‘For then, for now, forever’
As the Commonwealth War Graves Commission celebrates its centenary, we salute an organisation that tends the graves of 1.7million of the fallen in 154 countries
THE headstones stand in serried ranks like soldiers on parade, set out with military precision in lines which are ramrod straight. The grass is watered and clipped, while the scent of sweetsmelling flowers fills the air. This is Tyne Cot, the Commonwealth war cemetery at Ypres in Belgium and this level of caring devotion is repeated at 23,000 cemeteries and memorials in 154 countries around the world.
On May 21 it will be 100 years since the Commonwealth War Graves Commission was established to honour with a proper burial those for whom some corner of a foreign field was their last resting place. In 1917, the emphasis was on the dead from European battlefields such as the Somme and Ypres. When the war ended the attention turned to those killed in bloody campaigns in the former Ottoman Turk war zone such as Gallipoli, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Syria and Iraq.
Men called the Great War “the war to end all wars” but sadly within two decades conflict gripped the planet again. That is why today the commission tends the graves of 1.7million men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died in two world wars.
As the commission’s founder Sir Fabian Ware wrote, the cemeteries “are situated on every conceivable site – on bare hills flayed by years of battle, in orchards and meadows, beside populous towns or little villages, in jungle glades, at coast ports, in faraway islands, among desert sand and desolate ravines”.
Not all are in far-flung corners of the globe. We forget how many were killed in training here or who died on bombing and naval missions just off our shores. With 300,000 graves, Britain is second only to France as a final resting place.
The contrast between the cemeteries brings home the scale of the loss of life. From the green Belgian fields which inspired the immortal words, “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, between the crosses row on row…” to the sun-baked shores of Gallipoli where 80,000 British, Irish, Indian and New Zealand soldiers perished.
From the sub-tropical death camps of the Burma railroad, made famous in the film Bridge On The River Kwai, to a lonely memorial on a Scottish hillside where a Lancaster bomber crashed and its crew are interred.
At Essex Farm near Ypres is the grave of the youngest British soldier to die on the Western Front, 15-year-old Rifleman Valentine Strudwick, which is visited by thousands of history students each year. And then in the Surrey countryside near Woking there is the beautiful Brookwood cemetery, home to 5,000 graves and the focus of the centenary remembrance events.
Every headstone is inscribed with the national emblem or regimental badge, rank, name, unit, date of death and age of each casualty. Many also bear a personal dedication chosen by relatives, witness to the fact that we shall never forget. The graves of those whose remains could not be identified in
FLORAL TRIBUTE AT THE CHELSEA SHOW
ITV gardening expert David Domoney has created a war graves remembrance garden at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show (see artist’s impression, right) by using the skills of the CWGC’s craftsmen in Dorset, France and Belgium.
Two stone statues, originally part of the Portsmouth Naval Memorial, will guard the entrance and visitors will walk under a metalwork arch of 154 engraved 1918 are marked with poignant words specially written by Rudyard Kipling, whose own son was killed in action and whose body was never found: “A Soldier of the Great War known unto God.”
The enduring work of the commission owes everything to the dedication of Fabian Ware. When war broke out in 1914 he quit as a director of the Rio Tinto mining company and tried to enlist in the army – only to be told he was too old at 45. So he volunteered for the Red Cross on the battlefields and commanded an ambulance unit.
AS HE witnessed the slaughter in the trenches, he realised there was no proper means of recording where the dead were buried. He set up the Graves Registration Commission, was transferred into the Army and within a year had collected details of the last resting place of more than 50,000 men.
As word of his work spread back home, relatives wrote asking for details of their loved ones’ burial place and by 1917 about 17,000 leaves – one for every country in which our war dead are buried – shaped like the bronze wreath at Tyne Cot cemetery in Flanders.
The handmade bricks marking out the garden are from stock used to restore the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme and the stone stairs and paving on the central raised dais are made from Portland stone. photographs had been sent out to them. As the war went on and the losses mounted, Ware became worried about what would happen to the graves when the conflict eventually ended. He enlisted the support of the Prince of Wales – later to become Edward VIII – who served with the Grenadier Guards and although banned from fighting for security reasons had seen first-hand the horrors of the front line.
In 1917 Ware and the Prince proposed to the Imperial War Conference that a war graves commission be founded. The Prince of Wales was named president, Secretary of State for War Lord Derby was chairman and Ware became the vicechairman. Three of the most eminent architects, Sir Herbert Baker, Sir Reginald Blomfield and Sir Edwin Lutyens were commissioned to design the memorials.
So was born what later became known as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which now has an annual budget of £61million. Its founder continued as vicechairman until he retired more than 30 years later as MajorGeneral Sir Fabian Ware KCVO KBE CB CMG. He died in 1949.
The commission’s centenary will be marked on May 20 by the opening of an exhibition at Brookwood cemetery called For Then, For Now, Forever. Actor Brian Blessed will open the event and there will be a week of historical lectures.
On May 23 a service of thanksgiving attended by dignitaries from around the Commonwealth will be held at Westminster Abbey and the CWGC Centenary Garden will open at the Chelsea Flower Show (see panel). On May 28 the England v Barbarians rugby match at Twickenham will honour the memory of England international Edgar Mobbs, killed at Passchendaele in 1917.
All in all, a highly appropriate level of commemoration for a body which has achieved so much.
For more information on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission visit cwgc.org where you can enter the name of a war casualty.