"The coffin arrived at the Arc de Triomphe on November 11, 1920, where it first stayed in a room before being buried under the Arc on January 28, 1921," said Quentin Bendavid, technician of the cultural services of the Arc de Triomphe, in a video on Youtube. Mr Thin was later awarded the French Legion d’honneur by former Socialist president François Mitterrand in 1982 at the Arc de Triomphe, months before he died. Out of the line of coffins, he chose the sixth, saying later that he picked it because his military unit was the sixth, and six was also the number obtained by adding up the individual figures of his regiment’s number, 132. "I was chosen because I was the youngest enlisted 2nd class soldier and a veteran of the regiment of Verdun, the 132nd RI,” Mr Thin explained at the time. was invited by Mr Maginot to choose one by placing a bunch of lillies on it. The remains of eight soldiers from different battle grounds were brought in oak coffins and one of the soldiers designated to guard them, 21-year-old Auguste Thin. Then Pensions Minister André Maginot, himself a war veteran, chose the underground military base Citadelle de Verdun for a ceremony to choose the soldier's body on November 10, 1920. There was debate as to the location, with some suggesting the Panthéon, however veterans’ associations supported the Arc de Triomphe. It was supported by the press, and adopted by MPs in 1919.
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