To the unknown soldier

G. V. JOSHI

The tomb of the "Unknown Soldier" and the story behind it is interesting. In 1916, during World War I, Francois Simon lost one of his sons in the war against Germany and another son was gravely injured. Moved by this. Simon organised honorary escorts for the burial of bodies brought to Rennes from the battlefields. He began thinking of soldiers whose bodies were not discovered and recovered bodies that could not be identified.

In November 1916, during a ceremony honouring the war dead in Rennes, Simon asked, "Why does not France open the doors of the Pantheon (a historical site in Paris) to one of her unknown warriors who gave his life in the defence of his motherland?"

The idea was taken up by a French Minister, pushed by the press, and in 1919 given its first official approval by the Government of France. The grave should bear only two words - "A Soldier" - and two dates - "1914-1919".

A few days before the ceremony on November 11, 1920, the French decided not to bury their unknown soldier in the Pantheon, but to give him a shrine apart - beneath the Arc de Triomphe - a place of honour. Superbly situated, the Arc commands a magnificent view of the Champs Elysees, towering above the traffic of the Place de l'Etoile (now renamed the Place Charles de Gaulle).

On November 9, 1920, the caskets began arriving. Silent crowds watched eight trucks pull in. The ninth body never came; instead word arrived that in one sector, German and French bodies were buried in a common ground, and the commander could not be certain of delivering a French soldier. And so he sent none.

That night the unmarked coffins resting in state, were shifted several times to prevent identification with any sector. The honour of making the final choice was given to a young infantry soldier, Auguste Thin, chosen because his father was among France's unidentified war dead. With a bunch of red and white carnations, while Government officials watched and soldiers stood at attention, Thin walked down the flag-draped row of caskets, stopped before one, and placed flowers on it.

While a train carried this coffin to Paris to be invested with a glory never before accorded to a soldier, a British destroyer was bearing another body across the English Channel. No one knew whether he was a soldier, a sailor or an airman, whether he was English or from Canada or any other part of the then British Empire. He had died in France, and had been buried in an unmarked grave.

In a solemn ceremony at Westminster Abbey, he was reburied in French soil - 100 bags filled with earth from the battlefields in France. Similarly, a year later, when America's unknown soldier was brought home, his tomb at Arlington National Cemetery, outside Washington was constructed so that the casket rests on a 50 millimetres thick layer of French soil. The eternal flame in the French tomb was lit in November 1923, three years after the ceremony.

At New Delhi, at India Gate, the names of all soldiers who died in World War I are etched.

On the marble plaza in front of the tomb at Arlington, a guard walks back and forth, 21 steps in each direction. At the end of each 21 steps, the soldier pauses for 21 seconds, symbolic of a 21 gun salute and walks 21 steps in the other direction.

Every hour in winter and every half an hour in summer, the guard is changed. This is done on all days, in all seasons, in all weather conditions, sun, rain or snow.

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