Victoria Station and the Arrival of the Unknown Warrior

A little known commemoration ceremony, organised by the Western Front Association, takes place every year at Victoria Station in London on the evening of 10th November as part of the nation’s Remembrance Day events. While so many focus on the 11th November as the day of national mourning, this quiet and low key ceremony holds a special significance for those who do not forget the Unknown Warrior and what he represents.

Platform 8 on Victoria Station

Each year on the 10th November, the area between Platforms 8 and 9 on Victoria Station is cordoned off, and people gather to remember the arrival in 1920 of the coffin of the Unknown Warrior, brought by train from the battlefields of Belgium and France. It’s a simple service but a poignant one, as those present focus on the thoughts of the men and women who were there on that day.

This simple and solemn arrival of a dead soldier back home to Blighty must have caused intensely powerful emotions as the body represented every single man of the 100,000+ who had been killed fighting for the country between 1914 and 1918 and who had no known grave. The body could be that of any husband, father, son, brother who had died: it represented, and continues well over 100 years later, to represent them all.

The exact time of arrival is marked by a short service starting at 8.32, a reading of In Flanders Field by John Macrae and a bugle sounding the Last Post. Passengers passing by, unaware of the significance of the event, nevertheless are halted in their haste to get home, and stay to listen. The event is concluded with the Exhortation and the laying of wreaths, some appropriately to represent the many railwaymen who enlisted and died in the Great War.

The selection of the body is still an event shrouded in some mystery. But it is believed that 4 - 6 unidentified bodies were chosen from different battlefields, taken to St Pol in Northern France and Brigadier General Louis John Wyatt quietly and anonymously selected one. After arrival at Victoria the casket was guarded overnight by servicemen, and on the morning of November 11th it was placed on a gun carriage of the Royal Horse Artillery and drawn through London by six horses through huge and silent crowds.

After the unveiling of the Cenotaph the cortège was followed by the King and the Royal Family to Westminster Abbey. Here it was flanked by a guard of honour made up of 100 recipients of the Victoria Cross. Among the guests of honour were 1000 widows and mothers. 100 of these were chosen because they had lost their husbands and, unbelievably, all their sons. Their suffering is impossible to imagine. The casket was then interred at the west end in soil brought from the main battlefields. There is always a short service at the Tomb at 11.00 on 11th November.

The Dean of Westminster leading the prayers at 11am on 11 November at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior

Hundreds of thousands of people visit the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey every year, but few are aware that a more significant and personal tribute can be made at Victoria Station on every 10th November. It’s a moving and affecting event that stays with you long after the bugle’s last notes of Reveille have sounded.