

We do not know this soldiers name, we never will

The Unknown Soldier

Saluting their Service - Grahame Old

The Origin of the Unknown Soldier

The idea of a Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was first conceived by British Army Chaplain David Railton in 1916. Whilst serving on the Western Front he came across a grave marked by a simple cross with the markings, ‘An unknown British Soldier’. From that day he campaigned for the remains of an unknown British Empire soldier to be entombed in Westminster Abbey among the ‘Kings’ in honour of the many thousands of unidentified soldiers killed during WW1.

Australia’s own famed 15th AIF Brigade Commander, Brigadier General H.E. (Pompey) Elliot was moved by the masses of graves and ‘blazing red’ poppies – it was ‘as if their blood was shedding itself’. In a letter to his wife in 1917, he wrote; It makes one sick at heart to see them, just little tiny wooden crosses with an aluminium name plate tacked to it until after the war. But there are hundreds just marked ‘an unknown British soldier’. These are the great army of missing whose bodies are not recovered until they are unrecognisable. It is very sad that their people will never know what happened to them at all.

The Unknown British Empire Soldier

On the 7th of November 1920 four unidentified soldiers of the British Empire were exhumed from temporary battlefield cemeteries at Ypres, Arras, Aisne and the Somme. They were placed in coffins draped with the Union Jack and one coffin was randomly selected. The remaining three were re-buried. On the second anniversary of the Armistice, 11th of November 1920, the Unknown Soldier was entombed in Westminster Abbey, London, among ‘Kings’. The soldier was assumed to be British (though he could have been a Canadian, a New Zealander, or even an Australian) but he was intended to represent all the young men of the British Empire killed during the Great War. On the same date an unknown French soldier was buried under the Arc de Triomphe, Paris.

‍

The Unknown Australian Soldier

Plans to honour an unknown Australian Soldier were first raised in the 1920’s but it was not until 1993 that one was at last brought home. To mark the 75th anniversary of the armistice in 1993, the remains of an unknown Australian soldier exhumed from a First World War military cemetery in France, were entombed in The Australian War Memorial’s Hall of Memory.

The soldier’s remains had been recovered from the Adelaide Military Cemetery near Villers-Bretonneux in France. It was known that the soldier had not been buried in that cemetery initially, as the Adelaide Cemetery was a cemetery of re-burial. Rather the soldier probably would have been buried in an unmarked grave close to where he fell and later his remains would have been moved to Adelaide Cemetery. Nobody knows where he was initially buried and therefore no one can say what battalion or unit he was from. He was totally unknown and unknowable. Perhaps he was a Collie Boy?

The unknown Australian Soldier was buried in a Tasmanian Blackwood coffin with a bayonet and a sprig of wattle. Soil from the Pozieres battlefield was scattered on his tomb. ‘AN UNKNOWN AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER KILLED IN THE WAR OF 1914-1918’, is engraved on the top of the tomb. The Unknown Soldier represents all Australian Soldiers killed in war.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The CWGC meticulously care for numerous cemeteries around the world where Australian war dead lie far from the land of the wattle. Many of the WW1 grave headstones are simply marked, ‘An Australian Soldier of the Great War…Known unto God’. Over 60000 Australian Soldiers died in the First World War, 21130 have no known grave but are remembered on memorials at Villers-Bretonneux (France), Menin Gate (Belgium) and Lone Pine (Gallipoli). 133 ‘Collie Boys’ died in the First World War, 53 have no known grave.

They are remembered forever at the Collie Cardiff RSL Sub Branch.