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B-P’s Funeral Procession, Nyeri, Kenya, 1941
He was buried in the Africa he loved with full military honours
accorded to his rank of Lieutenant-General and with a guard
of Boy Scouts European, African, and Asian.

London, April 23, 1947:

DUSK HAD gathered in the nave of Westminster Abbey and the side chapels were dark, when a Royal Duke, at the head of a huge congregation, took his place before the altar. It was the evening of Wednesday, April 23rd, 1947, St. George’s Day — the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, and of the raid on the Zeebrugge. Before the altar stood the Dean, and as the hymn "Lord God of Hosts," borne on voices keen and clear, rose up into the vaulted roof, boys and girls wearing a uniform known throughout the world for nearly four decades, moved slowly forward from the great West Door bearing Colours which they laid in the hands of the Dean, who placed them upon the altar. The Dean addressed them, saying that they had come there to pay honour to the memory of a great man, and to renew promises to remain true to an ideal of duty and service which he had been the first to clothe with words and to teach in every country and in every clime.

When the service was ended, a second procession was formed. It passed round the ambulatory and down the south aisle until it reached the Chapel of St. George. Here upon the floor beneath the Screen was a tablet of stone, covered with the flag of St. George which the Duke removed as trumpeters of the Royal Hussars sounded a fanfare. Upon the stone was written:

TO THE MEMORY OF
ROBERT BADEN-POWELL
CHIEF SCOUT OF THE WORLD
1857-1941

Upon one side of the stone was the badge of the Boy Scouts, the arrow-head to point the true way as it had pointed the way for sailors and navigators from the time of the earliest maps; and on the other the badge of the Girl Guides-the three-leafed clover. The Organ pealed for the last time and died away, and the voices of Lord Rowallan, the Chief Scout of the British Empire and the Commonwealth, and of Finnola, Lady Somers, the Chief Commissioner of Guides, were heard leading the renewal of the Scout and Guide promises.

From: Hilary St. George Saunders, The Left Handshake, 1948

	Baden-Powell Photo Gallery: Early Years and Military Years
	Baden-Powell Photo Gallery: Scouting with Baden-Powell, 1907-1929
	Baden-Powell Photo Gallery: Scouting with Baden-Powell, 1929-1941
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