What Is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier?

On November 11, 1921, the United States dedicated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, honoring an unidentified service member killed in World War I. The memorial reflected a shift in how nations remembered the war’s dead.

Before World War I, fallen soldiers were usually buried in mass graves, with little effort made to repatriate or identify their bodies. Memorials were mostly reserved for major victories and high-ranking officials. But the staggering death toll of the global conflict—an estimated 8.5 million to 10 million military deaths—prompted calls for all soldiers to be memorialized in a profound and lasting manner. 

“In the First World War, the army was no longer on the fringes of the society. Its ranks were swelled by masses of volunteers,” says Peter Francis, chief of staff at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Here’s how the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier came to represent those unidentified fallen in Britain, France and the United States.

The British government banned the repatriation of dead soldiers during World War I. “Only the very wealthy could have afforded to repatriate remains, and that wouldn’t have been right,” Francis says.

With most families unable to go overseas to visit gravesites, many people built their own memorials. But it was a spark of inspiration from reverend David Railton that resulted in the first Tomb of the Unknown Warrior. Railton served as a World War I military chaplain, and he earned a Military Cross for rescuing three soldiers under heavy fire during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. That same year, Railton spotted the grave of an unknown British soldier. “It sparked in him this idea, particularly because of the nonrepatriation of remains policy,” Francis says. 

After World War I ended in 1918, a temporary memorial on Whitehall Road in London became so popular that U.K. Prime Minister David Lloyd George commissioned a permanent monument to be unveiled on November 11, 1920. This reinvigorated Railton’s idea, and he suggested an unknown soldier be memorialized at Westminster Abbey. “He wants to bury him among kings to add significance to it,” Francis says.

King George V gave his approval in October 1920 and Brigadier L. J. Wyatt selected a soldier from four bodies gathered on the Western Front from battles in the Aisne, Arras, Somme and Ypres. The Unknown Warrior’s body was put in a casket made of wood from Hampton Court Palace, while a 16th-century Crusader sword from the Tower of London collection was placed atop the coffin, Francis explains.

Crowds of servicemen, widows and mothers who’d lost their loved ones gathered early on November 11, 1920, to see the casket as it was transported. “The roof of the railway carriage is painted white to make it more easily identifiable,” Francis says. “Every train platform between Dover and London is full of people wanting to catch a glimpse of the casket.”

More than 1 million people marched past the coffin over the next few days. The Unknown Warrior came to symbolize everybody’s loss, Francis says. “People start traveling from Scotland and across the country because they think it’s their son, husband or father.”

In France, the Chamber of Deputies voted for a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to be buried at the Arc de Triomphe. Francis Simon, the president of the veterans’ association Le Souvenir Français, is credited with coming up with the idea. The remains of eight unidentified French soldiers were brought to the citadel of Verdun, where Auguste Thin, a corporal in the war, selected the soldier, who was then transported to Paris.

“The British and the French both buried their unknown soldiers on November 11, 1920, and they are basically doing it simultaneously,” says Philip Bigler, author of Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: A Century of Honor, 1921–2021.

The tomb was not immediately ready for burial in France, though. “They had to store the remains for a few months,” Bigler says. The Unknown Soldier was finally interred at the Arc de Triomphe on January 28, 1921, and the grave was marked by an eternal flame on November 11, 1923. 

A year after the solemn ceremonies in the U.K. and France, the United States honored its unknown soldiers on November 11, 1921. “There were only about 4,500 American soldiers who could not be accounted for by the end of the war,” says Steven Trout, a scholar of war memory studies.

New York congressman Hamilton Fish proposed the idea to Congress, and he initially envisioned a body placed inside the rotunda of the Capitol Building, says Trout. 

On October 24, 1921, U.S. Army Sergeant Edward Younger selected America’s Unknown Soldier from four unidentified men who had died at Aisne-Marne, Somme, Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel. “They blindfolded Younger, had him pace around the caskets and then leave a bouquet on one,” Trout says. 

A flotilla of vessels surrounded the USS Olympia as it carried the casket across the Atlantic. After the ship landed in Washington Navy Yard, people crowded every train platform as the soldier traveled to the Capitol.

Ultimately, the decision was made to inter the tomb at Arlington National Cemetery. Thousands of people attended the procession from the Capitol Building to Arlington, Virginia. America’s most decorated World War I soldiers acted as pallbearers. 

“The Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier becomes the de facto national American World War I memorial,” Trout says. 

On May 30, 1958, the remains of unknown soldiers from World War II and the Korean War were interred at Arlington. In 1984, an unknown service member from the Vietnam War was laid to rest there as well. However, in 1998, advances in DNA testing identified the fourth soldier as Air Force 1st Lieutenant Michael Blassie. At his family’s request, his remains were exhumed and reburied at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis. The Vietnam crypt at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was later rededicated to honor all U.S. service members missing from that war.

Unlike its counterparts in France and Britain, the American Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has been guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, since 1937. This decision came after visitors began picnicking, sitting on and having pictures taken with the tomb.

“It’s quite remarkable," says Trout, “because we don’t even honor our presidents that way.”