After World War I (1914-1918), officials of the Allied countries found that the bodies of many soldiers killed in battle could not be identified.

The governments of Belgium, Britain, France, Italy, and the United States decided to honour the memory of these soldiers.

Each government chose a symbolic Unknown Soldier, buried the remains near the national capital, and built a monument in honour of the soldier. Belgium placed its Unknown Soldier in a tomb at the base of the Colonnade of the Congress in Brussels. Britain buried its Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey.

France buried its Unknown Soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and keeps a flame always burning over the grave. Italy's Unknown Soldier lies before the monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a united Italy, in Rome.

The Unknown Soldier of the United States was one of four war dead taken from American cemeteries in France. An American soldier, Sergeant Edward Younger, selected the soldier from these four. The remains were brought to the U.S. Capital to lie in state. On Armistice Day (Nov. 11), 1921, they were buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The tomb, completed in 1931, bears the inscription, "Here rests in honoured glory an American soldier known but to God."

The American Congress later directed that an "Unknown American" from each of three wars -World War II (1939-1945), the Korean War (1950-1953), and the Vietnam War (1957-1975) - be buried beside the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The World War II and Korean War unknowns were buried in marble-capped crypts at the head of the tomb on Memorial Day in 1958. The unknown serviceman of the Vietnam War was buried between them during a Memorial Day ceremony in 1984.

At the time of the ceremony, however, over 2,400 servicemen were still listed as missing. In 1998, DNA tests determined that the Vietnam War unknown was Michael Blassie, an Air Force lieutenant shot down over South Vietnam in 1972. Later that year, the remains of Lieutenant Blassie were moved to a veterans cemetery near St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1993 the Unknown Australian Soldier was brought home from the Adelaide Cemetery near Villers-Bretonneaux in France.

The Unknown Australian Soldier laid in state at King’s Hall in Parliament house and was then interred in the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial on 11 Nov 1993. He was buried in a Tasmanian Blackwood coffin with a slouch hat and a sprig of wattle, and soil from the Pozieres battlefield was scattered in the Tomb.

On 25 May 2000, the remains of an unidentified Canadian soldier who died in the First World War were repatriated from France and buried in a special tomb in front of the National War Memorial in Ottawa.

On May 23rd, a Canadian Forces aircraft flew to France to bring the Unknown Soldier back to Canada. On board was a delegation consisting of a Canadian Forces contingent including a 45-person guard, a bearer party, and a chaplain. The Veterans Affairs contingent contained veterans and civilians, including two representatives of Canadian youth.

On the evening of May 25th, the casket carrying the remains of the Unknown Soldier was transported to Parliament Buildings, where he was placed in the Hall Of Honour.

He laid in state there for three days, until the morning of May 28th, so that Canadians could view the casket and pay their respect.

In the afternoon of May 28th, the Unknown Soldier was transported from Parliament Hill to the National War Memorial on a horse-drawn gun carriage provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The funeral cortege included the Governor General of Canada and Prime Minister of Canada, veterans, Canadian Forces personnel and members of the RCMP.

In a ceremony which aired on national television, the Unknown Soldier was laid to rest in a specially-designed sarcophagus directly in front of the War Memorial.

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