The British tomb of The Unknown Warrior holds an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during World War I. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, London on November 11, 1920, the earliest such tomb honoring the unknown dead of World War I. Even the battlefield the Warrior came from is unknown, kept permanently unknown so that the Unknown Warrior might serve as a symbol for all of the unknown dead wherever they fell.

The Warrior was conferred the US Medal of Honor on 17 October 1921, from the hand of General Pershing; it hangs on a pillar near to his burial site.

Several other nations would follow the example and have their own Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the most famous being France's, beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

When Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon married the future King George VI on April 26, 1923, she laid her bouquet at the Tomb on her way into the Abbey, a gesture which every royal bride since has copied, though on the way back from the altar rather than to it.

The tomb in Westminster Abbey is in the far western end of the nave, only a few feet from the entrance. The black Belgian marble covering the grave is the only tombstone in the Abbey on which it is forbidden to walk.

Epitaph

The inscription on the tomb, composed by Dean Ryle , reads:

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.

See also

• Tower Hill Memorial

External links

• The Unknown Warrior (Westminster Abbey)