Timetable For February Burial of The Unknowns

[Michelle79]

Hi Everyone,

During the Scottish relatives meeting which I attended last week the timetable for the burial of the unknowns in February was discussed and I thought it would be worth putting up on the board.

The timetable has now been finalised and is as follows:

Sun 30th Jan: An initial service will be held to open proceedings but this will not include a burial

Mon 1st Feb: The first burials of the unknowns will be carried out

Mon/Wed/Fri Throughout Feb: 20-25 unknowns will be buried on each of these days until the process is complete (on the

in-between days the teams will be filling the coffins in preparation for the next burial day)

Final Week of Feb: The final burials should take place during this week but this is subject to no weather hold-ups

Both the British and the Australians will be sending burial teams to conduct the burials and these teams will work together during this process. The Australian team will arrive on the 27th of Jan and remain throughout while there will be two British teams. Due to the fact the main regiments involved in the battle have been subsumed into other regiments the initial British team who will jointly conduct the first two weeks of burials with the Australian team will come from The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers who will then hand over to a new team from The Rifles on the 13th of Feb for the remainder of the burials. They are all currently practising in order to make sure everything runs smoothly. There will be a bugler for the ceremonies as well as British and Australian flags inside and a French flag outside all of which will be raised each day. Every soldier will be buried as an unknown with a grave number on the lid of their coffin and a stake with the same number on it beside their burial spot. Any relatives wishing to attend these burials on the Monday, Wednesday or Friday will be given access to them. This timetable is all subject to the weather, however, as 6 inches of snow at that time of year is not uncommon and if weather disruptions lead to the postponement of any of the burials then the process will take longer.

Regards

Michelle