The number of bodies involved in the selection process is disputed, with some accounts saying four, others six. The ones that weren’t chosen were reburied while the solitary selected figure was repatriated via Dover on the HMS Verdun. On 7 November 1920, the bodies, each covered in a union flag, were brought to the chapel at St Pol in northern France.īrigadier General LJ Wyatt, the commander of British troops in France and Flanders, selected one of the bodies at random.

Between four and six bodies were exhumed from different parts of the Western Front, all areas that saw heavy British battle. There is no definitive version of how the Unknown Warrior came back to Britain, but the one most experts seem to agree on is this. To find out more about the history of the poppy in Remembrance Sunday, see this article from CBBC's Newsround. This was a vast sum at the time and was used to help the war veterans who desperately needed it. The first Poppy Appeal was in 1921 and raised more than £100,000. Although it dates back to the Roman army, with specific military reference to an infantry between 3,000 and 6,000 troops, in later years it has come to refer to a large multitude of people, as the Royal British Legion is. For half of them, those injuries left permanent damage. This impacted even more on the soldiers who had sustained life-changing injuries and of the six million who fought, 1.75m returned with a disability of some description. Unemployment stood at two million and many had returned from the front with little prospect of gainful employment. That help was needed in 1921 as four years of war had had a detrimental effect on the British economy. Ninety-nine years on, it remains a centrepiece of Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom.

Built from Portland stone (the original was a temporary structure formed of wood and plaster), it was in place to be unveiled by King George V on Armistice Day 1920. It was designed by the architect Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens and was only intended to stand in place for a week in recognition of the first Peace Day celebrations in July 1919.īut it was a popular part of the celebrations, so much so that a permanent version was ordered.

The reason it’s called a Cenotaph is because the name describes a monument to honour of those who died and are buried in another location and comes from the Greek word for ‘empty tomb’. London's Cenotaph was built in Whitehall in 1919 to remember those who had died in the war between 19. With none of the fighting taking place on home soil, when the conflict ended in 1918, paying respects to soldiers where they had died meant visiting the locations of the Western Front trenches in France and Belgium. The First World War led to many thousands of British soldiers losing their lives on the Front.

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