Ct has been more than 100 years since the Unknown Soldier found refuge at the foot of the Congress Column in Brussels. But what is its story?
The story of the Unknown Soldier begins at the beginning of November 1922, when the remains of five unidentified soldiers who fell during the Great War were exhumed from cemeteries each located in a region of the country particularly marked by combat such as Liège, Namur, Antwerp and the two Flanders, recalls the WHI.
During a ceremony which took place in Bruges on November 10, 1922, Reinold Haesebrouck from Bruges, a war blind man, designated which of the five coffins would be officially attributed to the Unknown Soldier. The next day, this coffin was transported by train to Brussels and buried at the foot of the Congress column, in the presence of King Albert I. The same day, the four other unknown soldiers were buried during a ceremony which took place at the central cemetery of Bruges, in Assebroek/Steenbrugge.
The tomb of the Unknown Soldier has a symbolic character: it contains the remains of a soldier who died in combat, whose identity is unknown. In this way, he represents all the deaths of the conflict. Near the engraved slab, on the tomb, an “eternal” flame burns, constantly fed.
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