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Authors: Rupert Colley

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Large, silent crowds had assembled to witness the six-horse procession wind its way to The Mall, where the king had unveiled the newly erected Cenotaph. The King and his entourage then followed the cortège to Westminster Abbey where, waiting, was a guard of honour consisting of 100 holders of the Victoria Cross and 100 women who had lost both their husbands and sons during the war.

After a brief service, the coffin was lowered into the grave, ‘amongst the kings’, and sprinkled with earth brought back from the Western Front. It was covered with a stone slab with the simple inscription, ‘An Unknown Soldier’. The following year, the stone was replaced by a slab of Belgium marble and fully inscribed in capitals with text composed by the Dean of Westminster:

BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY
OF A BRITISH WARRIOR
UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK
BROUGHT FROM FRANCE TO LIE AMONG
THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS OF THE LAND
AND BURIED HERE ON ARMISTICE DAY
11 NOV 1920, IN THE PRESENCE OF
HIS MAJESTY KING GEORGE V
HIS MINISTERS OF STATE
THE CHIEFS OF HIS FORCES
AND A VAST CONCOURSE OF THE NATION

THUS ARE COMMEMORATED THE MANY
MULTITUDES WHO DURING THE GREAT
WAR OF 1914–1918 GAVE THE MOST THAT
MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF
FOR GOD
FOR KING AND COUNTRY
FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE
FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD

THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE
HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD
HIS HOUSE

Appendix 2: Timeline of World War One

1914

28 June
: Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to Austria–Hungary’s throne, and his wife, Sophie, assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo

28 July
: Austrian–Hungarian empire declares war on Serbia

1 August
: Germany declares war on Russia

3 August
: Germany declares war on France

4 August
: Germany invades Luxemburg and Belgium; Great Britain declares war on Germany

6 August
: Austrian–Hungarian empire declares war on Russia; Serbia declares war on Germany

7 August
: Germans capture Belgium town of Liége;

Lord Kitchener calls for volunteers to join the British army

23 August
: Battle of Mons begins; Japan declares war on Germany

26 August
: The Battle of Tannenberg begins

German colony of Togoland falls to the Allies

29 August
: German colony of Samoa falls to New Zealand forces

5–10 September
: The First Battle of the Marne begins. Trench warfare established as soldiers on both sides dig in

9–14 September
: Battle of the Masurian Lakes

21 September
: German New Guinea falls to the Australians

23 September
: Japanese siege of German-held Tsingtao begins

19 October
: First Battle of Ypres begins

29 October
: Turkey enters war on the side of the Central Powers

1 November
: Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire

7 November
: Japanese forces capture Tsingtao

21 November
: Anglo–Indian invasion of Mesopotamia

24–25 December
: Unofficial Christmas truce on the Western Front

1915

19 January
: First German zeppelin raid on Great Britain

19 February
: The Dardanelles Campaign begins

10–13 March
: Battle of Neuve Chapelle

22 April
: The Second Battle of Ypres begins. First use of poison gas

24 April
: Alleged start of the Armenian Genocide

25 April
: Battle of Gallipoli begins

7 May
: The British ocean liner RMS
Lusitania
is sunk by a German U-boat

8 May
: Nicaragua declares war on Germany

23 May
: Italy enters war on the side of the Allies

25 May
: British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, forms a coalition government

31 May
: First German zeppelin raid on London

9 July
: German surrender in South West Africa

6 August
: New Allied offensive in Gallipoli from Sulva Bay

5 September
: Tsar Nicholas II takes personal command of Russia’s armies

25 September
: British and Commonwealth forces capture Kut in Mesopotamia; Battle of Loos begins

6 October
: Central Powers, including Bulgaria, invade Serbia

9 October
: An Allied force lands at Salonika in Greece

12 October
: British nurse, Edith Cavell, is executed

14 October
: Bulgaria declares war on Serbia

15 October
: Belgrade falls to the Austrian–Hungarians

27 November
Defeated Serbian army evacuated to Corfu

7 December
: Siege of Kut begins

19 December
: Sir Douglas Haig replaces Sir John French as British commander-in-chief

1916

8–9 January
: British and Commonwealth forces evacuate Gallipoli

27 January
: Britain introduces conscription

21 February
: Battle of Verdun begins

9 March
: Germany declares war on Portugal

24 April
: Easter Uprising in Ireland

29 April
: The British surrender at Kut, finishing a 147-day siege

16 May
: Sykes–Picot Agreement proposes post-war division of Ottoman territory

31 May
: The Battle of Jutland begins

4 June
: The Russian Brusilov Offensive begins

5 June
: Death of Lord Kitchener by drowning

18 June
Last German forces in Cameroon surrender

1 July
: The Battle of the Somme begins

27 August
: Romania enters the war on the Allies’ side

29 August
: Erich von Falkenhayn is replaced as Chief of Staff by Hindenburg and Ludendorff

15 September
: The British introduce the tank during the Battle of the Somme

18 November
: End of the Battle of the Somme

7 December
: David Lloyd George replaces Herbert Asquith as British prime minister

12 December
: Richard Nivelle appointed commander-in-chief of French forces

1917

19 January
: Britain intercepts and deciphers German secret Zimmerman Telegram sent to Mexico

31 January
: Germany announces unrestricted submarine warfare

24 February
: British forces recapture Kut

8 March
: First Russian Revolution

11 March
: British enter Baghdad

15 March
: Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, abdicates

6 April
: United States declares war on Germany

9 April
: Start of the Nivelle Offensive; Battle of Vimy Ridge begins

5 May
: Philippe Pétain replaces Nivelle as French commander in chief

27 May
: Beginning of the French Mutiny

7 June
: British capture the Messines Ridge

25 June
: First US troops arrive in France

1 July
: Beginning of the Kerensky Offensive

17 July
: British Royal Family changes name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor

31 July
: Third Battle of Ypres (also known as Passchendaele) begins

3 September
: German forces capture Riga

15 October
: Execution of Mata Hari

24 October
: Austrian–Hungarians defeat Italians at the Battle of Caporetto

2 November
: Balfour Declaration proposes settlement of Jews within Palestine

7 November
: The Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian provisional government

19 November
: Clemenceau appointed French prime minister

20 November
: Battle of Cambrai

11 December
: British capture Jerusalem

16 December
: Russia and Germany sign armistice

1918

8 January
: US President, Woodrow Wilson, presents his Fourteen Points

3 March
: Russia and Germany sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

21 March
: Germany launches the Spring Offensive

26 March
: French general, Ferdinand Foch, is elevated to ‘Allied Supreme Commander of the Western Front’

1 April
: Royal Air Force is founded

12 April
: Haig issues his ‘Back to the Walls’ directive

21 April
: German flying ace, Baron Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron), is shot down and killed

1 June
: Battle of Belleau Wood begins

15 June
: Italians halt Austrians at the Battle of River Piave

15 July
: The Second Battle of the Marne begins

17 July
: Tsar Nicholas II and family are executed

8 August
: Start of the Allies’ Hundred Days Offensive

27 September
: British breach the Hindenburg line

29 September
: Bulgaria surrenders

1 October
: British capture Damascus

3 October
: Prince Maximilian of Baden appointed Chancellor of Germany

24 October
: Austrian–Hungarian army destroyed by Italians at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto

26 October
: Ludendorff dismissed

28 October
: Czechoslovakia declares independence from the Habsburg Empire

29 October
: Kiel mutiny; Foundation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed Yugoslavia in 1929

30 October
: Turkey signs armistice

31 October
Hungary declares independence from the Habsburg Empire

3 November
: Austria and Italy sign armistice

9 November
: German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, abdicates and flees Germany

11 November
: Germany signs armistice. Fighting ceases at 11 a.m.

1919

18 January
: Paris Peace Conference opens

6 February
: Weimar Republic founded

28 June
: The Treaty of Versailles officially ends the First World War

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Published by Harper
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in 2012

Epub Edition 2012 ISBN: 978-0-00-748515-4

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