This article was first published in the Summer 2014 edition of Outlook, the magazine of the Diocese of Canterbury. It is reproduced by kind permission of the Diocese.
With the help of local historian Robin Colyer, members of the Church of St. John the Baptist in Margate, Kent have been preparing for the centenary by highlighting the significant, but largely unrecognised, impact of a former vicar of their parish.
The story begins in 1916, when a young army chaplain, returning to a billet at Erkingham in France, discovers a small garden at the back. He recounted the incident many years later in his writings: "... only about six paces from the house,there was a grave. At the head of the grave stood a white cross of wood on which was written in deep black pencilled letters 'An Unknown Soldier of The Black Watch.' How I longed to see his folk! But who was he and who were they?"
The chaplain in question was the Rev'd David Railton. At the time of the outbreak of the First World War he was curate at St Mary and St Eanswythe in Folkestone. While in Folkestone he saw hundreds of thousands of soldiers leaving the town for the Western Front and like many other clergy, he volunteered to serve there as an Army chaplain. It was in the battlefield, and after his experience in that small garden that he first considered the concept of the Unknown Warrior.
Rev'd David Railton
Today the grave of the Unknown Warrior, which lies in the west end of the Nave of Westminster Abbey, has become a national symbol of commemoration and remembrance. However, as Robin Colyer explains, it took several years of persistence by Rev'd Railton, before the idea finally gained support.
"He first wrote a letter to Field Marshall Douglas Haig during the war to express the idea that a representative of the war dead should be returned to England,but the letter was not acknowledged. Then in August 1920 he wrote another letter, this time to Dean Ryle of Westminster Abbey with the suggestion that an unknown soldier should be buried in the Abbey.It is believed that he could not give up on the idea and with the war over for almost two years his wife suggested that now was the time or the opportunity would be lost for ever."
Dean Ryle was very impressed with the idea and with many in the Church of England at the time disappointed that the Cenotaph in Whitehall was not a Christian memorial to the war dead,the idea gained momentum.
The Unknown Warrior was accorded a hero's burial in the Abbey on 11 November 1920 and the grave in the nave was filled with French soil and later sealed with a slab of Belgian marble. Over the following three days, thousands of people came to the Abbey to walk past the grave, showing the popularity of the idea. The Union Flag that had been draped over the coffin, and which was hung above the grave, was one provided by David Railton himself; it had been used by him in the war for the burial of soldiers.This flag still hangs there today as a permanent link to the man who first inspired the idea.
