Gender:
Unknown
The unknown Australian soldier whose body lies in the Australian War Memorial. The original unknown soldier was entombed in Westminster Abbey, London on 11 November 1920, two days after being brought from France. His body was selected by General Wyatt from four who had been recovered from the British battlefields of Somme, Aisne, Arras and Ypres. The Unknown soldier was assumed to have been British, but he could have been Canadian, New Zealander, or Australian, he was a representation of all young men who were killed during World War 1. On the same date of his entombment an unknown French soldier was buried under the Arc de Triomphe, and several other allied nations also entombed unknown soldiers of their own.
It was not until 1993 that an Unknown Australian soldier was brought home to Australia, his body was recovered from Adelaide Cemetery near Villers-Bretonneux in France. the Unknown Australian Soldier was interred, with bayonet, a sprig of wattle in a Tasmanian blackwood coffin, and scattered with soil from the Pozieres battlefield in the Hall of Memory at the War Memorial on 11 November 1993. (Source: Australian War Memorial website)
