The idea of a Tomb of the Unknown Warrior was first conceived in 1916 from rough crosses dotted along the Western Front bearing the legend 'An Unknown British Soldier'.
It was proposed in 1920 that an unidentified British soldier from the battlefields be buried with due ceremony in Westminster Abbey "amongst the kings" to represent the many hundreds of thousands of dead. The idea was strongly supported by Prime Minister, David Lloyd George.
Arrangements were placed in the hands of Lord Curzon who prepared the service and location. Suitable remains of six unknown soldiers were exhumed from various battlefields and brought to the chapel at Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise near Arras during the evening of 7 November 1920. The bodies were placed in six plain coffins covered with Union Flags in the chapel before Brigadier Wyatt and Lt Col Gellain entered alone. The two officers did not know from which battlefield any individual soldier had come. Brigadier Wyatt with closed eyes rested his hand on one of the coffins. The other five soldiers were then taken away for reburial.
The coffin of the unknown warrior stayed at the chapel overnight and on the afternoon of 8 November, it was transferred under guard, with troops lining the route, from the chapel to the medieval castle at Boulogne. A company of the French 8th Infantry Regiment stood vigil overnight.
The following morning, two undertakers placed the coffin into a casket of the oak timbers of trees from Hampton Court Palace. The casket was banded with iron, and a medieval crusader's sword chosen by the King personally from the Royal Collection was affixed to the top and surmounted by an iron shield bearing the inscription 'A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914–1918 for King and Country'.
The casket was then placed onto a French military wagon, drawn by six black horses. At 1030, all the church bells of Boulogne tolled; the massed trumpets of the French cavalry and the bugles of the French infantry played the Last Post and the mile long procession, led by one thousand local schoolchildren and escorted by a division of French troops, made its way down to the harbour.
At the quayside, the casket was saluted by Marshal Foch before it was carried up the gangway and piped aboard HMS Verdun. The Verdun slipped anchor just before noon and was joined by an escort of six battleships. As the flotilla carrying the casket approached Dover it received a 19 gun Field Marshal's salute. It was landed at Dover Marine Railway Station on 10 November. The body of the Unknown Warrior was transported by train to London. The train arrived at Victoria Station just after 2030 that evening and remained overnight.
On the morning of 11 November 1920, the casket was placed onto a gun carriage of the Royal Horse Artillery and drawn by six horses through the streets of London with immense and silent crowds. The route followed passed through Hyde Park Corner, The Mall and Whitehall Cenotaph. The cortège was then followed by the King and the Royal Family to Westminster Abbey, where the casket was borne into the West Nave of the Abbey flanked by a guard of honour of one hundred holders of the Victoria Cross.
The guests of honour were a group of about one hundred women who had been chosen because they had each lost their husband and all their sons in the war.
The coffin was then interred in the far western end of the Nave, only a few feet from the entrance, in soil brought from each of the main battlefields, and covered with a silk pall. Servicemen from the armed forces stood guard as tens of thousands of mourners filed silently past.
The grave was then capped with black Belgian marble stone and is the only tomb in the Abbey where it is forbidden to walk.