On the morning of the 10th November the Unknown Warrior began its departure from France, where Marshal Foch saluted the casket at the Boulogne quayside before it was carried up the gangway of the destroyer, HMS Verdun, chosen because it bore the name of France’s most famous battle. The Verdun slipped anchor just before noon and was joined by an escort of six battleships. As the flotilla carrying the casket closed on Dover Castle it received a 19-gun Field Marshal’s salute. The body of the Unknown Warrior was carried to Victoria station in London in South Eastern and Chatham Railway General Utility Van No.132, which had previously carried home the bodies of the executed nurse Edith Cavell and mariner Charles Fryatt.
Following the Twenty-Second 