THE ORGANISERS of events associated with Remembrance this November have done the nation proud.

Reporting the centenary of the burial of The Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, some referred to The Unknown Soldier but Warrior is right, not soldier.

For the Unknown Warrior may be a Royal Navy sailor or a Royal Marine and, whoever he was, his body was brought across the English Channel, most appropriately, in the destroyer HMS Verdun.

Sailors and Royal Marines not required for service at sea in the first years of the Great War formed the Royal Naval Division, fighting in Belgium and Gallipoli. In 1916, what was left of the RND helped form the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division which, under Army command, fought on the Western Front.

Sailors fighting ashore was not new.

A Naval Brigade was at Bunker Hill in 1774 and brigades were common in the nineteenth century, notably in the Crimean, Zulu and Boer Wars and the Boxer Rebellion.

Sub Lieutenant A P Herbert was a naval officer with the 63rd.

Later an MP, he penned an amusing poem about General Shute’s disapprobation of the Royal Naval Division – its naval humour perhaps too risqué for modern times.

Lester May (Lieutenant Commander, Royal Navy – retired)

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