Some time ago now 5 POWs escaped from: HARPERLEY POW CAMP – The Great Escape – (GCRMAH).
They missed the train and were hiding in the wood near the Railway Station (GCT462).
These prisoners subsequently escaped from the wood and appeared to be Missing/Lost in Action.
However, there has been a recent sighting of THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER (see related web page above) and he needs a ‘Safe House’ to return to in Northern England
Will you bring him home? We've left him a map and a tenner 
to help him on his way.
THE HISTORY
The Tomb of an Unknown Soldier from World War One refers to a monument in dedication to the services of an unknown soldier and to the common memories of all soldiers killed in any war. Such tombs can be found in many nations and are usually high-profile national monuments. Throughout history, many soldiers have died in wars with their remains being unidentified.
In 1920, as part of ceremonies in Britain to commemorate the dead of World War One, there was a proposal that the body of an unknown soldier, sailor or airman lying in an unmarked grave abroad be returned to England for burial in Westminster Abbey. This was to symbolise all those who had died for their country, but whose place of death was not known, or whose body remained unidentified.
It is thought that the idea came from the reverend David Railton, who had seen a grave marked by a rough cross while serving in the British Army as a chaplain on the Western Front, which bore the pencil-written legend "An Unknown British Soldier". He suggested (together with the French in their own country) the creation at a national level of a symbolic funeral and burial of an "Unknown Warrior" proposing that the grave should in Britain include a national monument – The Cenotaph.
There are a number of versions of how the selection of an ‘Unknown Soldier’ was made, but it is generally agreed that between four and six bodies were exhumed from each of the main British battle areas on the Western Front on the night of 7 November 1920, and brought to the chapel at St Pol, in northern France. Each was covered with a Union Jack. The commander of British troops in France and Flanders, Brigadier General LJ Wyatt, picked one. This was placed in a coffin which was taken to Boulogne, where it was transported to Dover on HMS Verdun. The other bodies were reburied.
For the funeral of the Unknown Soldier a tree was felled from the grounds of Hampton Palace, was made into a coffin of English Oak and fixed atop a 16th century crusaders sword, taken from the Tower of London. In England a King and Country wait to honour him. A cenotaph is unveiled to him and all the glorious dead. On the morning of 11 November 1920 - the second anniversary of the armistice that ended World War One - the body of the Unknown Soldier was drawn in a procession to the Cenotaph. This new war memorial on Whitehall was then unveiled by George V. At 11 o'clock there was a two-minute silence, and the body was then taken to Westminster Abbey where it was buried at the west end of the nave, simultaneously with a similar interment of a French unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in France.
To the surprise of the organisers, in the week after the burial an estimated 1,250,000 people visited the abbey, and the site is now one of the most visited war graves in the world.
'They buried him among the kings, because he had done good towards God and towards his house'.
Other nations have followed the practice of creating a symbolic Tomb of an Unknown Soldier – creating and also representing the fallen of other wars in their history.
AFTER THE WAR