On Armistice Day, 11 November 2004, an unknown warrior was buried in front of the Hall of Memories at the National War Memorial in Wellington. The New Zealand soldier had been disinterred from his grave in France. He lay in state in Parliament before being conveyed to the newly constructed tomb. Thousands of people paid their respects at Parliament or lined the streets as the funeral procession passed by.
The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior symbolises the New Zealanders who have not come home after fighting overseas. Nearly 30,000 New Zealand military personnel have died during wartime, and almost one-third of them have no known grave.
On 11 November 1920, the second anniversary of Armistice Day, the remains of an unknown soldier were reinterred in Westminster Abbey in London as a memorial to personnel from the British Empire who died during the First World War. A suggestion for a similar New Zealand memorial was not taken up at the time. When the idea was revived in 1999, it gained the support of the government. In 2002 the Commonwealth War Graves Commission agreed to the repatriation of the remains of a New Zealand soldier killed in the First World War.
The National War Memorial was seen as the most appropriate place for the tomb, which would be outside to enable public access. The contract to design and construct the tomb was awarded to Wellington’s Kingsley Baird and his design team. In November 2004 ceremonies were held in France and New Zealand to repatriate and inter New Zealand’s Unknown Warrior.
The Unknown Warrior died on the Western Front, as did most of the more than 18,000 New Zealanders who died in the First World War. He was buried at Caterpillar Valley Cemetery near Longueval, in the region where the Battle of the Somme was fought in 1916. The soldier’s name, age, rank, race and religion are unknown. His white headstone carried the inscription, ‘A New Zealand soldier of the Great War known unto God’.