Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, monumental grave of an unidentifiable military service member who died in wartime. Many countries now maintain such tombs to serve as memorials to all their war dead.

The movement to set aside special tombs for unknown soldiers originated with World War I, a war in which soldiers died in unprecedented numbers. In the United Kingdom the grave of the Unknown Warrior was dedicated on November 11, 1920, the second anniversary of the armistice that ended the war. It is said that the idea for the tomb originated in 1916 with David Railton, an Anglican chaplain serving in France. He later contacted Herbert Ryle, the dean (senior priest) of Westminster Abbey in London, where the tomb eventually was built. Unknown soldiers from several battlefield cemeteries were brought together in one place, where an officer who did not know which was which made the final selection. (The other bodies were reburied elsewhere.) King George V paid his respects at the burial ceremony. France selected its final honoree, the Soldat inconnu (Unknown Soldier), in much the same way. After a debate over the tomb’s location, with some suggesting the Panthéon, the remains were buried at the base of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in January 1921.

The United States followed suit shortly afterward. Congress authorized the burial of an unknown soldier on March 4, 1921, and the ceremony took place on November 11, in the plaza of the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia, with Pres. Warren G. Harding officiating. The honoree was selected by an army sergeant from among four unknowns who had been exhumed from four American cemeteries in France. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier site later came to be called the Tomb of the Unknowns as additional unidentified combatants from later wars—World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War—were interred in the shadow of the original sarcophagus. DNA testing during the 1990s revealed that the Vietnam unknown was in fact First Lt. Michael J. Blassie, whose remains were subsequently removed. His empty grave at Arlington was repurposed as a memorial to “Missing Servicemen, 1958–1975.” Some observers think that DNA testing makes it unlikely that future wars will produce unknown soldiers.

Many other countries have created their own unknown soldier monuments. India’s unknown soldier has been interred since 1971 under the India Gate monument in New Delhi. The Tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier, near Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, holds a World War I veteran but was not established until 1993. Canada’s unknown soldier is also a World War I casualty, but the monument is even newer, having opened in 2000 at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Ontario. The Canadian monument was the site of a terrorist attack in October 2014, when a gunman shot and killed one of its honour guards.