Edward lee, p.3
Daisy and the Unknown Warrior, page 3
It sounds simple and wonderful, but it took David Railton a long time to get others to agree that it was a good idea. Early in the war the government decided not to bring back the dead from the battlefields even if they knew who they were, because there were just too many. The government thought that so many burials at home would make people turn against the war, and they wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.
Reverend Railton kept trying, though, and in the end he succeeded. The burial of the Unknown Warrior on 11 November 1920 was a huge event. That was because the whole country was deeply scarred by what had happened in the war. Nearly 900,000 soldiers from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland – all of which was in the United Kingdom at the time – had been killed, leaving their families to grieve for them.
Of course, soldiers from the British Empire fought too, and men from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, the West Indies and many other colonies died. The idea for the two-minute silence came from South Africa. It was something that had been done in Cape Town in 1918 to help people remember the dead. King George V heard about it in 1919 and said it should be done in Britain.
The First World War changed this country for ever. After the war, people were more critical of governments and religion – how could God have let such terrible things happen? Women who had worked wanted to do so again, and to have the vote.
The song that Daisy was named after was composed in 1892 by an English songwriter called Harry Dacre. It was hugely successful before the First World War, and lots of girls were called Daisy because of it – including my grandmother, who was born in 1905.
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Tony Bradman, Daisy and the Unknown Warrior
