The centenary of the unknown soldier
Audio 02:33
A monument to the Unknown Soldier of the Great War.
Defense Historical Service
By: Franck Alexandre
8 min
On the occasion of the ceremonies of November 11, France will celebrate this Wednesday the centenary of the Unknown Soldier.
On November 11, 1920, the body of a French soldier arrived at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, two years to the day after the armistice of the Great War.
Franck Alexandre tells us this singular story.
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In the aftermath of the bloody battle of Verdun, in 1916, the decision was taken to honor all the dead by choosing one of them, an unknown soldier, a "
deprived of death
", according to the phrase of the time and which would rest in a highly symbolic site.
1920 will therefore be the year of the Unknown Soldier, in Paris as well as in London, since that same day, an unknown British soldier is also buried in Westminster Abbey.
On November 8, 1920, the National Assembly passed the law "
relating to the transfer to Paris and the deposit at the Arc de Triomphe of the remains of an unknown soldier who died for France
" to pay tribute to some 1,400,000 French soldiers. killed between August 2, 1914 and November 11, 1918, tens of thousands of whom were never identified.
On November 9, 1920, the remains of eight unnamed French soldiers, exhumed from eight battlefields - Lorraine, Verdun, Champagne, Chemin des Dames, Île-de-France, Somme, Artois and Flandres - were gathered in a fiery chapel in the citadel of Verdun.
Only one of these remains will join the Arc de Triomphe at the end of a long journey, indicates Jean-François Dubos, curator at the historical defense service: “
On November 9, the body of the unknown soldier is chosen.
On November 10, the remains arrive in Paris, place Denfert-Rochereau for a funeral wake.
The next day, after a visit to the Panthéon during which we will deposit the heart of Léon Gambetta (French statesman) in order to associate on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Republic, in the same glory, the French soldier and the great tribune, the unknown soldier is finally brought to the Arc de Triomphe where he is installed
”.
The Unknown Soldier remains in a room in the Arc de Triomphe before being buried on January 28, 1921 under a slab with the inscription: "
Here lies a French soldier who died for the Fatherland 1914-1918
".
A small bunch of blueberries
It was Auguste Thin, a young corporal of the 132nd Infantry Regiment, that the heavy task of choosing the Unknown Soldier fell.
Two days before the ceremony on the Place de l'Étoile, on November 9, 1920, eight anonymous dead, each fallen on one of the eight major battlefields of the
Great War,
therefore rest in the crypt of the citadel of Verdun, in strictly identical coffins covered with a tricolor.
Private Auguste Thin, hired January 3, 1918, is one of the survivors of the 234th Infantry Regiment, a regiment decimated in Champagne during the German counter-offensive of July 1918. Paid to the 132nd Infantry Regiment, the regiment of Verdun, Auguste Thin, under the drum rolls, enters the crypt, blows Jean-François Dubos: “
We must imagine Auguste Thin destabilized by this request made to him directly by André Maginot and to materialize his choice, he must deposit a small bouquet of blueberries on the one of the coffins that he will have retained… Auguste Thin does not know how to choose… And he has an idea: he belongs to the 132nd Infantry Regiment, he adds up the numbers that make up the number of his unit and therefore he will designate the sixth coffin by placing the bouquet on it.
".
The chosen coffin is placed on a 75 gun carriage to reach Paris
via
a special train.
The other seven bodies are buried in Verdun in a necropolis.
November 11, 1940
The Unknown Soldier immediately embodies a form of continuity of the Republic.
While military parades were used, as in Roman times, to pass under the Arc de Triomphe, the monument becomes a place of meditation.
On November 11, 1940, a founding event took place under the Arc de Triomphe, one of the first acts of resistance under occupied France, notes Jean-François Dubos: “
While the Nazi occupiers banned patriotic demonstrations, students are going to meditate despite everything on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
It is an act of resistance, even if it does not say its name and it is an act which is particularly interesting in my opinion, because it is the work of young people who are in their twenties.
So, they do not go to the grave of a comrade who fell to the front as their parents were able to do, but they go to the grave of a young man who, in the end, embodies this continuity, this durability of the Nation. .
We can even perhaps think that General de Gaulle, during his famous appeal of June 18, when he evokes the flame of resistance which must not be extinguished and which will not be extinguished, perhaps to be an indirect allusion to this flame which watches over the tomb of the Unknown Soldier
”.
If France and Great Britain, the two great allies of the First World War, invented the Unknown Soldier, the symbol has since been taken up by some thirty nations, from the American Military Cemetery in Arlington in 1921 to the Australia in 1993, and Canada in the year 2000. On the other hand, Germany, the great vanquished of this deadly conflict, has never had an unknown soldier.
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Our file on the First World War
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On RFI Savoirs:
France: the "unknown face" of the First World War
Verdun and the Unknown Soldier
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