The return of the son

The Unknown Warrior’s journey from the World War One battlefields via Dover to his resting place in Westminster Abbey is 100 years old this month

- Lucy Shrimpton

Just imagine for a moment you are sat on the edge of the Dover cliffs with a time traveller’s unique ability to see eons of history evolve through time. You will witness an era when the cliffs adjoined those on the north coast of France, the day Louis Blériot made his pioneering flight across the Channel, and more recently, heartfelt video messages projected directly onto the cliffs. It’s so often been the stage for some of history’s most emotional chapters.

But there’s another seismic episode that took place right here which has all but been eclipsed, something that meant everything to a generation but is little known by ours.

One hundred years ago this month, thousands of silent, grief-stricken mourners of World War One’s fallen – the mothers, the fathers, the brothers, the sisters – lined the Dover cliffs and quaysides awaiting the arrival of our Unknown Warrior by ship, on his journey from the battlefields of the Western Front to his resting place for all eternity in Westminster Abbey.

The scale of this gathering on 10 November 1920 was neither publicly organised nor anticipated, and while it may have seemed to an onlooker that the crowds were simply lifting their hats as a mark of respect to a stranger, many among them were almost certainly letting themselves believe that The One in that flag-draped coffin was their own son.

It all began as an idea proposed by Kent curate David Railton back in 1916, following the decision that to repatriate the bodies of the fallen would be too chaotic, too damaging to already low-lying national morale, and no doubt also too costly.