At 11am today a silence was observed across the UK. And at Complete Utilities offices in Maisemore we made certain that we collectively paused work, silenced our phones and closed our laptops. Then for the next two minutes, remembering the fallen from two world wars (and conflicts since) quite rightly took priority over installing fibre, gas, water and power networks.

For us, Armistice Day is made even more poignant because a number of the Complete Utilities team are former members of our armed forces. So as well as remembering our armed forces past and present, we are proud to sit silently and support those ex-forces members who have lost comrades.

The story of The Unknown Warrior

As many as 96 million people died in both World Wars. On the Western Front in France, many thousands of graves from WWI alone are simply marked as ‘Unknown’.

On the evening of November 7th 1920, in strict secrecy, four of those unidentified British bodies were exhumed from temporary battlefield cemeteries at Ypres, Arras, the Asine and the Somme.

None of the soldiers who did the digging were told why and the bodies of the unknown soldiers were taken by field ambulance to GHQ at St-Pol-Sur-ter noise. There the bodies were draped with the union flag and then one of these was selected at random. A French honour guard was selected, and stood by the coffin overnight. In the morning of the 8th (a specially designed coffin made of oak from the grounds of Hampton Court) was brought and this unknown warrior placed inside.

On top was placed a crusaders sword and a shield on which was inscribed 'A British Warrior who fell in the GREAT WAR 1914-1918 for king and country'.

On The 9th of November the unknown warrior was taken by horse drawn carriage through guards of honour and the sound of tolling bells and bugle. There it was saluted by Marechal Foche and loaded onto HMS Vernon bound for Dover..... the coffin stood on the deck covered in wreaths and surrounded by the French honour guard.

On arrival at Dover the unknown warrior was greeted with a 19 gun salute, normally only reserved for field marshals. He then travelled by special train to Victoria Station London where he stayed overnight. Then on the morning of 11 November 1920 - the second anniversary of the armistice that ended World War One - the body of the Unknown Warrior was drawn in a procession to the Cenotaph. This new war memorial on Whitehall, designed by Edwin Lutyens, was then unveiled by George V. At 11 o'clock there was a two-minute silence, and the body was then taken to Westminster Abbey where he was placed in a tomb at the west end of the nave. His grave was filled in using 100 sandbags of earth from the battlefields.

When the Duke of York (later King George VI) married Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyons in the Abbey in 1923 she left her wedding bouquet on the grave as a mark of respect (she had lost a brother during the war) Since then all royal brides married in the Abbey have sent back their bouquets to be laid on the grave.

The idea of the unknown soldier was thought of by a Padre called David Railton who had served at the front during the great war and it was the union flag they used as an altar cloth at the front, that had been draped over the coffin. The intention is that all relatives of the 517,773 combatants whose bodies had not been identified could believe that the unknown warrior could very well be their lost husband, Father, brother or son. To the surprise of the organisers, in the week after the burial an estimated 1,250,000 people visited the abbey and the site is now one of the most visited war graves in the world. The text inscribed on the tomb is taken from the bible (2 Chronicles 24:16): 'They buried him among the kings, because he had done good toward God and toward his house'.

We will always remember them

Tradition is a belief, or a custom that’s been passed down through generations. Over the passage of time these traditions can become diluted or sway from the original tale. But time must be spent to look back and remember the source and where it all began. In doing so, traditions will remain as accurate as possible.

So in 12 months’ time we’ll do all this again. And for two minutes only, we’ll allow remembrance, respect and tradition to stand in the way of delivering our clients’ networks.