The Blood-Stained Poppy by Kevin Rooney;James Heartfield; & James Heartfield

Author:Kevin Rooney;James Heartfield; & James Heartfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Hunt (NBN)
Published: 2019-08-11T16:00:00+00:00

The Unknown Soldier

To add to the meaning, the unveiling of the new Cenotaph was coupled with the burial of an ‘Unknown Soldier’ in Westminster Cathedral. The idea was that:

The burial of an unknown fighting man among the great men of history with impressive pageantry will express the honour the nation pays to the legions of fighting men who fell, whose sacrifice is commemorated in another way in the Cenotaph.

Like the Cenotaph, the price of fame was anonymity. The soldier would always remain unknown to earn his place among ‘the great men of history’: ‘Whether a soldier or an airman, a man of Great Britain or the Dominions, will never be known.’21 He could be anyone, that is, as long as he was British, or from one of Britain’s white colonies (Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Newfoundland or South Africa – which only sent white troops).

The British Cabinet read a paper that October that said that ‘it would do honour to the great mass of fighting men’. They resolved that ‘the remains of one of the numerous unknown men who fell and were buried in France should be exhumed’ to be reburied in Westminster Abbey, the ‘symbolic exception’ to the rule that no soldier was to be disinterred and repatriated.22

The Unknown Soldier, like the empty sarcophagus in Whitehall, would always remain a lifeless abstraction, while real, living ex-servicemen and the bereaved relatives were left to look on, spectators at their own symbolic interment.

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