A letter to Rudyard Kipling

As part of World Letter Writing Day, here is a letter from the IWGC to Rudyard Kipling discussing the inscriptions for the Ypres (Menin Gate) memorial dated 9 October 1923.

The Nobel prize-winning author had been appointed as the IWGC Literary Advisor and was personally invested in the Commission’s work as his own son had been lost in the war.

He determined the famous ‘Known Unto God’ headstone inscription for unidentified casualties, as well as ‘Their Name Liveth For Evermore’ on the Stone of Remembrance. He was described as a man of few, but “extremely pertinent”, words during Commission meetings.

He was a noted 'compulsive doodler’, which can be seen on the following pages as he mulled over ideas for the inscription, ultimately honing the them down to the final words carved into the face of the monument:

To the armies of the British Empire who stood here from 1914 to 1918 and to those of their dead who have no known grave.