Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Azmak Cemetery, near Suvla Bay, Turkey, contains the graves of some of the soldiers who died during the Gallipoli Campaign.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, abbreviated to CWGC, is a joint governmental organisation responsible for marking and maintaining the graves of members of the Commonwealth of Nations' military forces that died in the two world wars, to build memorials to those with no known grave, and to keep records of the war dead. It was formed in 1917 as the Imperial War Graves Commission and adopted its present name in 1960.

Based in Maidenhead, the United Kingdom, The commission is responsible for the commemoration of 1.7 million Commonwealth servicemen and women in 150 countries worldwide. It has constructed, and maintains, around 2,500 cemeteries and is also responsible for Commonwealth war graves in other cemeteries. There are 73,000 such cemeteries containing Commonwealth war graves worldwide, of which over 12,000 are in the United Kingdom.^[1]

The six member nations are Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Newfoundland was a founding member but ceased to have separate status from 1949, when it became a part of Canada. The President of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is HRH The Duke of Kent.

The largest cemeteries are in France and Belgium, and were built after the First World War. A number of cemeteries are also present in the Middle East and Iraq, as a result of battles against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, and in North Africa, the Far East and Italy from the Second World War. The largest Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery is Tyne Cot Cemetery, north of Ypres, which contains nearly 12,000 graves; the smallest maintained isolated site contains the remains of only Rupert Brooke, and is located on Skyros.^[2] Memorials were also constructed to commemorate the dead who have no known grave; the largest of these is the Thiepval Memorial, which is 45 metres high and carries the names of over 72,000 missing servicemen from the Battle of the Somme.

A Project is currently underway to photograph the graves and memorials to all service personnel from 1914 to the present day. The work is being carried out by the British War Memorial Project in conjunction with the CWGC and the Ministry of Defence. The project has archived currently 500,000 photographs (at November 2006).

Design

Architecture

The Cross of Sacrifice is a unique feature of many Commonwealth cemeteries.

Each cemetery is made up of rows of white gravestones; unlike French or German graves, these are not shaped like crosses, but are, instead, rectangles with rounded tops. However, each gravestone is marked with a cross, except for those where the deceased was known to belong to another religion, in which case, another symbol is provided. If the deceased was of no religion, no religious emblem is engraved on the headstone. The graves are also marked with the name, rank and unit symbol of the soldier.

Many gravestones are for unidentified casualties; they consequently bear only what could be discovered from the body in addition to the inscriptions "A Soldier of the Great War" (or Second World War) and "Known unto God", originally proposed by Rudyard Kipling.

Some graves also have an additional phrase chosen the next of kin. In the case of First World War graves, these were charged to the family at 3½ pennies per letter, a significant sum in the 1920s when the headstones were constructed.^[3]

The cemeteries are normally surrounded by a low brick wall, often with a decorative gate over the entrance. Many have an identical limestone war memorial, called the 'Cross of Sacrifice' and designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield; these vary in height from 4.5m to 9m, depending on the size of the cemetery. If there are one thousand or more burials, a Commonwealth cemetery will contain a 'Stone of Remembrance', designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and bearing words from Ecclesiasticus: "Their name liveth for evermore". All the Stones of Remembrance are 3.5 m long and 1.5 m high, with three steps leading up to them. Each cemetery has a plaque that explains in which war the soldiers died and provides some background history. They also have a visitors book and a register of everyone buried in the cemetery.

On the Gallipoli Peninsula, and in the Far East, the cemeteries have slightly different design features. To prevent masonary sinking into water-sodden ground, the graves have stone-faced pedestal markers rather than headstones, and instead of a freestanding Cross of Sacrifice, the cross is built into a wall. The smaller size of the markers mean that they lack unit insignia.^[4][5]

Floriculture

Commonwealth cemeteries are distinctive in treating floriculture as an integral part of the cemetery design. Originally, the intention was to allow visitors and mourners to experience a more peaceful environment, in contrast with traditionally bleak graveyards.^[6] The architects were aided by the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, which allowed the architectural designs take into account the requirements of various plants. Lutyens furthered his long-standing working relationship with Gertrude Jekyll, and her foremost expertise was employed in transforming the cemeteries into gardens of remembrance.^[6]

Where possible, indigenous plants are utilised to further connection between the interred and their surroundings.^[6] The beds around the headstones are planted with a mixture of floribunda roses and herbaceous perennials; short varieties are planted in front of the headstones, to avoid obscuring the details of the deceased whilst still preventing soil from being thrown onto the white stone when it rains.^[6]

History

The pedestal marker at Haidar Pasha Cemetery, Turkey, of an unidentified soldier killed during the First World War

On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Fabian Ware, who had been responsible for education in South Africa and a member of the board of the Rio Tinto Company, found that, at 45, he was too old to join the British Army. He used the influence of his friend, Viscount Milner, to obtain command of a Red Cross Mobile unit, arriving in France in September 1914. Whilst there he was struck by the lack of any official mechanism for marking the graves of those that were killed. He made it his task to change this, and created an organisation within the Red Cross for this purpose. This organisation was transferred (along with Ware) into the British Army in 1915.^[7] By October 1915, the new Graves Registration Commission had over 31,000 graves registered, and 50,000 by May 1916.^[8]

As well as recording details about graves, it handled numerous requests from relatives for details or photographs of the graves, and had sent out around 12,000 photographs by 1917.^[9] As the war continued, Ware became concerned about the fate of the graves after the war. With the help of Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1917, he submitted a memorandum on the subject to the Imperial War Conference. On 21 May 1917, the Imperial War Graves Commission was created by a Royal Charter, with the Prince of Wales as its President and Ware as its Vice-Chairman, a role that Ware held until 1948.

A committee under Sir Frederic Kenyon, director of the British Museum, presented a report in November 1918 on how the cemeteries should be developed. Two key elements of this were that bodies should not be repatriated and that uniform memorials should be used to avoid class distinctions. Both of these issues generated considerable public discussion, which eventually led to a heated debate in Parliament on 4 May 1920, with opponents arguing for the rights of the individual. The matter was eventually settled with Kenyon's conclusions being accepted.

Three of the most eminent architects of their day, Sir Herbert Baker, Sir Reginald Blomfield, and Sir Edwin Lutyens were commisioned to design the cemeteries and memorials. Experimental cemeteries were constructed in France, at Le Treport, Forceville and Louvencourt. All three were completed in 1920, with the one at Forceville being considered the most successful; with uniform headstones, Blomfield's Cross of Sacrifice and Lutyen's Stone of Remembrance, it became the model for all future ones.

At the end of 1919, the commission had spent £7,500, but this figure rose to £250,000 in 1920 as construction of cemeteries and memorials took off. 4,000 headstones a week were being sent to France in 1923. In 1927, when the majority of construction had been completed, over 500 cemeteries had been built, with 400,000 headstones and 1000 Crosses of Sacrifice.

In many cases small cemeteries were closed and the graves concentrated in larger ones, and further enlarged as battlefields were searched for bodies. As early as 1916, Ware had approached the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew for advice on floriculture for the cemetries. The building programme was finally completed in 1938, just before the oubreak of the Second World War.

From the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Commission had a graves registration unit. With the increased number of civilian casualties compared to the First World War, Sir Winston Churchill agreed to Ware's proposal that the Commission also maintain a record of the Commonwealth civilian war deaths. This book, containing the names of nearly 67,000 men, women and children, has been kept in Westminster Abbey since 1956. When the Allies liberated Northern Europe, most of the First World War cemeteries were found to be largely undamaged and the floriculture had nearly reached pre-war standards within three years.

The Second World War had produced over 600,000 Empire and Commonwealth deaths. In 1949, the Dieppe Canadian War Cemetery was the first to be completed, and, eventually, over 350,000 headstones were erected. However, the wider scale of the war, coupled with manpower shortages and unrest in some countries, meant that construction of Second World War cemeteries was not complete until the 1960s. By this time, the Commission had constructed 559 new cemeteries and 36 memorials.

The organisation changed its name from the Imperial War Graves Commission to Commonwealth War Graves Commission in 1960.

Financing

The First World War Ypres Reservoir cemetery, near Ypres, Belgium.

The War Graves Commission's work is funded predominantly by grants from the governments of the six member states. In the FY2004/05, these grants amounted to £38.9m.^[10] The contribution from each country is proportionate to the number of graves preserved, and grants are thus broken down as follows:

Vandalism

CWGC cemeteries are generally respected as humanitarian, non-political sites, and instances of vandalism and desecration appear to be rare; when they do occur they tend to make news in Commonwealth countries. For instance, on 9 May 2004, 33 headstones were demolished in the Gaza Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery, which contains 3,691 graves,^[11] allegedly in retaliation for the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.^[12]

Accusations of vandalism of Imperial war graves were levelled at Nazi Germany after their victory in the Battle of France. On 2 June 1940, Adolf Hitler visited the Vimy Memorial to show that it had not been vandalised or destroyed by German troops.^[13]

Monuments and cemeteries maintained by the CWGC

Further information: Category:Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries

• The Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing, a memorial to missing soldiers in the Ypres Salient
• Three cemeteries on the Death Railway
• Voormezeele Enclosures in Belgium. Also known as Voormezele Enclosures
• The Kranji War Memorial and Cemetery in Singapore
• The The Ottawa Memorial in Ottawa, Canada
• Cemeteries in Hong Kong at Sai Wan, and at Stanley
• Stanley in the Falkland Islands

Footnotes

External links

• Commonwealth War Graves Commission official website
• The British War Memorial Project - official website
• For King and Empire
• British War Memorial Project
• Maple Leaf Legacy Project
• Australian War Grave Photographic Archive
• South Africa War Graves Project
• United Kingdom National Index of War Memorial
• Courage Remembered

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