Day: August 8, 2025

The sheer horror and bleakness of trench warfare is unrivalled. The humanitarian toll of the First World War, which began in August 111 years ago, is staggering, with 10 million military deaths, close to 7 million civilian deaths, and 21 million military personnel wounded. On July 1, 1916, the Battle of the Somme saw the deadliest day in British military history to date, with 57,000 casualties, including 19,240 dead. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission files reveal that 526,816 British and Commonwealth soldiers of WWI have no known resting place. Tragically, 338,955 have never been buried, and 187,861 have unidentified graves. It is hard to fathom the scale of devastation and brutality that could render half a million families bereaved without even a tangible location in which to mourn their dearly departed. How did half a million men die in service of their country, with no known final resting place? What spurred the idea of a single tomb to commemorate these men? 

These are the questions John Nichol endeavors to answer in his new book The Unknown Warrior: A Personal Journey of Discovery and Remembrance. The bestselling author weaves archival research, diaries, and interviews with descendants and military experts to present a moving historical account that both haunts and edifies. A veteran who served in the Royal Air Force for fifteen years, Nichol is all too familiar with the complexities and camaraderie of war. He was taken prisoner in the Gulf War, and his highly publicized captivity became one of the most enduring images of the conflict. In this new book, Nichol quantum leaps between the past and the present to commemorate the fallen. 

At High Wood

If one single moment was emblematic of the loss of the Great War, it was surely there on the first day at the Somme, “when thousands of young men leapt gamely from their trenches, only to discover that woolen uniforms offer precious little protection against machine-gun bullets.” It was a cruel day in which one man was killed every 4.4 seconds. Two weeks later, a combined British-Indian force armed with lances charged into the jaws of a heavily armed, fortified German position equipped with machine guns. The writer explains that early in the Somme, the Allies had developed a strategy referred to as “creeping barrage.” A wall of exploding shells which moved slowly over enemy positions as infantry followed closely behind, with the hope being that any remaining enemy combatants would be forced to stay under cover as Allied soldiers advanced upon them. 

Nichol offers glimpses of the lives of some of the fallen. Bert Bradley with his pipe, young Alec Reader awaiting his release papers, and Sidney Wheater, the hockey player from Scarborough, all died at High Wood. A few hours later, Raymond Asquith, son of the Prime Minister, was shot while leading his men in an attack. In Ginchy, Harry Farlam from Derbyshire, who was so proud to be a Corporal, was killed the next day. Nichol cites the Duke of Wellington’s 1815 remark after Waterloo, “Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.” At High Wood today, it is estimated that 8,000 nameless soldiers from both sides still lie under the soil. “Many of the dead, never recovered and offered a permanent place to rest, still lie in the earth beneath my feet. So many Unknown Warriors. So many ghosts.”

Chaplain David Railton carried his personal Union Jack on the battlefield in France, taking great care of it. “The flag was a stirring symbol of home, of ‘Dear Old England’, as he put it. It brought a flash of colour to the muted greys and khakis of their dun-coloured surroundings. And it was a Christian symbol, too: a blood-red cross which offered, perhaps, the possibility of resurrection for those upon whom it was softly laid.” When a fresh corpse was deposited, the Padre would cover it with his flag and say a few prayers. He would do his best to identify the body and make a note of the burial location. By November 1916, the combined casualties of the British Empire, the French, and the Germans were in excess of one million, and many families had no closure. 

Fabian Ware, a newspaper editor and educator, thought deeply about the fate of the unidentified dead and their resting places in France. With colleagues, he started an operation comprising sixteen ambulances, a field hospital, touring cars, well-crafted crosses with inscriptions, and tarred bases to prevent rotting. Called the “Graves Registration Commission” (GRC), they were officially recognized by the War Office. Ware worked to establish general principles for burying and memorializing the dead after the war, and what followed was the establishment of the Imperial War Graves Commission, with the Prince of Wales as its president. Writer Rudyard Kipling, who had lost his eighteen-year-old son John in the Battle of Loos in 1915, was appointed literary advisor. It was Kipling who coined the majority of the phrases carved in cemeteries and gardens, and the phrase that is on the white headstones of all the Unknown Warriors: “A Soldier of the Great War. Known unto God.” Famed architect Sir Edwin Lutyens would design a majority of war memorials, including the Cenotaph. 

The Chosen One 

Railton understood the nation needed closure, healing, and a symbol to represent the devastating loss. Only 32 out of 16,000 British villages had all their men return alive from the war. He proposed that an unknown warrior be interred at Westminster Abbey, and wrote to its dean, the Right Reverend Bishop Ryle. The dean had the ear of both the King and the Prime Minister, and if anyone could get this sanctioned, it was he. Ryle replied three days later: “The suggestion of commemorating the Unknown Dead has indeed been made in different quarters. But your suggestion strikes me as the best I have received. If I could obtain the War Office permission, I think I could carry out the rest of the proposal—the interment, etc. And the idea occurs to me that it would be appropriate as a wonderful way of commemorating the Armistice.” 

Grieving mothers needed to believe the Unknown Warrior could be their precious son; widows had to hope he could be their beloved husband; and children had to be given faith that he could be their dear father. Thus, it was essential that the identity of the chosen Warrior remain unknown. All involved were sworn to secrecy and given specific instructions for the selection process. Four bodies were to be chosen. The whereabouts of the three “unused” bodies were to be sacrosanct. The body had to be a British soldier chosen from each of the big battle areas: Aisne, Somme, Arras, and Ypres. The bodies were to be brought to the headquarters at St Pol and placed in the Chapel on November 8, 1920. The parties bringing the bodies were to swiftly return to their areas. The final chosen Warrior would lie in a sixteenth-century-inspired English oak casket.

The final chosen Warrior was transported by ambulance to Boulogne on the coast under military escort, along with six barrels of French soil. Soldiers, both British and French, and a plethora of photographers lined the roads approaching the port, eager to see the Unknown Warrior’s cortège. Nichol explains, “A bearer party of British and dominion soldiers was waiting to carry the Union Jack-wrapped coffin up to the Château’s library. The men had been carefully selected to represent all branches of the army: the Royal Army Service Corps, the Royal Engineers, the Royal Garrison Artillery, the Australian Light Horse, the Canadian Infantry, the 21st London Regiment, the Machine Gun Corps and the Royal Army Medical Corps.”

That night would be the only time in which the Warrior was not under the protection of British troops. The “poilus” from the French 8th Regiment were chosen to guard him, in recognition of their valor in battle and as recent recipients of the Légion d’Honneur en masse. “At 10:30AM, all the bells of Boulogne began to toll, and after a blazing salute from the trumpets of the French cavalry, the great bass drums of the massed band began to thump out the sombre rhythm of Chopin’s marche funèbre (funeral march).” France had lost 1.3 million men in the war, and Maréchal Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander, well understood the intense human suffering. He unexpectedly travelled to the procession on his own volition and marched alongside General Macdonogh behind the Unknown Warrior. The Warrior set sail on the HMS Verdun, finally on his way home. He arrived on British soil to the chords of “Land of Hope and Glory,” then travelled by train to London Victoria’s station and onwards to his final resting place at Westminster. The French Unknown Warrior would begin his journey to Paris, where he was honored the following day as his brother-in-arms was being interred. 

A Place of Remembrance 

The Unknown Warrior’s parade began at Victoria Station, passed Constitution Hill and The Mall, stopped at the unveiling of the Cenotaph, and moved onwards to the abbey, where 20,000 applications had been received for around 1,600 places. Newspapers had come across the plea of a young boy who ended his letter with, “The man in the coffin might be my daddy.” A sentiment shared by many. Thanks to Queen Mary, wife of King George V, some places had been reserved for widows who joined dignitaries from across the Empire, including many Victoria Cross recipients, bestowing a very different honor as the Warrior’s peers. The Warrior would not be weaponless in the afterlife and was interred with an iron shield and Charles ffoulkes’ crusader’s sword. A writer for the Yorkshire Post captured the nation’s mood, “But never have I known any feeling comparable to that of today as I gazed on the flag-covered coffin that enshrined the sublime anonymity of a fallen soldier, from that to the simple but all-moving symbolism of the Cenotaph, and from both to the living, palpitating, pathetic multitude of mothers and wives stricken by the fell blow of war in these recent years. ” 

In the present, Nichol admires the ornate Unknown Warrior’s American Congressional Medal of Honor, affixed to a pillar near the Warrior’s tomb. It is embossed with the single word “VALOR.” More than 60 countries now have their own tomb for their own valiant unknown. Nichol shares that he and fellow Gulf War POWs gather every year on the anniversary of their release. They observe a moment’s silence before dinner and toast to absent friends who did not come home. 

Nichol speaks of the similarities between Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s final journey and that of the Unknown Warrior. The nation mourned for both, with a deep and profound sorrow permeating all quarters. Pride was also thematic in both, “Pride in Her Majesty’s life and her legacy; pride in our Armed Forces and the role they played; pride, above all, in the feeling of what it is to be British.” After laying flowers at Buckingham Palace, I too was a proud Brit who undertook the arduous lying-in-state pilgrimage to pay respects to our Late Queen. It was the mother of all British queues, thirteen hours of walking through the bitter London cold beside the River Thames. We diligently journeyed past iconic landmarks, eventually reaching the Palace of Westminster at 2am. 

Yet as Nichol states, differences exist, too. “Instead of the crown, orb and sceptre lay the workaday steel helmet, webbing and bayonet of a soldier.” Her Majesty was by no means anonymous. With the Warrior, he was everyone, yet no one, yet someone. As written in a personal narrative after the Warrior’s funeral, “The most terrible words in all writing used to be There they crucified Him. But there is a sadder sentence now—I know not where they have laid Him. Surely ‘missing’ is the cruelest word in the language.” The Unknown Warrior was someone’s missing—and there were hundreds of thousands like him. 

I have worn a poppy to remember the fallen and their sacrifices every November since primary school. Blazer or Cashmere coat, made of paper or enamel, ‘tis there on my lapel. It is a reminder to myself and others of what John McCrae so poignantly wrote in the first stanza of his poem, which inspired the symbol: 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. 

There are rows upon rows of those who loved and were loved. Who, like us, indeed felt dawn and beheld a sunset glow. The century has turned, man’s propensity for conflict has not abated, and peace still comes at a cost. As the passage of time takes us further away from the Great War, Nichol reminds us of our duty to remember—lest we forget.

Despite being written 180 years ago, Richard Wagner’s opera, Tannhäuser, speaks to contested aspects of freedom in modern-day life. It reflects the earlier conception of freedom that historian Sophia Rosenfeld documents in her new book, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life. Heinrich Tannhäuser moves from license to liberty in the opera. The opera illustrates Rosenfeld’s argument that freedom traditionally meant freedom from bondage to disordered desire; it distinguished between liberty and licentiousness. This, in contrast to the dramatic twentieth-century inversion, in which moral license, rather than being an antonym of freedom, becomes a synonym for freedom.

Contrary to the way the opera’s drama is typically framed today, as revolving around Tannhäuser’s choice between profane and sacred love, the first words Henrich utters—even the first notes of the overture—make clear that Tannhäuser seeks the freedom of beatitude. In Act 1, Heinrich, enslaved by his sexual passion to the goddess Venus—today we would call Heinrich a sex addict—describes the opera’s dramatic trajectory (translation by Burton Fisher),

If I remain with you, I can only be a slave.
It is freedom that I long for: freedom, freedom, for which I thirst;
I will struggle and fight,
even if destruction and death await me:
therefore I must flee your kingdom.
Oh queen, goddess, let me go!

The drama in Tannhäuser does not revolve around a never-ending dialectical struggle between the Apolline and the Dionysiac, tempting though it may be to frame the drama as a choice for Heinrich between Venus (Dionysiac) and the chaste Elisabeth (Apolline).

From beginning to end, albeit with fits and starts, the opera revolves around Heinrich’s pilgrimage to free himself from his bondage, his addiction, as he seeks to attain the beatific vision. Ultimately, however, only death can free him from his bondage. It is not the death of romantic extinction, however, it is a death unto life. The dramatic movement arises from how those around him, his ostensible friends and allies, hinder and divert him from his pilgrimage, and from how others help him to free himself, even at great cost to themselves.

To be sure, I accept that Wagner’s opera embodies and reflects Romantic-era themes. Yet modern commentary often draws too sharp a line between Romanticism and Christianity. Thematic currents certainly existed in Romantic art that reflected heterodox, immanentistic religious sentiments. But there also existed currents in the movement more congenial to Christianity.

One does not stretch to recognize a Christian theme in an opera in which the libretto provides “To Thee do I journey, Lord Jesus Christ, for Thou art the pilgrims’ hope.” And more diffusely, the common German Romantic trope of the redemptive female, I suggest, draws on the Biblical currents of traditional Christendom in which the Church holds a distinctively feminine identity as the bride of Christ.

That said, the opera shouldn’t be baptized; Wagner himself prevents that. Nonetheless, I think we can interrogate the opera for Christian themes, although interrogate it for themes that challenge today’s all-too comfortable Christianity as much as interrogate it for themes that challenge today’s antinomian conception of freedom.

The Chiastic Structure of Tannhäuser

The opera offers a basic chiastic structure.

The chiastic structure highlights three points about the opera. First, the opera is all about Tannhäuser’s pilgrimage toward beatific vision; it is not about a choice between profane and sacred love. This is clear musically as well as textually. The very first notes of the overture are those from the Pilgrims’ Chorus. The very last notes of the opera are those of Pilgrim’s Chorus. (Some versions end with a trebled “hallelujah,” but those are no more than sung exclamation marks.)

There is a musical shift, however, that emphasizes the concluding words of the libretto reporting Tannhäuser’s redemption: In both the overture and when the Chorus is sung by the pilgrims returning from Rome without Tannhäuser, the meter for the Pilgrim’s Chorus is 3/4. In the opera’s concluding use of the Chorus, it is in the measured and emphatic 3/2 meter.

The pilgrims’ leitmotif frames both the start and conclusion of the opera. Doing so musically links Heinrich’s fate with that of the pilgrims returning from Rome when they sing the Chorus at length in Act 3, “I lay my pilgrim’s staff to rest, because, faithful to God, I completed my pilgrimage!”

The music articulates the same outcome for Heinrich, the change in the meter underscoring the dramatic concluding words of the libretto, sung with emphasis by pilgrims and others on stage, “The salvation of grace is the penitents reward, now he [Tannhäuser] attains the peace of the blessed!” This is the end toward which the opera moves from literally the first notes of the overture.

Secondly, when Tannhäuser departs Venusberg, his pilgrimage not only takes him away from Venusberg, it also takes him away from Wartburg, and Elisabeth, as well. This is why the opera does not circle around Heinrich’s choice between Venus and Elisabeth: Heinrich does not leave Venusberg in order to return to Elisabeth and Wartburg. His diversion to Wartburg and Elisabeth represents a relapse; this diversion threatens his soul.

Finally, Elisabeth’s intercession for Heinrich is the pivot around which the chiasm inverts. The pivot, however, reflects a point of discontinuity for Elisabeth, a significant moment of change. Elisabeth was basically a besotted schoolgirl before growing up spiritually in answer to Tannhäuser’s crisis.

At the pivot, Elisabeth recognizes that in returning to Wartburg, Tannhäuser has placed his soul at risk. Contrary to the view that Elisabeth does little more than fulfill the Romantic-era trope of the sacrificial virgin, Elisabeth matures more than any other character during the course of the opera (including Tannhäuser). After the chiastic pivot, she reflects the deep love of Christ for his people, “Greater love has no one than that he lay down his life for his friends.”

The Dramatic Movement in the Opera

Act 1 opens with Tannhäuser, a medieval German minnesinger (akin to a troubadour) in intimate repose with the goddess Venus in her grotto in Venusberg. Satyrs, fauns, naiads, sirens, nymphs, and others cavort around the couple. (Some versions of the opera open with a longer orgiastic ballet.)

Tannhäuser is jarred awake by the “joyous peals” of church bells he hears in a dream. Moved by the beatific call, Tannhäuser presses Venus to release him from his bondage to her. Initially diplomatic in how he frames his request, Tannhäuser praises the goddess before repeatedly asking to be set free. Venus pushes back, declining his request. The disagreement escalates, musically as well as textually.

Tannhäuser comes clean with his change of heart, “Goddess of pleasure and delight, no! Oh, I shall not find peace and repose in your embrace! My salvation lies in Mary!” (Mary is a synecdoche for heaven and God’s presence.)

Venus and Venusberg disappear immediately; Tannhäuser finds himself in front of a shrine to Mary outside of Wartburg.

Before Tannhäuser is able to continue his pilgrimage, however, he meets a group of minnesingers from Wartburg whom he used to know. While acknowledging them, he begs them to allow him to continue his pilgrimage away from Wartburg. Not recognizing the desperate nature of Tannhäuser’s pilgrimage, they press him repeatedly to join them again and return to the castle. Tannhäuser resists each request until Wolfram, a previously close friend, entices Tannhäuser with the prospect of renewing his association with Elisabeth. The temptation proves too much; Tannhäuser capitulates. Now diverted from his pilgrimage, he returns with them to the castle, and to Elisabeth.

In Act 2, the community gathers with the minnesingers to witness their competition over who can improvise the best song. The Landgrave (the aristocratic lord) provides the topic of the competition: the minnesingers must improvise a song describing “the true essence of love.”

The first two minnesingers improvise insipid songs of drippy platitudes; Tannhäuser scorns their songs (as they deserve). But when it comes to Tannhäuser, that his return to Wartburg represents a relapse into bondage becomes clear: he sings a tribute to Venus and profane love.

His song scandalizes the assembly. The other minnesingers, outraged, advocate Tannhäuser’s exile, even death. While Elisabeth is shocked as well, she alone recognizes that Tannhäuser has returned to Wartburg morally wounded and disordered. Elisabeth intercedes for Tannhäuser, saving him from the mob.

This is the pivot in the chiasm.

Elisabeth’s intercession allows Tannhäuser finally to proceed with his pilgrimage, heading to Rome with other pilgrims to receive absolution from the pope.

In the final act, Elisabeth waits for Tannhäuser’s return from Rome. When the other pilgrims return, Tannhäuser is not with them. She recognizes that Tannhäuser is again spiritually lost. In response, Elisabeth fulfills the terms of prayer she made at the chiastic pivot, giving her life that she might draw even nearer to the heavenly altar to continue praying for Tannhäuser. She departs to die.

Tannhäuser subsequently arrives back in Wartburg. He is lost: The pope rejected his plea for forgiveness, telling him that because he had “sojourned in the Venusberg, from now henceforth, you are eternally damned.” The pope tells Tannhäuser that, as his (the pope’s) wooden staff no longer blossoms, “deliverance can never blossom for you.”

Without hope of redemption now, Tannhäuser braces himself to return to Venus. “I have lost my salvation, now let the pleasures of hell be mine.” Venus appears before him to receive him back, “Now be forever mine!” This return is its own judgment for Heinrich.

Before Tannhäuser departs, however, the minnesingers arrive carrying Elisabeth’s corpse. Wolfram tells Tannhäuser, “Your angel prays for you at God’s throne. She has been heard, Heinrich, you are saved!” Tannhäuser collapses before Elisabeth’s body and cries out, “Holy Elisabeth, pray for me!” And dies.

Another set of pilgrims arrives, returning from Rome. They return, however, with news of a miracle: the pope’s staff has blossomed. Heaven has overruled the pope; the miracle shows that redemption has “blossomed afresh” for Tannhäuser, and he has “attained the peace of the blessed.”

Elisabeth’s Maturation in the Opera

Commentary typically portrays Elisabeth as a unidimensional, “saintly” Elisabeth. The Romantic trope of the redemptive woman. Elisabeth does become saintly. But she’s an earthly-minded girl at the start of Act 2.

Elisabeth fell hard for Tannhäuser before he spurned her for Venus. In response to the hurt and embarrassment, Elisabeth petulantly withdrew from the activities at Wartburg. On hearing of Tannhäuser’s return, her heart flutters, “How strongly my heart jumps.” She sings, “I have been awakened to new life.”

When Tannhäuser subsequently sings paeans to Venus at the music competition, Elisabeth is as shocked as the others, perhaps even more so. Critically, however, she recognizes, as the others do not, that Tannhäuser is struggling to break free of spiritual bondage. Helping Tannhäuser break free of this slavery requires her intercession, an intercession requiring not only that she give up her own hopes for happiness with Tannhäuser as a couple, but that she sacrifice her earthly life for his eternal life.

At the chiastic pivot, Elisabeth recognizes that Tannhäuser’s diversion to Wartburg—and to her—meant a spiritual relapse for Tannhäuser, that he is once again in the demon’s thrall. Elisabeth recognizes this, and makes a fateful commitment to exchange her earthly life to secure Tannhäuser’s eternal life:

May the spirit of belief be granted him, just as the Savior once suffered. … Let him journey to Thee, Thou God of clemency and grace. … Forgive him, who has fallen, forgive the guilt of his sin. I will pray for him. May my life be prayer; grant that he may see Thy light, before he is lost in darkness. In joyful fright, let a sacrifice be dedicated to Thee. Take, oh, take my life: I no longer call it mine.

Elisabeth offering her life as a sacrifice likely strikes the ears of most modern American Christians as heterodox. Jesus, after all, is the sacrifice for the sins of people.

But Elisabeth’s offer is not quite as heterodox as it may initially appear. First, Elisabeth herself frames her request in the context of Jesus’s sacrifice, “just as the Savior once suffered.” And recall that Jesus enjoins his followers to “take up their cross,” the instrument of crucifixion, to follow him. Similarly, Peter writes that Jesus’s suffering provides Christians “an example, so that you may follow in his steps.” Paul refers to his suffering “completing what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of the body which is the church.” The Apostle even suggests he would be willing to be accursed so that he might save others.

None of this impugns the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Rather, traditional Christian theology makes a distinction between Christ’s unique propitiatory sacrifice and his followers’ “eucharistic sacrifices”—sacrifices of thanksgiving—for God and each other.

As with Abraham’s willingness to offer Isaac, sacrifice is a means by which the faithful can turn cheap talk into credible talk. Elisabeth offers her life to God to underscore the earnest authenticity of her prayer for his eternal good.

So, too, Elisabeth’s sacrifice of her life for Tannhäuser is not as alien to traditional Christian beliefs as it may seem at first. Elisabeth’s offer in this opera is not a Romantic gesture to non-being. While not emphasized much today, Christian baptism provides a proleptic death (and resurrection), a death that kills off the sin nature, freeing the person into life. This death liberates from sin.

Elisabeth and Tannhäuser do not look to death as extinction, but as release into the freedom of divine beatitude. Here, too, they reflect a deep Biblical longing. Paul, for example, longs for the beatitude that results from death, for “to depart and be with Christ is very much better.” This is ultimately the hope of liberation for Tannhäuser, why he sings of his death as part of his liberation from Venus.

This liberation is the opera’s story, from the first notes of the overture to the last notes the pilgrims sing. It is the move from licentiousness to the freedom of beatitude. Without suggesting that Wagner intended it to communicate a Christian message, or that it does not have its share of heterodox Romantic moments, the opera challenges modern conceptions of what freedom is, challenges easy-going assumptions among Christians of what it means to love one another, and provides a dramatic, and moving, display of what it takes to be freed from bondage to sin.