The tomb of the unknown soldier is 100 years old

On November 11, the televisions will undoubtedly be focused on the Pantheon, where the writer Maurice Genevoix will make his entry.

But another ceremony will take place the same day, under the Arc de Triomphe, around the Unknown Soldier - whose "choice" dates back to just a hundred years ago.

As early as 1916, the idea of ​​honoring an unidentified soldier was born.

Initially, we think of a transfer of a body to the Pantheon, before finally moving towards the Arc de triomphe, a location considered more “military”.

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But who to choose to symbolize all these anonymous?

And how to make a choice?

It is the soldier Auguste Thin, hired volunteer in 1919, ward of the Nation and aged 21, who will be in charge of this task, during a ceremony organized in a fiery chapel of Verdun, on November 8, 1920. Under the eye of André Maginot, then Minister of Pensions, and himself mutilated by war, Auguste Thin will stand in front of eight coffins of "unknown" soldiers, exhumed in the eight regions where the fighting took place

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