Intellect

Authors:  Eleanor Bavidge 
DOI: 10.1386/jwcs.2.2.225_1

Keywords
public memory, private memory, State funeral, Unknown Warrior, Last Veteran, First World War

Abstract
Following ceremonies in other countries, the British MP Iain Duncan Smith proposed in 2006 that a State funeral should be held for the last known First World War British veteran to die. The demand for a large commemorative occasion came predominantly from the general public and politicians rather than from veterans and their families. This article considers the responses to the planned ceremony and is structured around five points of tension: those between public and private discourses, the combatant generation and the nation, the mythologization of the figure of the soldier and the reality of an individual's experiences, the individual body and the fetishization of the body, and finally the individual and the solidarity born of camaraderie. It explores the motivations and ethics behind a proposal that perpetuates the use of the figure of the soldier for public and national ends at the cost of the experience and wishes of the individual.