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THE FLAG
The Story of Revd David Railton MC and the
Tomb of the
Unknown Warrior
by Andrew Richards
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 Andrew Richards served in The Life Guards for 23 years. He retired from the Army in 2002 and moved to the United States, where he set up a professional development consulting company, Acorn Leadership, which he ran for two years in Maryland. He co-founded the Atlantic Coast Invitational Rugby Tournament, is a Rugby coach, an instructor in caving, sailing, climbing, mountaineering and kayaking, and has also published two novels.
His latest book, The Flag, to be published in November 2017, and serialised in the Daily Mail, tells the extraordinary story of the Reverend David Railton MC, whose idea it was that the body of an unknown soldier be brought back to Britain and interred in Westminster Abbey. The idea was taken up by the Dean of Westminster, the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, and then The King. On 7th November 1920, six unidentified bodies were exhumed from cemeteries along the Western Front, and at midnight on that day, a senior officer chose the coffin of the ‘Unknown Warrior’. A union flag, given to Railton by his mother, was wrapped around the coffin for the journey to London and, four days later, the Unknown Warrior was buried in Westminster Abbey with all the ceremony that would normally be afforded to a king.
The Flag will be reviewed in the Winter 17/18 edition of The Guards Magazine. A copy can be ordered direct from Casemate Publishing. www.casematepublishing.co.uk. at £20
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