the commonwealth war graves in the north of france · 2013-04-11 · of this organisation's...

Université Lille 3

Première année de Master Enseignement de l'anglais

The Commonwealth WarThe Commonwealth War

Graves in the North of FranceGraves in the North of France

Mémoire préparé sous la direction de M. Philippe VERVAECKE

Présenté et soutenu par Benoit DAMBRINE

Année universitaire 2011/2012

Acknowledgements

I would first like to thank Philippe Vervaecke, lecturer at the University of Lille 3,

for his time and suggestions in the making of this master's dissertation.

Several people and organisation played an important role by helping me gather all the

information needed to write on this subject: Alexandra Baye from the Commonwealth War

Graves Commision of Beaurains, who is the Communication and Public Relation Assistant

of this organisation's office in the France Area, Nathalie Legrand, from the Centre de

Documentation of the Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne who gathered for me the

cemetery registers that were archived. David Avery, a British amateur historian also helped

me by sending me pictures of the Imperial War Graves final verification form. During my

visits to the Archives Départementales of the Nord and the Pas-de-Calais and the different

libraries in Lille 3 I always found a very helpful and available staff who gave me great

advice on where to find the information I was looking for.

I would also like to express my gratitude to Juliette Lebrun, Pierre-Antoine Willoquaux and

my parents, Maryse and Hervé Dambrine, for their help and support in the adventure that

writing a master's dissertation is.

It is also an honour to write about the men who fell and gave their young life far

from their home to defend our country.

- LEST WE FORGET -

(Front page picture: the entrance of the Duisans British Cemetery. Credits: author's own

collection)

Summary

Acknowledgements................................................................................................................2

Introduction............................................................................................................................4

I. The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission............................................8

A. The British Empire in the Great War......................................................................8

B. The creation of the Imperial War Graves Commission........................................13

C. The decisions taken at the end of the War............................................................14

II. The Cemeteries and Memorials in the North of France...................................................18

A. The implantations.................................................................................................18

B. How a cemetery is made......................................................................................21

C. The graves of the fallen soldiers..........................................................................27

D. The families of the soldiers..................................................................................40

E. The records...........................................................................................................44

III. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission today and tomorrow. ...........................46

A. Finding missing soldiers......................................................................................46

B. The Ceremonies....................................................................................................48

C. The tourism of the battlefields and the war graves..............................................50

D. The future of the Commission.............................................................................52

Conclusion............................................................................................................................54

Bibliography.........................................................................................................................56

Appendices...........................................................................................................................62

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Introduction

If you happen to be driving in the North of France on the road D937, a road that

goes from Arras, the county town of the Pas-de-Calais, to Souchez, a small town near the

old coalfields, you will go through a few villages and on the way you will see an incredible

number of war memorials and cemeteries. It starts in the village of Neuville Saint Vaast

where in the entrance there is a German cemetery, further and on the other side of the road

lay a British military cemetery backing on to a French one. A few blocks away stands a

French War memorial to the dead, followed by a private First World War museum. The

road leads on to the countryside, where right next to the D937, are facing two memorials: a

Polish and a Czech WW1 memorial. From this point you can clearly see at a distance the

destroyed abbey of Mont St Eloi, along with the destroyed church of Ablain Saint Nazaire,

both bombed during the Great War and never rebuilt, being now testimonies of the past. If

you look north, what will probably strike you first is Notre Dame de Lorette, one of the

biggest French military cemeteries, that stands on a hill above Souchez. If you look east,

you will not miss the shape of the two gigantic white stones splitting the woods of Vimy,

this shape is the one of the Canadian Memorial of Vimy Ridge, a must-see site for anyone

interested in the history of the First World War in the North of France. You are now

entering the town of Souchez and the first human construction at the entrance of the town

is the large British cemetery of Cabaret Rouge. A few meters after one finds the new

French memorial to the soldiers of the Pas-de-Calais who fell during the Algerian War.

Next to it is found the memorial to the 77 th division of the French Army led by the General

Barbot, who fought along the Canadians to defend Vimy Ridge. In a radius of ten

kilometres lie approximately 200,000 war graves.

You have now crossed many constructions meant to honour the men who died

during the wars and you have only travelled eight kilometres. It shows how much damage

the two world wars have done in the North of France, in terms of destruction and

casualties. The reason is simple: the German Army invaded France in 1914 and 1940, both

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times by going through the flat region of the Flanders, where moving an entire army was

fast and easy. After the wars, cemeteries were built throughout the North to bury the

casualties and French people living in the North are very aware of the cost of the war as

they are reminded of it each time they drive or walk by a military cemetery. But while there

are a few French and German cemeteries along the Western Front, there are exactly 14251

Commonwealth cemeteries found in the North, the Pas-de-Calais and the Somme regions.

Those cemeteries are also scattered along the Western Front where the Commonwealth

forces fought during the First World War, drawing a line passing through Armentières,

Lens, Arras, Bapaume and Cambrai. In the area of Arras, where you can find the most

important concentration of Commonwealth cemeteries in the world, people say that

wherever you are in the countryside, there is always a cemetery in sight.

But why are there so many Commonwealth cemeteries compared to the other

nations who took part in the conflict? This particularity resides in the fact that any soldier

of the Commonwealth who died in the field of action or because of wounds inflicted during

the fight was to be buried where he died. There was no repatriation of the bodies and there

was no exception to the rule, a rule that gave birth to an impressive number of cemeteries

sometimes found in very remote areas. Those cemeteries are under the care of the

Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which was formerly the Imperial War Graves

Commission, a worldwide organization founded in 1917 by Sir Fabian Ware which has the

goal of maintaining the graves of the Commonwealth soldiers who are buried where the

Queen's forces fought: in Turkey, Italy, South Africa, India, Hong Kong, the Falkland

Islands, and many other places in the world. But most of its job lies on the remains of the

battlefields of the Western Front, or more precisely, the North of France and a bit of

Belgium. Exactly 574,9452 war dead of the Commonwealth are buried in Northern France

and are under the care of the Commission. Many books have been written on the history of

the Commonwealth War Graves Commission or on a particular battle in which the British

Army was involved, very often written by British historians for British people. But nothing

has been written on what I intend to talk about in this dissertation: The Commonwealth

War Graves in the North of France.

1 “Listing of Cemeteries” Excel file given by the Commonwealth War Graves Commision of Beaurains. 2 Commonwealth War Graves Commission Annual Report 2010-2011

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Indeed, I intend to cast a another look on the matter, by someone about the same

age as the soldiers who fell on the battlefields and who, while growing up, has always seen

those cemeteries as part of the natural landscape, just like trees, roads and railways.

Writing this dissertation is probably a way to give an answer to all the questions I have

been asking myself about the Commonwealth War Graves in the part of France where I

grew up, and I will try to answer most of the questions one could ask on the matter: After

the creation of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, what response could be given

to the burials and registering of the dead soldiers? When creating the cemeteries, what

form should the cemeteries and memorials take to honour the dead? Almost a hundred

years after the beginning of WW1, what is the mission of the CWGC3 and what is done to

honour the soldiers who gave their life?

The particularity I have to answer those questions is the geographical proximity I

have with the subject itself: I am surrounded by cemeteries, the France Area office of the

CWGC is three kilometres away from where I live and lays near the old fighting front on

the outskirts of Arras. This research is therefore both a field research and an academic

research, with the chance of having access to precious primary sources not used before.,

like the visitor's books, the epitaphs found the graves, the engraved regiment and national

badges in each cemeteries and many others. Studying this subject gave me the opportunity

to travel around the region, visiting memorials and cemeteries, attending ceremonies,

meeting people who had a direct link with the cemeteries (British gardeners working in

France, Canadian families on a trip to a relatives graves, etc.) , being taken on a tour of the

office and workshop of the CWGC in Beaurains, etc. Now that the material needed for this

research has been gathered, here is how I will explain the well-known fact that those

cemeteries in the North of France are the result of an immense and arduous work from the

CWGC, who did their best to give the fallen soldiers a moving and immaculately

maintained place to rest to show the future generations the price that was paid for freedom.

3 Abbreviation of “Commonwealth War Graves Commission”, which will be used throughout the text.

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In Chapter I, I will deal with the creation of the CWGC in the aftermath of the war,

as it was the solution to the no-repatriation policy that caused problems for the families and

for the care of those new cemeteries who started appearing behind the trenches as soon as

the war started. The decisions taken at the end of WWI will also be discussed, decisions

such as the debate over the architecture of the cemeteries, the way to help the families in

finding out more about their buried relatives or even the international agreements with the

countries inside the Commonwealth and the countries where the battle took place,

countries such as France, the most damaged of all.

In Chapter II, we will first deal with the implantation of the cemeteries in the

particular case that the North of France is, then we will focus in detail on the creation of

cemeteries and memorials on a technical level , along with the history behind the graves of

the soldiers, each one being similar to the others and unique at the same time. The visits of

the families and their work of mourning and remembrance are to be studied. The way the

records were archived and made public will also be closely looked at, in its evolution

throughout the years and its relation with the families of the soldiers.

In Chapter III, we will give an outlook of the CWGC and its cemeteries in the

North of France almost a century after the war, as new casualties are being found and new

cemeteries are being built, like the Fromelles Australian Cemetery. Of course the older

cemeteries are not left unattended and they are witness of a close care all year round, and

are often places of commemoration during national and international anniversaries. The

tourism and tours created around those famous places of the First World War are a sign of

the importance of those cemeteries and memorials for people from all the countries

involved in the conflict. Finally, we will end by the question of the future of those resting

places and the CWGC.

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I. The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission

A. The British Empire in the Great War

1. The casualties of the Empire

The United Kingdom entered the war with the help of conscripts, of many

volunteers and the participation of six other members of the British Empire, namely:

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa and India. When those

nations took part in one of the bloodiest conflicts humanity has ever seen, they were

principally involved in the fights in France and were witnesses of the horror of the trenches

of the Western Front.

Those members of the Empire bravely fought and many gave their lives sometimes

very far away from their home. Here are a few details of the actions and casualties of each

nation:

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Illustration 1: Map of the the Western Front with repartitions of the different armies. Credits: www.greatwar.co.uk

The United Kingdom

In the First World War, the United Kingdom lost exactly 440,697 men in the

battlefields of Northern France. The first regiment that left for France was the British

Expeditionary Forces, in August 1914. After a few weeks, the casualties were such that this

regiment stopped to exist and was replaced by other regiments of conscripts and volunteers

who had just finished their training. The United Kingdom was involved in major battles of

the First World War: Loos, The Somme, Arras, Cambrai, and smaller ones. Most of the

time they were helped by at least another member of the British Empire.

Canada

There are 39, 714 Canadian soldiers who gave their life in the North of France,

being the second highest number of war dead of the Empire on the Western Front. The

Canadian story in WW1 started when the first Infantry Regiment arrived in January 1915.

The fought at Neuve-Chapelle but quickly moved to Ypres. In 1916 they took part in the

Battle of The Somme. In August 1917, most of the Canadian Regiments met for one of

their most famous battle: the taking of Hill 70, in Vimy Ridge, a place where the Canadian

memorial now stands. They also fought in Amiens, Arras, Villers-Bretonneux and Cambrai.

Australia

This enormous island on the other side of the world lost 33,205 Australian soldiers

during the First World War, now buried in the ground of the North of France. The

Australian Imperial Force (A.I.F) first fought overseas before arriving in France in April

1916. They took part in the first Battle of The Somme, nearby in Pozières and also further

in the North, in Arras. Their most famous engagement was at Villers-Bretonneux in April

1918. A memorial was erected there for the memory of the Australian soldiers who fought

thousands of miles away from their homeland.

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New Zealand

This small island near Australia lost 7,534 of her sons in the conflict in France and

as the Australians, those sons also fought overseas to secure some German territories

outside of Europe. The New Zealanders arrived in France at the same time as their

Australian neighbours: in April 1916, also to fight in the first Battle of The Somme. The

New Zealanders were then involved in the Battle of Flers-Courcelette and Morval. They

left to fight in Belgium in 1917 and came back to take Bapaume in 1918.

Newfoundland

This state only became a Canadian province in 1949. At the outbreak of the war

they very quickly created a regiment, the Newfoundland Regiment. Out of this regiment,

804 men died and are buried in France. They were first sent to Gallipoli (Turkey) and then

joined the Battle of The Somme in July 1916. They fought the end of the war in Belgium.

South Africa

This member fought as the Union of South Africa but then became the Republic of

South Africa when they left the Commonwealth in 1961. In 1914, its army gladly joined to

fight alongside with the British Army even though the last Anglo-Boer War just ended

twelve years before.

As many oversea countries, they first fought in Egypt and then were disembarked in

Marseilles in April 1916 to take part in the Battle of The Somme, in Delville Wood (where

the South African memorial now stands) and in Warlecourt. They moved north in 1917 to

fight in Arras. In 1918, the were part of the Battle of Le Cateau and reached their final

objective before the end of the war: to cross the River Selle. But this objective had a price

and now 3,461 South African men lay in the cemeteries of the North of France.

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India

India, being part of the British Empire, also fought in WW1 and a consequent

number of Indian soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice in the fields of Northern France:

exactly 8,065. They arrived in Europe as early as October 1914 and fought in Belgium

until March 1915 where they came to France and took action in Neuve-Chapelle (where

you can see the Indian Memorial now). They also fought in Loos and the Indian Cavalry

Corps remained in France until 1918.

2. The need for the families to know

The First World War was at its beginning believed to be a quick war that was going

to end by Christmas 1914. It did not. It lasted four years. Four years of slaughters that

brought each year its load of dead soldiers. Here is a chart of the repartition of soldiers

commemorated in the North of France by the year of their death.

Year of death Soldiers commemorated

1914 15125

1915 51388

1916 168467

1917 119477

1918 173874

1919 4131

In the first month of the war, more than a dozen thousand men had already died in

the North of France and a year later this number rose to 66,000. The no-repatriation policy4

of the British Empire caused the regiments to bury their dead in a hurry, behind the

trenches, and to mark their graves with a simple wooden cross (Appendix A p.64). This

4 See part B.2 The philisophy of the Commission

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was done when the bodies could be found or were not trapped in the middle of the no

man's land. The captain was responsible for taking record of the dead soldiers and their

place of burial but as some men were never found or identified, or the captain himself did

not take a record of the missing, any information on the death or the burial of a relative was

extremely hard to find for the families. Rudyard Kipling, the famous author of The Jungle

Book , received a note in 1915 stating that his beloved 18-years old son Lieutenant John

Kipling went missing during the Battle of Loos in September 1915. Kipling moved heaven

and earth to find out if his son was dead or still alive. In despair, he wrote a poem called

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”, copied below:

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"

Not this tide.

"When d'you think that he'll come back?"

Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Has any one else had word of him?"

Not this tide.

For what is sunk will hardly swim,

Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"None this tide,Nor any tide,

Except he did not shame his kind -Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,This tide,

And every tide;Because he was the son you bore,

And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

Rudyard Kipling, 1915

Rudyard Kipling was not the only parent or relative to feel this way and something

had to be done as no organisation was responsible for the last resting places of the soldiers.

This is where Fabian Ware, a forty-five year old leader of a Red Cross unit, came and

played a major role in the creation of what is now an international organisation: The

Imperial War Graves Commission 5.

5 Former name of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. “Imperial” was judged inappropriate in 1960

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B. The creation of the Imperial War Graves Commission.

1. The founders of the Commission

Fabian Ware first arrived in France, in Lille, in September 1915. He was too old to

fight but wanted to help his country in the conflict and joined the Red Cross. He soon

realized that no organisation were responsible for the care and the record of the graves of

the soldiers and feared that they might disappear as the war goes on. This is how Ware's

unit started taking care or recording any cemetery they might encounter. In 1915, Ware's

unit was officially recognized and became the Graves Registration Commission. A new

unit was created in Paris and helped the families in answering the hundreds of inquiries

they received asking for information or photographs of the graves of their relatives. In

1917, 12000 photographs had been sent to the families.

But the task was such that Ware believed that an official commission should be

created, an organisation that would represent the Empire's immense effort of war and that

would treat equally each soldier and maintain their graves and cemeteries. With the

support of the Prince of Wales, Fabian Ware presented a memorandum to the Imperial War

Conference in May 1917. It ended by this sentence :

“THE DECISION which is asked of the Imperial Conference is as to whether the Governments of

which it is composed will approve of the creation either of an Imperial Joint Committee, or of a

statutory body of Commissioners, of which the Secretary of State for War (Chairman), the High

Commissioners for the Dominions, the Secretary State for India, The Secretary of State for the

Colonies on behalf of the Crown Colonies, or other duly accredited representatives […].

FABIAN WARE, Brigadier-General, Director of Graves Registration and Enquiries

WAR OFFICE 7th March, 1917.” 6

This memorandum was approved and by Royal Charter the Imperial War Graves

Commission was created.

6 From The National Archives – WO 32/9433

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2. The philosophy of the Commission

The policy of no-repatriation was applied by the participating governments to

ensure social equality between the men and allowed the Commission to honour them

together where they fell, as comrades. Not bringing the bodies home also had a practical

reason and avoided the travel of hundreds of thousands of coffins by boat. This policy was

reinforced by the values and aims of this new Commission which were laid out in 1917 and

still stand today. Those fundamental principles are the following:

• Each of the dead should be commemorated individually by name either on a

headstone over the grave or by an inscription on a memorial if the grave was

unidentified.

• Headstones and memorials should be permanent.

• Headstones should be uniform.

• There should be no distinction made on account of military or civil rank, race or

creed.

C. The decisions taken at the end of the War.

1. Architecture

Now that the Commission was created and its principles made public, the question

of the relation with the French and Belgian government over the properties on which the

cemeteries and memorials (Appendix B p.65) would stand and their architecture rose .

About the acquisition of lands, F. Ware answered in a memorandum dated 13 October 1917

called “MEMORANDUM on the Acquisition of Burial Grounds in France and Belgium”7

in which he states:

“The French Law of 29th December 1915, which, under your instructions, I negotiated

with the French Government provided for the acquisition in perpetuity (at the cost of the

French Nation) of the land required for the burial of French and Allied soldiers.”

Fabian Ware, Brig-General. D.G.R.&.E.

7 From the National Archives - WO32/9434 toWO32/9433

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This gift from the French nation was a small relief for the loss of half a million men

of the British Empire in the Flanders.

Now that the problem of the acquisition of the lands was solved, there was still a

big debate over the architecture of the future Imperial cemeteries and memorial. What form

should they take? What should the headstones be like? How much would it cost the

governments of the nations who fought? From the very beginning, the Commission sought

perfection and unity in the commemorative graves of the soldiers. For this, they decided to

hire three of the most famous architects at the time: Sir Edwin Lutyens, Sir Herbert Baker

and Sir Reginald Blomfield. They worked together and in 1917 sent a memorandum8

written by Lutyens to the Commissions stating that there should be “one kind of main

monument”, with a Stone of Remembrance, facing Westward, on which would be written

some words of dedication, along with a Christian “Cross of Sacrifice”, representing the

faith of the majority of soldiers and conceived by Blomfield. The “Great War Stone”,

being now the Stone of Remembrance was to represent the soldiers who had a different or

no religion, Rudyard Kipling was asked to take part in the process and gladly did by

choosing an excerpt from Ecclesiasticus (Sirach 44:14) to be engraved on the Stone of

Remembrance : “THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE” (Appendix C p.74). The

shape of the headstones caused great debates, as some were in favour of a Christian cross

and some in favour of a flat stone. The latter was chosen as it is more respectful of

everyone's faith, less complicated to maintain and allows more inscriptions on it9. Three

cemeteries were built to have an idea of which one the Commission was going to choose

and the Cemetery of Forceville, surrounded by small walls, with a Cross of Sacrifice and a

Stone of Remembrance, where plants and trees were carefully planted around the alley was

selected by the Commission. After a few modifications, Forceville became the standard to

follow to build the rest of the cemeteries, with the difference that the Cross of Sacrifice

was to be present in sites of over 40 burials and the Stone of Remembrance was to be built

in sites of over 400 burials.

8 Same archive as above9 French Military Cemeteries use Christian crosses for most of the soldiers and flat stones for Muslim and

Jewish soldiers.

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2. Finance

Building the 1425 cemeteries and memorials found in the North of France was an

enormous task and represented the majority of the Commission's worldwide work.

Rudyard Kipling wrote that this task was“The single biggest piece of work since the

Pharaohs, and they only worked in their own country.” This gigantic project was of course

not free and was supposed to cost millions of pounds. Financial cuts were made on

unnecessary details and the Commission aimed for great quality with cheap materials. The

financing of the Commission were discussed and the Imperial War Conference passed a

resolution10 on June 17, 1918 stating that the cost of the construction of cemeteries and

memorials was to be divided between the different members of the British Empire who

fought during the War “in proportion to the numbers of the graves of their dead.”. Here is

a chart of the percentages that each member pay each year.

10 From KIPLING Rudyard. The Graves of the fallen. London : H.M. Stationary Office, 1919. Page 37.

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Illustration 2: The Cross of Sacrifice (left) and the Stone of Remembrance (right) in a cemetery.

Government Percentage

United Kingdom 78,43

Canada 10,07

Australia 6,05

New Zealand 2,14

South Africa 2,11

India 1,2

Total 100

Percentages of contributions being made by partner governments.

CWGC Annual Report 2010-2011.

Another enormous task with the construction of the cemeteries was the indexing

and archiving of the records of the dead. Those records held the name, date of death,

regiment, rank number, family address and of course the name of the cemetery in which the

soldier is buried. The goal was to be able to answer any enquiry the families had. If an

enquiry did not lead to an answer because the soldier was not buried in a cemetery, it meant

that the body of the soldier was not found or identified. For those men, memorials were

built and their names were engraved on it. There were so many dead soldiers in this

situation that the Commission had to build a great number of memorials between 1923 and

1938.

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II. The Cemeteries and Memorials in the North of France.

A. The implantations.

1. Worldwide and in the North of France

There are 25,271 cemeteries and memorials in the entire world under the care of the

CWGC. Out of these, 2,942 are in the North of France, representing a total of 11.6% of the

number of cemeteries and memorials in the world. Let's not forget that the CWGC cares for

the graves of the dead in almost every country in the world, exactly 150 countries. A large

number of cemeteries are of course found in the United Kingdom itself and actually

represent about half the number of cemeteries in the world. Even though 11.6% might

seem a small number compared to the rest of the Commission's burial locations, those

11.6% commemorate the name of 576,734 soldiers of the British Empire out of the

1,709,030 soldiers under the care of the Commission, which means that 11.6% of the

cemeteries and memorials hold 33.7% of the total of soldiers who fell. The reason is

simple: there are some extremely large cemeteries and memorials in the North of France

and here are a few examples: The Thiepval Memorial holds the names of 72,205 soldiers,

the Arras Memorial 34,793 and there are 15 cemeteries and memorials in the North of

France that contains more than 4000 casualties. In the United Kingdom, the biggest

memorial is the Tower Hill Memorial of London with 35,752 names and there are less

cemeteries that hold more than 4000 casualties, there are 6 of them. So why such a big

difference? The CWGC buries a soldier as a war casualty if he died during battle or from

wounds caused in battle. Therefore, a great number of wounded soldiers during the first

and the second world war were repatriated to be cured in the United Kingdom and most

died of their wounds. In this case the soldier was buried in his home town, often in the

churchyard of a small village. This explains the 6,250 churchyards in the United Kingdom

that contains only 1 or 2 graves under the care of the Commission, being therefore

cemeteries of the CWGC. As a comparison, the average Commonwealth cemetery in

France holds about 30 graves.

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2. The particular case of the North of France

There is still an impressive number of cemeteries and war dead in the North of

France, but if you go around Lille, Douai or even Abbeville, you will not see many or even

not see one at all. Why? Because there were not battles around those cities or it was

occupied by the German army. The Queen's soldiers were buried behind the lines or where

they fell. Here is a map of the repartition of the cemeteries in the North of France and in

Belgium:

From this map we can see that there is a big concentration of cemeteries along the

front line especially in Belgium, in Arras and in the Somme, where major battles took

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Illustration 3: Map of the Cemeteries and Memorials in the North of France. Credits: Philip Longworth in “The Unending Vigil” (see bibliography)

place. There are also a few cemeteries elsewhere in the North of France. Those cemeteries

were usually places where there were Commonwealth reinforcement camps and hospitals.

For example, the Etaples Military Cemetery held an hospital that was remote from the front

lines and accessible by train from the battlefields. The men buried there died from the

wounds and injuries caused while fighting. Those more remote cemeteries and the

Commission's policy on who deserved to be buried in a military cemetery are responsible

for the official dates of the conflict given by the Commission: from the 4th of August 1914

to the 31 of August 1921 for the First World War and from the 3rd of September 1939 to the

31 of December 1947 for the Second World War, as many soldiers still died from wounds

after the conflict ended.

The very last soldier who died as a casualty from the First World War and who is

buried in France is the Sergeant Alfred Harman who died on August 19 1921 and is buried

in Les Baraques Military Cemetery in Sangatte. This cemetery was home of the last

Commonwealth forces who left France in 1921. WW2 is also delimited with unusual dates

by the Commission, those dates are different for the same reason that the dates of WW1.

WW2 was also fought in France and a little bit in the North of France where from

1939 the British Army fought in the Battle of France before the British Army fled from

Dunkirk and France signed the armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940. When Hitler invaded

France and took control of the “occupied zone”, the Commission was worried about what

would happen to the cemeteries and the memorials which had just been built. Hitler

himself answered the Commission by saying that no cemeteries or memorials would be

destroyed. He even toured on June 2 1940 the Vimy Memorial (Appendix D p.76) and the

nearby cemeteries of the Commission to show that they had not been destroyed by his

army. Hitler chose the Vimy Memorial as he himself fought against the Canadians there

during the battle of Vimy Ridge.11 Even if this war left the cemeteries and memorial

unbroken it caused the death of thousands of Commonwealth soldiers, either before and

during the Battle of France, during the occupation especially through aerial battles or even

after the landing in Normandy in the ally effort to push the German army out of France.

Those casualties were for the main part added to already existing cemeteries like the

Faubourg D'Amiens Cemetery and Memorial in Arras. In places where Commonwealth

11 Hitler also visited the nearby German military cemetery of Neuville St Vaast, where a path has been specially designed for him to take, a path that avoided the few graves of Jewish German soldiers of the First World War.

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soldiers fell that did not have a Commission cemetery nearby because no soldiers had died

there during the First World War, new cemeteries had to be created, like the Dunkirk

Memorial which holds the name of 4518 soldiers who died between 1940 and 1945. But

this case remained exceptional as there were existing cemeteries in many places in the

North , either on the left of the WW1 front line where there were hospitals, on the front line

itself of course and in the German lines taken at the end of 1918 during the German retreat.

Seeing it from this point of view, it is easy to understand the saying that in the

North of France, wherever you look you always see a British cemetery. Inhabitants of the

North of France are used to be surrounded by those reminders of the First World War: they

see the cemeteries on their way to work, they visit the museums with foreign friends, they

find bullets and shells in the ground while gardening or farming and seeing the bomb-

disposal experts working is not an exceptional event. Most of them also know a few things

about the Commission cemeteries as they are neighbours to them. But they probably don't

know what each part of a cemetery means.

B. How a cemetery is made.

1. The organisation

The size of a cemetery depends on the number of burials it contains and the

presence or not of a memorial to the missing. The largest memorial in Northern France,

standing at 45 meters high is the Thiepval Memorial with 72,205 names . The largest

Commission cemetery is the Etaples Military Cemetery with 10,816 burials. In such places,

immense memorials were built for the thousands of men commemorated there. In smaller

cemeteries, like the ones you find in the countryside, the elements constituting the

cemeteries are more simple but you always find the same elements in cemeteries

depending on their size: In every cemetery, you have the rows of graves surrounded by a

small brick and white stone wall. You are welcomed by the name of the cemetery engraved

on the stones and sometimes a metal plaque on which is written the history of this cemetery

(which battle took place there, what regiment was involved, etc.). You always have a

register, hidden in a small bronze niche. This register contains the names and information

about each soldiers in the cemetery. The niche also contains the visitor's book, on which

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the families and visitors can write a comment about their visit on the grave of a relative or

on the cemetery in general.12 In sites of over 40 burials, you have a Cross of Sacrifice

standing at 3 meters high, much higher for large cemetery such as the Faubourg d'Amiens

cemetery in Arras. In site of over 400 burials, you can add the Stone of Remembrance to it.

In some cemeteries, the Commission has built shelters out of bricks and white stones.

Those shelters are for the use of the visitors as a place to protect themselves from bad

weather or as an area to rest and think. The shelters are often used to host the register niche

and information about the cemetery, like the engraved plaque stating that “THE LAND ON

WHICH THIS CEMETERY STANDS IS THE FREE GIFT OF THE FRENCH PEOPLE

FOR THE PERPETUAL RESTING PLACE OF THE SAILORS SOLDIERS AND AIRMEN

WHO ARE HONOURED HERE”. This plaque can be found in English and in French. In

cemeteries that do not have a shelter it is found on the wall at the entrance. Inside the

cemeteries lie the most important constituents of a CWGC site: the graves of the soldiers.

Each soldier is buried under a headstone, and the headstones are carefully aligned in a row.

Those rows are made to be not too long and are usually cut by a path or small trees. A few

sets of rows form a plot. This system allows an easy search for graves in the cemeteries:

the plots are divided by Roman numerals, rows by letters and headstones by numbers in

order of appearance in the row. For example if you search for Arthur G. Hunt in Duisans

British Cemetery, you will find him at “VI.C.15” , meaning plot number 6, row C 13 ,

headstone number 15 from the left to the right of the cemetery. In cemeteries such as

Duisans British Cemetery, which is a burial site a few kilometres away from the actual

front line, the dead were added as they fell and the plots are divided by years: the first plots

are from the beginning of the war while the others are from the following years. The very

last graves are from the Second World War. Smaller cemeteries usually correspond to a

certain battle by a certain regiment in a short period of time: the Quebec Cemetery in

Chérisy contains 183 Canadians soldiers who died between the 26th of August and the 10th

of September 1918. For those cemeteries, the bodies were buried at the same time and

none has been added afterwards. The chronological system of plots does not apply in this

case. When a soldier was not found, his name was added to one of the memorials and the

names on memorials are either organized by alphabetical number (Vimy Memorial) and

searching a certain name is done easily directly on the memorial, or they are organized by

12 Those visitor's book will be studied in the fourth part of this chapter.13 This letter can be found on the side of the headstone at the beginning of each row.

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nationalities and regiments (Vis-en-Artois Memorial). In this case, the enquiry for a name

tells on which panel the name can be found (ex: Panel 5) and in more complex memorials

(Thiepval Memorial for example) it gives an indication such as “Pier and face 5D”.

Illustration 4: Plan of the Faubourg D'Amiens Cemetery in Arras. www.cwgc.org

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Soldiers are often separated by nationalities in memorials but the system is

different for cemeteries that hold more than one nationality. We have seen that six other

nationalities fought along with the United Kingdom in the Commonwealth forces: Canada,

Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, Australia and India. In the cemeteries, all

those nationalities are mixed up except the Indians, who are usually in an outside row near

the walls. Why so? The reason is that the cemeteries are organized by faith: the main plots

are for the soldiers of a Judeo-Christian faith (Protestants, Catholics, Jewish) and for

soldiers with no known faith. This is why Muslims and Hindus (two of the principal faiths

of the Indians) were buried apart from the ones they fell with. Even those faiths are divided

by rows: there are the Muhammadan Row, the Hindu Row and the Sikh Row. The

separation of soldiers by religion was done when possible and therefore not always applied.

In cemeteries where it was possible, the Chinese Labour Corps, a division of Chinese

workers who helped in digging the trenches and other forms of labour were also put aside

because of their difference of faith and also because of their status as civilians and not

soldiers.(Appendix E p.77) There were also a few German soldiers who have been buried

along with their enemies, the soldiers of the Commonwealth. The German soldiers are in

the main plots with people from their religion. Seeing the grave of a German soldier

between the graves of two British soldiers, lying there for eternity, in a peaceful land and

knowing that they all receive the same amount of care from the Commission is a beautiful

sign of peace (Appendix F p.79). There are also examples of a few other nationalities

buried in some cemeteries: Americans and French for example. Civilians and women are

also commemorated in some of the Commission's cemeteries as they died from the war

(nurses from the Red Cross, Priests of the “Church Army”, members of the YMCA, Postal

services,etc).

2. The atmosphere

All those nationalities are commemorated in cemeteries and memorials carefully

and thoughtfully built, following the plans of renowned architects who worked hard to

make the cemeteries and memorials a respectful resting place for the soldiers. Sir Frederic

Kenyon, Lieutenant-Colonel and director of the British Museum wrote in 1918 that:

“There is no reason why cemeteries should be places of gloom” 14. From as early as 1917,

14 In How the Cemeteries Abroad Will Be Designed, The Kenyon Report, part 1. 1918

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the Commission tried to plant flowers, grass and trees in the cemeteries to brighten up the

first sites. After the war, when the Commission started to build the cemeteries as we know

them now, Sir Edwin Lutyens, the main architect of the Commission asked for Gertrude

Jekyll's help with the gardening of the sites. She was responsible for the look and the

atmosphere present today in the cemeteries: an impression of a “cottage garden” in the

British tradition. Each headstone has a perennial plant in front of it, sometimes roses and

the grass is always kept perfectly trimmed. The lawns of the CWGC are impressively

beautiful, even during the winter. It is just a proof of the dedication and excellent work that

is done in the sites of the Commission, a work that is not done by itself: the CWGC in

Beaurains (Appendix G p.80) has a staff of 450 employees, from which the main part are

gardeners, who are dedicated to making the cemeteries get this “park” atmosphere that

suits so well the sites. The staff today is composed of gardeners, engravers and

administrative workers. At the end of the war, the task was so great that Fabian Ware had to

hire a lot of workers to make the headstones, carve them, build the cemeteries, plant the

different flowers and trees, and of course: work on the records of the dead soldiers. He

started with only a group of eight and almost no money and by 1921, had hired about 1,300

employees. The majority of them came from Great Britain and lived in barracks near the

area where they were working, by any weather, with every cemetery having its own

specificities.

3. The names

Each cemetery is indeed different even though they are built on the same scheme:

they have different stories, are of different size and the access can be quite difficult15. Their

names are of course different too, and can tell us more about their individual stories.

Most of the cemeteries and memorials, about 90% of them, have the same name as the city

or street on which they are found, to give a few examples there is the Vimy Memorial, the

Etaples Military Cemetery, the Duisans Military Cemetery, the Faubourg d'Amiens

Cemetery, from the street of the same name in Arras, and many more. Then, there are some

that are related to the nationality or the regiment of the men who died there, like the

Quebec Cemetery in Chérisy, the Anzac Cemetery of Sailly-Sur-La-Lys (ANZAC means

Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), the Toronto Cemetery in Démuin, the London

15 Still today, some cemeteries are only accessible by foot or with a four-wheel drive.

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Cemetery and Extension in Longueval where the 47th London Division fought, the

Highland Cemetery in Roclincourt where Scottish soldiers fell, the Nine Elms Military

Cemetery in Thélus, from the name of the London District, etc. Another interesting name is

the one of the Unicorn Cemetery in Vend'huile that comes from the divisional sign of the

50th Division: a red unicorn's head. Now, some cemeteries have names that have no direct

link with any of the criteria we just saw, here are a few interesting example about the

history of the names of some cemeteries16:

Beehive Cemetery, Willerval: This name comes from a German machine gun

emplacement behind which the German soldiers would hide all together, like in a beehive.

The nickname given by the British soldiers became the name of the cemetery in which the

victims of the machine gun are buried.

Thistle Dump Cemetery, Longueval: This cemetery is mainly composed of Scottish

Highlanders (Thistle). The use of the word “dump” comes from the fact that the soldiers

would fall instantly from heavy shell fire when they attacked.

Sunken Road Cemetery, Fampoux: The war increased the depth of the sunken lane

between Fampoux and Bailleul, giving its name to a cemetery.

Lichfield Crater and Zivy Crater, Thélus: Those two mine craters were used by the

Canadians as mass graves for the burial of bodies found after the Vimy Ridge battle of

1917.

Cabaret Rouge Cemetery, Souchez: Before being destroyed a cabaret stood there,

recognisable by its bricks of a strong red colour.

L'Homme Mort Cemetery, Ecoust-St-Mein: This name is actually the one of a hamlet

about three kilometres away from the cemetery. One might think that the cemetery was

named from the name of the closest hamlet or village but no, as both villages of Saint

Léger and Vraucourt are only one kilometre apart from the cemetery, it is more a sign of a

strange soldier humour on the question of choosing a name for this cemetery,

Dud Corner Cemetery, Loos: After the war, an impressive number of unexploded shells

was found there.

Happy Valley Cemetery, Fampoux: This name was sarcastically given by the British

16 Major GIBSON Edwin, Courage Remembered. London ,HMSO, 1989. Page 202-215

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troops who fought there because they actually had a chance not to get killed and “only” be

injured, which was a one way ticket home after being healed.

C. The graves of the fallen soldiers.

1. The engraved history of the soldier

Each cemetery is built on the same scheme and from far away they might just all

look the same but if we take a closer look, we can see that many things are different from

one cemetery to another: we talked about the name, the size, the different elements, but all

the headstones look the same. What differs with the headstones is the information they

bear: a headstone in a CWGC cemetery is the personal history of the soldier buried

underneath. (Appendix H p.81)

As we can see on the picture

on the right, a headstone bears

different kinds of information.

Starting from the top, there is the

regimental or national badge, always

round and representing the regiment

or nation to which the soldier

belonged. Then is found the service

number of the soldier followed by its

rank. His name with the initial of the

middle name is found below, then

comes the regiment of the soldier and

when known, the date of his death

and his age when he died are

engraved below. In the middle part of

the headstone is found the religious

sign: a cross for the Christians, a

David star for the Jews, and nothing

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Illustration 5: A grave in the Dainville British Cemetery. Credits: author's own collection.

for the atheists, humanists or agnostics. At the very bottom is engraved an epitaph chosen

by the family of the soldier. Muslims and other faith such as Hindus and Sikhs have a

different organisation on their headstones: the engraving “THE FOLLOWING HINDU

SOLDIER OF THE INDIAN ARMY IS HONOURED HERE” and their military identity

(just as a British soldier) are written under a representative sign on their faith: it can be a

sentence written in Hindi, in Arabic, in Gurmukhi17, or even a emblem like the the bell for

the Buddhists, a traditional symbol of wisdom.(Appendix E p.77)

All the graves of the soldiers who fought in the Commonwealth forces have the

same shape and are made of the same material. The headstones are basically rectangles

with a slightly curved top side, measuring 813mm of height, 381mm of length and 76mm

of depth. Other nationalities who fought in the First World War and who are

commemorated by the Commission in the North of France are of different shapes: French

headstones are just plain crosses with the name and the date of the death of the soldier on

it. The Chinese, who helped digging trenches and working on military material support,

have headstones the same shape as the Commonwealth ones, but their names are written in

Chinese and most of the time are not translated. German headstones are almost the same as

the Commonwealth ones but instead of a curved top side, it is a pointing top. The name of

the German soldier is written below an iron cross, symbol of the German army. Polish

graves in the North are usually from the Second World War and have a more oval shape at

the top of the headstone. The name of the Polish soldier is found at the top and below lies

the symbol of Poland: the eagle with a crown. This shape difference makes it easy to spot

the different nationalities in a cemetery.

3. The badges

But if the soldiers of the Dominions have the same headstone with the same

organisation, how can we easily differentiate them? The answer is easy, they all have

different badges on top of their headstones. Each dominion has its own badge while the

United Kingdom has a different badges for every regiment. We just saw that India has a

special way of being commemorated on headstones by the CWGC and therefore is not

included in the illustration below, an illustration that shows the five “permanent” badges of

the Commonwealth armies and an example of a British one:

17 The Sikh alphabet.

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Each badge of the dominion has a significance and depicts a particularity of each

country. The Australian badge, for example is the so-called “Rising Sun” badge, a

reference to the fact the sun never sets on the British Empire. This badge therefore shows a

great particularity of Australia: its geographical distance with the United Kingdom, but at

its creation, it was not intended to represent a sun: what people see as a sun is in reality an

ensemble of bayonets around the crown. On its right, the South African badge is more

obvious: the motto UNION IS STRENGTH with its translation in Afrikaans both encircle

the head of a springbok, a small antelope that was the national symbol of South Africa

during the white minority rule until the end of the Apartheid. The Canadian badge

represents the maple leaf, a national Canadian symbol also found on the Canadian flag

today but not during the First World War. The New Zealand graves bear under its name an

unofficial symbol of the country: the silver fern, an endemic plant of New Zealand.

Newfoundland is characterised with a caribou head, the animal being the symbol of

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Illustration 6: Headstone badges of the Commonwealth armies. Credits: Author's own collection

Newfoundland. The image of the Caribou is also used in bronze statues at four different

Newfoundland memorials, the most famous one being the Beaumont-Hamel Memorial in

the Somme. The badge on the United Kingdom given here as an example is the badge of

the Royal Lancaster Regiment.

Those badges correspond to the army, the infantry and

the artillery that was fighting in the trenches. The First

World War was not only fought in the trenches but also in

the air and at sea. The Air Force and the Navy are also

commemorated by the Commission in the North of France

. There were three Air Forces: The Royal Air Force, The

Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Australian Air

Force. Even though they are from different parts of the

Commonwealth, they share the same badge, unlike the

different armies, as explained earlier. The base of the

badge is the one of the Royal Air Force: an Eagle

encircled by the RAF motto: PER ARDUA AD ASTRA

meaning “Through adversity to the stars”, topped with the

crown and separated by a sprig of laurel. From this, the

Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Australian Air

Force simply added the adjectives “Canadian” and

“Australian” to the badge. The story of the badge for

several dominions is repeated again with the Navy: The

Royal Navy, The Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal

Australian Navy share the same badge: a simple rope and

anchor symbol.

The casualties of the British army account for about 80% of the total casualties of

the Commonwealth forces in the North of France. It is therefore logical that the United

Kingdom does not have just a unique badge for all its soldiers like Canada for example, but

a multitude of badges for each regiment. All regiments have a different badge and the

soldiers were usually proud of the regiment they were fighting with. This spirit of fraternity

is reminded on top of their headstones. During the First World War, the British Army sent

exactly 216 different regiments to the front, from the smallest Yeomanry with less than a

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Illustration 7: Headstone badges of the Air Force and the Army. Credits: Author's own collection

hundred men to the biggest regiment, which was the London Regiment during the First

World War, with 92 battalions. All those regiments of the British Army have a special

badge to be carved on top of their headstones (Appendix I p.82), and if you add the badges

of the other nations, of other faiths, of other wars with other regiments in other countries, it

gives the CWGC a catalogue of more than a thousand signs that can be carved on the

headstones. In those signs is found one of the most prestigious awards that can be received

in the Commonwealth forces: the Victoria Cross. In the North of France, the Victoria Cross

was awarded to 153 soldiers from different parts of the Commonwealth. This award was

given for “most conspicuous bravery, or some daring or pre-eminent act of valour or self-

sacrifice, or extreme devotion to duty in the presence of the enemy.18" and is now engraved

on the headstones of those soldiers.

3. The missing

Those soldiers are part of the ones who were lucky enough to be identified in order

to receive the right information on their headstones, but sometimes, bodies were found and

identifying them turned out to be an impossible task. If a body was found but absolutely no

information could be found about it, the soldier was buried with on its headstone the

inscription: “A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR”. If the nationality was found, this

message became: “A BRITISH (or Canadian, Australian, etc) SOLDIER OF THE GREAT

WAR”. If the regiment or battalion was found, they added it to the sentence, as the rank, if

found too. All those levels also bear the epitaph “KNOWN UNTO GOD”, invented by

Rudyard Kipling. If all the “missing” of the Great War have their name on a memorial of

the CWGC, it means that the unidentified bodies have a grave, with no name on it, and a

name on a memorial, with no grave under it. Some other soldiers almost became part of the

“missing” even after being buried by the Commission: some cemeteries were bombed by

the German shells a short time after they were built, destroying the fragile wooden crosses

(which were to be replaced by headstones). This bombing of cemeteries happened at the

end of the First World War and a little bit during the Second World War. Graves who have

been bombed are either replaced by a small memorial inside the cemetery, bearing the

names of the soldiers' graves which were destroyed. Otherwise, headstones were built near

the wall of the cemetery and on top bear the inscription “BURIED NEAR THIS SPOT” or

18 www.nationalarchives.gov.uk Military Honour and Awards

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“BELIEVED TO BE BURIED IN THIS CEMETERY”. R.Kipling also added an epitaph at

the bottom of those destroyed graves: “THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED

OUT”, a sentence from the Ecclesiasticus (Sirach 44:13). In some cemeteries, the

soldiers are buried extremely close to each other, making the Commission put the

headstones in a continuous row with no space between them. Some soldiers are so close

that they have to share a headstone, with the round badges forming an horizontal “8” and

the information of each soldier piling on top of the other.

4. The epitaphs

The very last information found on a headstone, at the bottom, is the epitaph. About

45% of the graves found in this part of France bear one and the percentage is higher for

officers. The epitaph was to be chosen by the family of the soldier; they were sent a form

asking what sentence they would like to put on the grave of their deceased relative

(Appendix J p.92). The sentence was to be no longer than 66 characters, including the

spaces, because of the space available at the bottom of the headstones. The epitaph was

also at the expense of the family and the fee was of 3 pounds and a half per character. The

form also asked if they wanted a Christian cross to be engraved on the headstone or not.

The price seems small today but at the time it was quite a certain amount of money and

some families just could not afford it. Due to this problem, the Canadian government

decided not to tax the families and to take care of the bill, as the Canadian soldiers buried

in France already gave enough. New Zealand simply decided that if some families could

not afford an epitaph on their headstones, then no New Zealanders should have one,

following the principle of equality that was claimed by the CWGC but not respected here.

The United Kingdom and the other dominions decided to keep it the way it was planned.

Therefore, the headstones without any epitaph are either due to a financial problem, a

failure to trace the next of kin or the will not to have an epitaph on the headstone.

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The personal inscriptions chosen by the families come from the parents or the wife

of a soldier, who lost what was dearest to them. They are very moving and carry different

emotions in just a maximum of 66 characters. To help the families in their choice, the

CWGC gave a list of examples of epitaphs for soldiers. Many chose to go with an example

from the list. Here are a few epitaphs taken from the list that can be found on several

headstones:

REST IN PEACE HE DIED THAT WE MIGHT LIVE

EVER FONDLY REMEMBERED IN LOVING MEMORY

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN PEACE PERFECT PEACE

Other epitaphs are the creation of the families and depict different feelings that the

families felt: grief, duty, patriotism, pacifism or even anger, to name a few. Here are some

epitaphs found on headstones throughout the North of France. They are organized by the

feeling they convey or the goal they have as a sentence written forever on a grave

somewhere in France.

Grief:

From the parents

REMEMBRANCEA FLOWER THAT NEVER FADES

WHEN WATEREDBY A MOTHER'S TEARS

THERE IS A COTTAGE HOMEIN ENGLAND

WHERE HIS MOTHER SITS ANDWEEPS

YOUR MOTHERDOES NOT CEASETO THINK OF YOU

FOR A SINGLE MOMENT

TILL CHILD AND MOTHERMEET AGAIN

MY ONEMY ALLMOTHER

RACHEL BOUCH

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Not many fathers wrote about their son and when they did, duty, pride and

patriotism was included in it. Mothers gave more powerful epitaphs, forgetting about the

war and focusing on the loss of what they cared the most about in the world: their son.

From the wives and children

BILLY DEAR WE MISS YOUBUT IT'S HONOUR ON YOUR NAME

REST IN PEACE TILLWE MEET AGAIN. EMMA & BOYS

SADLY MISSEDBY HIS LONELY WIFE MARY

A BROKEN HEARTEDCHILD AND WIFE

WILL EVER MOURN HIS PRECIOUS LIFE

There are significantly fewer epitaphs from wives than from parents. The reason is

simple: the average age of the soldier during the First World War was 20 years old, many

were even younger because they lied about their age when they enlisted to fight in France,

there are graves of soldiers who were 16, 15 or even 14 when they died in this conflict.

Faith:

AND THE ARMIESWHICH ARE IN HEAVEN

FOLLOWED HIMUPON WHITE HORSES

- From Revelation 15:14

PSALM 144-

A simple epitaph which mentions a psalm starting with “Blessed be the LORD my

strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight...”

CHRISTIANSNEVER SEE EACH OTHER

FOR THE LAST TIME

Many epitaphs referring to faith are extracts from the Bible, others deal with the

question of eternal life as a hope against the reality of never seeing each other again.

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Duty:

MY ONLY BELOVED CHILDYOU HAVE DONE YOUR DUTYI AM WAITING TO MEET YOU

MOTHER

THE CLARION CALLEDHE OBEYED

HIS DUTY NOBLY DONE-

(The Lance Corporal James Holland was executed for cowardice)

Duty was one of the main reason, with patriotism, for the volunteers to enlist or for

the conscripts to have motivation to fight.

Patriotism:

I WAS BRITISH ONE WHO HAS HELPED

TO WRITE AUSTRALIA'S HISTORYIN BLOOD

HE DIED TO HELPTHE MAPLE LEAF TO LIVE

NO KING OR SAINTHAD TOMB SO PROUDAS HE WHOSE FLAG

BECOMES HIS SHROUD

AUSTRALIA IS PROUDOF HER HERO

WHO WAS ONLY A PRIVATETHAT'S ALL

Those men went to fight mainly for their country, as a patriotic act. This patriotic

act is a subject of pride among the families of the soldiers and the conflict played a big part

in writing the rather recent history of those young nations and therefore helped building a

national identity19.

19 As of May 2012, the 20 Canadian dollars bill has the Vimy Memorial drawn on it.

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Anger and pacifism:

SOME DAYGOD'S VOICE WILL SPEAK

AND TELL US WHY

WOE TO THE WORLDSHOULD HE DIE IN VAIN

AN ONLY SON'TO WHAT PURPOSE

IS THIS WASTE?'S.MATT.26.8

FOR PEACEHIS SOUL WAS YEARNING

AND NOW PEACELAPS HIM ROUND

IF THIS IS VICTORY, THENLET GOD STOP ALL WARS

HIS LOVING MOTHER

There was a hidden feeling of waste of young lives in the families after the

slaughter of the First World War, a slaughter that for them, could not be justified by

patriotism, duty or any other reason.

Appeal to stranger:

OH WHY ARE WE DEADWE YOUTH?

ALL YE THAT PASS BYFORGET NOT

STOP TRAVELLERA HERO LIES HERE

LOOK ON US THOU WHO PASS BYFROM OUR DEAD HANDS

THY FREEDOM CAME

GO STRANGERTELL OUR PEOPLE WE LIE HEREHAVING OBEYED THEIR WORLD

ALL YOU WHO PASS PRAY FOR HIS SOUL

This “appeal” to the stranger is of course the words of the relative who, by

“talking” with the people visiting the cemeteries, tries to tell them something regarding

their son or husband. Mixed with a multitude of headstones with simpler epitaphs, those

ones quite attract the eye and make us think about the reaction the families expected the

visitors to have.

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Mentioning France – distance with the grave

AN AUSTRALIAN'S GIFT TO FRANCE

LET NO FOEMANDESECRATE HIS SOIL

HE SLEEPS NOT IN HIS NATIVE LAND

BUT 'NEATH SOME FOREIGN SKIES

AN ENGLISH FLOWERIN A FRENCH GARDEN

FORGET THEM NOTO LAND FOR WHICH THEY FELL

MAY IT GO WELL WITH ENGLANDSTILL GO WELL

Those epitaphs are not only referring to the visitors coming to the cemeteries but

also to the country in which they are buried. Most families will never see the grave of their

relative buried somewhere in France and some ask for the good care of the grave that they

might never be able to maintain themselves, others ask the people of France to be aware of

the loss of beloved husbands and sons who died in a country on the other side of the planet

from where they used to live.

First person speech:

FORGET ME NOT DEAR LANDFOR WHICH I FELL

I CONSIDERED IT AN HONOURTO DIE FOR MY COUNTRY

There are not many examples of first person speech, as the families had to put

themselves in the shoes of the soldiers and give a sentence coming from the soldier and

being addressed to the visitors, not an epitaph from the family addressed to the deceased ,

as the last words they would have told him. The fewness of this kind of epitaph shows that

the principle of making the soldier “speak” was not very popular.

Youth:

YOUTH HAD SCARCELY WRITTENHIS NAME ON HER PAGE

AGE 17 YRS.1 MON. 10 DYS. IN THY KEEPING

OUR FATHER

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ANSWERED HIS COUNTRY'S CALLOCT. 1914. AT THE AGE OF 16

Mentioning the very young age of some soldiers was not just an indication, it was

to show what this war had done: it had killed boys who were not even men yet. As said

earlier, some of the soldiers were as young as 14 when they enrolled, saying they were 18

years old to the officer in charge of registering the volunteers, who “blindly” believed

them. The luckiest ones were denounced by their parents before they left for France. Most

of the other ones now have a CWGC headstone above their head.

Famous quote:

IT IS A FAR, FAR BETTER THINGTHAT I DO

THAN I HAVE EVER DONE-

From Charles Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities.

NATURE MIGHT STAND UPAND SAY TO ALL THE WORLD

THIS WAS A MAN!-

From William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Act5, Scene 5.

THAT THEIR DUSTMAY REBUILD A NATION

AND THEIR SOULSRELIGHT THE STARS

-From Songs Before Sunrise by A.C

Swinburne.

THEY SHALL GROW NOT OLDAS WE THAT ARE LEFT GROW OLD

-From the poem For The Fallen by Laurence

Binyon.

Some families decided to go with a famous quote from English literature, with

sentences often taken out of their context but that suit the soldier's grave. The 1914 poem

For The Fallen by Laurence Binyon also inspired many families. Other parts of this poem

can be found as epitaphs, like: “At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will

remember them.”

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Double epitaphs (brothers or son/father):

ALSO IN MEMORY OFSERJT. WILFRID H.HOLROYD

NORFOLK REGIMENTMISSING OCT. 13TH 1915

-Those two brothers died the same week.

Wilfrid has no known graves and is commemorated on the Loos Memorial to the

Missing.

I KNOWWHERE YOU ARE DEAR LAD

BUT HARD TO SAYYOUR BROTHER IS MISSING

- This young lad's brother is commemorated on the Nieuport Memorial to the Missing.

ONE OF SEVEN BROTHERSWHO SERVED

THREE OF WHOM REST IN FRANCE

THY WILL BE DONE-

In Dartmoor Cemetery, two graves carry the same epitaph: this one, of the Sergeant LEE, 44 years old, and next to him, the one of his

son, the Corporal Frederick LEE. Both died the same day.

As shown by those examples, the War gave some families more than one relative to

mourn and family ties are reminded in epitaphs, or are more discreet, like the very tragic

one of Mrs. Frances LEE (last example), who lost everything: her son and her husband, on

the 5th of September 1916.

Unclassifiable:

SAME MESSAGE

This epitaph is found on Guy Davenport's grave in Vaulx Hill Cemetery, near

Bapaume. The story behind it is not of an answer to a letter or message the soldier might

have sent before he died, unknown to us but known by the soldier and the person

concerned. What really happened here is that the widowed Mrs. Davenport was asked for

the “personal inscription” she would like to put on her husband's headstone. The form was

relayed by the Australian Army, got mixed up with the Imperial War Graves Commission

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and in this confusion the Commission asked again Mrs. Davenport what words she would

like to put. Mrs. Davenport, not knowing that her file had been lost or never received, she

replied to the Commission those words: “Same message”20.

D. The families of the soldiers.

1. The visits of the families

After the war, the families were able to visit the grave of their relative,

commemorated by either a new Commission headstone or by a wooden cross, in

cemeteries that have not been officially built by the Imperial War Graves Commission. The

families would soon be able to see from their own eyes the grave of their son or husband

and to mourn, knowing and having visited the place where he rests. The War Office and the

Secretary of State for War, being Winston Churchill at that time, decided to help the

families in their trip to France21. They were helped with a 50% reduction on boat trips from

any port of the United Kingdom and the Dominions and also enjoyed a 50% reduction of

train fares by the French Railway Company. Those reductions were paid by the Army

Funds, who planned on 40% of the families of the dead soldiers visiting the cemeteries in

the North of France. This kind of journey greatly helped the families in their mourning. But

a different kind of traveller was found visiting the cemeteries: tourists. As early as 1919,

after the end of the war, tourists came to see for themselves the ruins of the North of

France, the famous battlefields and also the cemeteries and memorials being built. This

kind of tourist was not seen well by the families of the soldiers as they associated this trip

with other leisures activities. Some of those tourists were not only there for the “sight” ,

they had a member of their families who had fought in France and wanted to see the reality

of what they were told when those men were lucky enough to go back home safely.

20 JONES Trefor. On Fame's Eternal Camping Ground: A study of First World War epitaphs in the British

cemeteries of the Western Front. Trowbridge: Cromwell Press Ltd, 2007. Page 196.

21 National Archives. Reference CAB/24/103

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2. The visitor's books.

Almost a hundred years after the First World War, the cemeteries and memorials of

the CWGC are still visited by many people, even though the percentage of people having a

relative commemorated there dropped drastically. The visits of the families help with the

act of remembrance and when they leave a cemetery or a memorial after visiting it, some

people leave a word in the visitor's book, that can be found with the register at the entrance

of every site of the commission. The visitor's book are a very interesting source of

information because it can give us data on the number of people who visited a cemetery,

their nationality, and what they had to say about it. Studying what some of the first visitors

of the cemetery and very close member of the families of the soldiers would have also been

interesting to study but unfortunately, the archives have been destroyed and the oldest

pages of the visitor's book available are from 1992. Still, from these contemporary

commentaries we can see that the people visiting the sites are for a great majority British

on a “Remembrance Trip”, from those British people, only a few have relatives buried in

France. There are also people from other parts of the Commonwealth like Canada,

Australia, New Zealand, etc. The last part of visitors are from Belgium, the Netherlands,

Germany, and an incredibly high number of people from the USA, whom we might thought

would be more interested in the history of the landing in Normandy of June 6 1944, but

also visits the battlefields of the First World War. Of course, in those visitors there is a large

part of local people, French people. From time to time, the pages are taken, replaced by

empty ones and studied carefully in the CWGC Office, to check for any commentary

concerning their work. As I discovered, those papers are not archived for a long time and

the reason is simple: if every year, a book of 20 pages is filled in each of the 2,942

cemeteries and memorials in the North of France, and that the Commission is now 95 years

old, the number of pages to archive is astronomical.

People usually give an observation of what they think about the cemetery, have a

thought for the soldiers or about the war while a few give a dedication to a relative that

died during the conflict. To see the differences and common points between the

commentaries given, two kinds of visitor's books will be studied: some from very visited

cemeteries and memorials like the Faubourg d'Amiens Cemetery and Memorial and some

from less famous and more remote cemeteries like the Duisans British Cemetery.

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Near the famous battlefields of the First World War stand immense cemeteries and

memorials of the CWGC, well-known in the Commonwealth countries. In Arras, buses full

of tourists and pupils on a field trip in France stop everyday in the Faubourg d'Amiens

Cemetery and Memorial, which commemorates exactly 38,530 soldiers of all nationalities

involved in the First and Second World War. Most of the people stopping there have no

family link with the soldiers remembered there and in this kind of site, only 5% (C.Winter;

2011) of the visitors leaving a note in the visitor's book mention a specific soldier. Others

give a quick commentary on the remembrance they pay to the soldiers: “God Bless you

all!” , “Thank you” , “Too young to have died”, “I will remember” , write about the war:

“Why?” , “We are thankful that we are able to walk freely here”, “Stop wars for ever!” ,

“What can you say?”, “Let's hope Katie22 never has to see a war” or simply thank the

Commission for the work they have done and still do in the cemeteries: “Well kept”, “Well

maintained”, “Thank you for keeping this cemetery so beautiful”. While studying the

pages archived from major sites of the commission, I could sometimes find the

commentaries from the same persons, who travelled from sites to sites. Their commentary

was usually always the same with a word for the Commission or for the soldiers. With the

visitor's book being available for everyone visiting a site, we might expect some form of

vandalism from non-respectful visitors or teenagers on a school trip they don't care about,

but I have not witnessed any behaviour of that sort in the commentary, as the commentaries

are always very respectful to the soldiers or the Commission. The only exception was a

commentary from a British man who wrote: “I hope French people don't forget our lads

died here!”. As a French student writing on the subject I do believe I am in the good place

to answer and say: No, we do not forget. And, as a matter of fact, some French people gave

a comment in the visitor's book, mostly about the war or about the maintaining of the

cemetery. Some commentaries from French people give advice on what is to replace or to

change in the cemetery, as if they were a little responsible for this cemetery, being on their

land. Others thank the soldiers for what they have done: “Merci mes amis” (Thank you my

friends), “Thank you Canada, la France reconnaissante” (Thank you Canada, France is

grateful). Even French children comment in the visitor's book and give a true and touching

outlook on the cemeteries, without forgetting to mention their names:

“C'est très beau mais très triste” (It is very beautiful but very sad. - Théo, 7 years old)

22 Obviously his daughter.

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“J'apprend l'histoire de l'Europe” (I learn the history of Europe. - Marie, 10 years old)

The visitor's book in the smaller and remote cemeteries are radically different: over

60% (C.Winter;2011) of the commentaries in the visitor's book refer to specific graves and

pay a tribute to the man buried underneath. The smaller the cemetery is, the higher the

percentage of specific commentaries in the visitor's book is. The reason is simple: some

cemeteries are found in the very countryside of Northern France, in places inaccessible

with a car and only contain less than a hundred graves. No tourists would go there unless

they had a specific goal: the grave of a relative. Here are a few examples of the

commentaries they give: This sort of pilgrimage can also be explained with the

“nationalities” of the cemeteries: some only have Canadians graves while some only have

Australian or South-African graves for example. The nationality of the persons

commenting in the visitor's book (almost exclusively people from the country of origin of

the soldiers) show that this pilgrimage is different from a typical remembrance trip in the

North of France: in Memorials like Vimy, which only commemorates Canadians soldiers,

you can see in the commentaries that there are the same range of nationalities as evoked

earlier with visitors in the major sites of the Commission. The persons who mention a

soldier in their commentary tend to give the same kind of tribute in the pages of the

visitor's book. Here are a few examples found in cemeteries:

“Paid pilgrimage to my uncle's grave Alex Mann. Killed 12.10.1916. May he rest in

peace.”

“Great and great-great nephews of CP. L . A . Douglas, 23 Bn Australian Infantry. Grave

G.7. Thank you for the excellent conditions of the cemetery.”

For this last example, the three persons who signed their names were all part of the Royal

Australian Artillery. Other dedications are less formal and more personal, such as this

example: “Last time Sam. Thank you. (visit no.15)”.

But the visits of the families and the finding of a relatives grave would not be

possible if the records of the CWGC had not existed.

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E. The records.

1. A need for the families.

Rudyard Kipling gave a good example of the distress of the families when in need

to know about what happened to their son or husband. The Commission had the duty of

giving the families all the information they had about a certain soldier to the families who

enquired, sometimes to know if this soldier was dead or still alive, or to know where he

was buried. Indexing hundred of thousands of records of deceased soldiers is not an easy

task and many people were hired by the Commission to sort and archive, the records along

with answering any enquiries or questions the families had. In 1922, the Record

Department of the Commission was strong of 132 clerks. Their task was not only to

answer the families and index “simple” records containing only the name, date of death

and place of death of the soldiers, they went further than this. Each soldier had a personal

record containing the same information found on its headstone except the epitaph (added

later) plus information about his family such as the name of the parents, of the widow for

those who were married, the home town and anything else that the Commission could

extract from the form the soldier filled when they enlisted. Soldiers who were awarded the

Victoria Cross had a paragraph added to their record telling about the heroic event that led

this soldier to be awarded with the highest distinction in the Empire.

2. Searching for casualties.

At the very beginning, any enquiry was made by sending a letter to the

Commission, who would answer as quickly and as completely as they could. Help

regarding the site where the soldier is commemorated was also given, in the form of an

explanation on how to get there, how to travel to France and a reminder of the discounts

that was voted by the War Office. This system, while quite expensive for the Commission,

was kept until another mean of communication was democratized: the telephone. Enquiries

could still be made by mail but the families could now give a call and be answered quicker

than by mail. But as this communication arrived quite late in British homes, the families

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calling for an enquiry in the 1960's-1970's were not the same as the widows or parents who

wished to visit a grave right after the war: they were mourning while the latter where for a

majority doing a work of remembrance towards an uncle or a grand-father for example.

Although, they were still families who had to save money for several decades before they

could afford to travel to France to see a grave. Some families never went to see the grave of

their relatives. The use of the phone also allowed some next-of-kin to easily ask about the

care given in a particular cemetery or any information that could make them fell closer to a

lost parent, buried many miles away from home. When the first personal computers

arrived, the CWGC did not hesitate and started computerizing the records of the soldiers.

This allowed them to search for a record more easily and to archive them in less room than

the office filled with a million and a half records of soldiers under the care of the CWGC.

When the enormous task of computerizing every record was finished, the database, called

“The Debt of Honour”, was made available to the public by putting computers in famous

memorials and places where people pay remembrance such as the Thiepval Memorial for

example. This file was found to be extremely practical, as researches could be made by any

piece of information like the rank, the regiment, the battalion, the nationality, the cemetery,

the last or first name, and many others. It also allowed a search of cemeteries and

memorials to give data concerning each cemetery such as the list of casualties, the history

of the cemetery or even indications on how to go to a specific cemetery. Now, this very

useful tool is available on the internet, which means everywhere in the world, at any time,

for free. The fact that the CWGC always improves its services show show a great

adaptation of a public service ran like an international company, with a high regard and

interest in what the Commission call their “customers”23. Almost a hundred years after the

First World War, the Commission still has a lot of work between improving its services,

maintaining the memorials and cemeteries, publishing information on their work and

educational documents for pupils, organizing ceremonies, etc. But sometimes, the

Commission has to change its organisation proven efficient for many years because of

unexpected events, most of the time, missing soldiers were found.

23 CWGC Annual Report 2010-2011

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III. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission today and tomorrow.

A. Finding missing soldiers.

1. Archaeology of the First World War

A good part of the North of France was completely destroyed after the First World

War and if there are so many missing soldiers it is because they have been buried by the

enemy and not reported, or buried by the explosion of a shell or just never found. There are

more than a hundred thousand soldiers whose bodies were never found and whom are still

buried somewhere in the North of France. Their names are commemorated in the different

Memorials to the Missing found here.

French laws makes any entrepreneur wishing to built a new building ask for an

archaeological search throughout the site, if the site was previously a field. Those

preventive searches in France often give birth to Gallo Roman villages been discovered or

any other archaeological sites, but in the North of France, what is usually found are

remains of the First World War: trenches conserved in the mud, tanks found in a river, and

sometimes, the graves of missing soldiers. Major G.L.Philips, the Imperial War Graves

Commission Australian Representative in France already stated in 1927 that: “A great

number must still be in the ground and too deep to be located by ploughing or probing.”.

He was right, there are, still today soldiers, of any nationalities, buried in unknown places

in the North of France. When they are found, they are either by themselves, alone in the

earth or in common graves which had never been found. Sometimes entire trenches were

blown up by a mine and the bodies are too scattered to ever be found. About twelve

soldiers are found, every year, in the North of France. Knowing that there are potentially

670,000 bodies scattered along the Western Front, with about 120,000 being soldiers of the

Commonwealth show the extremely thin chance of ever finding all the missing soldiers.

But if those soldiers are somehow buried and commemorated on a memorial, why then

search for them almost a hundred years later? The answer is that archaeologists do not

search for them, they just happen to find them while doing preventive archaeology, and

when they find a common grave or wild burial, they work on the bodies to first identify the

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soldiers as much as they can and try to learn about why they are buried there (Appendix K

p.93) . Some bodies still bear valuable information about the conflict and the different

battles in which they took part. Once done, the archaeologists do not leave the bodies in

their previous state: they have been unearthed, it is now time time to give them a proper

burial and a decent grave. The Commission takes it from there.

2. The role of the Commission.

For the past ten years, many soldiers of the Commonwealth have been found in the

North of France and are now buried in cemeteries like Point-du-Jour Cemetery in Athies or

even Monchy-le-Preux Cemetery. In 2008, 250 sets of remains were found by an Oxford

archaeologists team near Fromelles, where the Australians fought during WW1.This team

worked for two years on revealing the bodies of the soldiers and slowly trying to identify

them. Modern methods were used to identify them, such as x-rays or DNA sampling.

Those scientific data were used along with the records of the Commission and the

knowledge available on the different battalions and companies that fought near Fromelles.

Families who might have a link with one of the soldiers found in Fromelles were

encouraged to come forward and give a DNA sample. 94 successful identifications were

made and many are still being worked on as this dissertation is being written.

When the unveiling of the soldiers was done, the Commission had the task to find

new burials for the 250 soldiers found. Adding them to other cemeteries nearby was not

possible: they had to create a new cemetery, a task that the Commission had not done in

fifty years. The chosen site was a little further away that the actual site of the finding but it

offered a better access and a better view. This is how, in July 2010, was completed the

Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery.

A funeral ceremony was to be held for the soldiers of the Royal Regiment of

Fusiliers and of the Australian Army. The service took place on February 21 2011 and was

the same that would have been read as those who were buried during the First World War.

Ceremonies are an important part of remembrance and are held every year in almost

each cemetery and memorial of the CWGC in the North of France.

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B. The Ceremonies.

1. Annual ceremonies

In each cemetery there is an annual commemoration that takes place on the 11 th of

November, the date the armistice was signed between the belligerents. But in small

cemeteries there cannot physically be a CWGC ceremony every year. The solution is to

couple those ceremonies with the ones taking place in each village at the local Monument

aux Morts (Monument to the Dead). Let's take the example of a small city near Arras:

Dainville, where there is a CWGC site: the Dainville British Cemetery. In Dainville, every

year, on the 11th of November, two ceremonies take place with the participation of the

town council, the veterans, the local schoolchildren and British people from the twin city of

Whistable, near Dover. The first ceremony is at the Monument aux Morts, where a speech

is given and the children sing a song from the French soldiers of the First World War: La

Madelon. After this ceremony the crowd moves to the nearby Dainville British Cemetery

where another speech is given and the children sing another song, but from the British

soldiers this time. The song is It's a long way to Tipperary, a very famous British Army

song. Most cemeteries are built in small villages and with this system, the CWGC is sure

that almost every cemetery will be honoured at least once a year.

2. Special ceremonies

In larger cemeteries the 11th of November is of course a day where ceremonies take

place, but in the form of a rather important event as those ceremonies and memorials hold

more names and are more visited than smaller ones. These sites are the witness of big

ceremonies held every year for the armistice but are also places where other anniversaries

take place: the anniversaries of the Battles. For example, the Thiepval Memorial holds

every year a ceremony on the 1st of July to commemorate the beginning of one of the

bloodiest battles of the First World War: the Battle of the Somme, which began on July 1 st

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1916. Other sites nearby also hold ceremonies on this day: The Newfoundland Memorial of

Beaumont Hamel and the Ulster Tower Memorial24. The Delville Wood Memorial follows

this concept and hosts a ceremony every year around the 10 th of July, date of the

anniversary of the Delville Wood Battle, which took place in July 1916. The Delville Wood

Memorial is a South-African Memorial and such commemorations become more a national

commemoration rather than a Commonwealth event. A good example of this

nationalisation of the ceremonies and anniversaries is the Vimy Memorial, which every

year honours the Canadian soldiers who fell during the Battle of Vimy Ridge. This

ceremony is held every year on the 9th of April, the anniversary of the Battle that took place

there between the 9th of April and the 12th of April 1917. The South-Africans have a

special ceremony, the Canadians too, the Britons are more dedicated to the date of the

armistice of 1918, but what about the Australians and the New Zealanders? The national

Memorial Day of both countries is Anzac25 Day and is on the 25th of April, the date

corresponding to the first battle the Australians and New Zealanders fought in Gallipoli, in

Turkey, the 25th of April 1915. In the North of France Anzac Day is celebrated with a dawn

service at the Australian Memorial of Villers-Bretonneux, a village in the Somme that was

freed by the Anzacs, by a pure coincidence, on the 25th of April 1918. The ceremony goes

on all day with other speeches and service given in different Anzac Memorials such as the

one in Bullecourt (Appendix L p.97).

Because the CWGC and the governments of the countries involved organize rather

large events for the anniversaries of the battles, it is expected from them to organize even

larger events to celebrate a “special” number such as the 90th , 95th or even 100th

anniversary of each and each battle. In the past ten years there has been many occasions to

celebrate those battles in a special way. For example, about two months before the

publication of this dissertation, on the 9th of April 2012, 5000 Canadian students travelled

to Vimy Ridge to celebrate the 95th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge (Appendix M

p.98). Five years before, in 2007, Elizabeth II, Queen of England and head of the

Commonwealth of Nations, visited the Vimy Memorial along with French Prime Minister

Dominique de Villepin, in a ceremony for the 90th Anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

About 20,000 persons attended the ceremony and half of them were Canadians. During this

24 A ceremony also takes place at the Lochnager Crater on July 1st but it is a private site and not a CWGC site.

25 Australian and New Zealand Army Corps

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day, the Queen also visited the Arras Memorial, on the same site as the Faubourg d'Amiens

Cemetery in Arras.

There are not only “planned” ceremonies that take place in the CWGC cemeteries

in the North of France, as seen earlier, the newly built cemetery of Fromelles was home of

a service and a commemoration right after its construction. As bodies of soldiers continue

to be found, burial ceremonies keep being held in some cemeteries. For example, the

Fromelles Cemetery will host a ceremony for the nine soldiers recently found buried near

the site. The service will take place on July 20 2012.

In the crowd of the persons attending the different ceremonies are found people

from all over the world: local residents of course, British, Canadians, Australians and many

others. Those persons come in the North of France to pay respect and remembrance to the

fallen soldiers of course, but after almost a hundred years after the War, the grief gave

place to a heavy sense of remembrance. This remembrance usually takes the form of a trip

in Belgium and in the North of France by families from countries of the Commonwealth.

As shown earlier with the extracts from the visitor's books, some people wish to visit

several sites and learn more about the conflict when they are in France.

C. The tourism of the battlefields and the war graves.

1.Planning a trip to the memorials, cemetery and warsites.

Every year, many people visit the sites of the CWGC. They mainly go to find a

relative's grave and on the way will stop at different memorials and historic sites of the

First World War, will visit museums, go on guided tours, etc. Everything is done to

facilitate their journey throughout the North of France: the direction to each cemetery is

given thanks to a very recognisable green sign with the name of the cemetery written in

white letters, in the most famous sites such as the Somme and Arras for example, there are

circuits organised for the visitors. In the Somme it is called the Circuit of Remembrance. It

goes from Péronne to Albert or vice-versa and is indicated by signs recognisable thanks to

the poppy on it. This route goes through the main memorials and cemeteries of the Somme:

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it starts with a visit of the Historial de la Grande Guerre26 of Péronne and continues with

the visit of Longueval (Australian Memorial), Delville Wood (South-African Memorial),

Thiepval (Commonwealth Memorial), Beaumont Hamel (Newfoundland Memorial), The

Ulster Tower (Northern Ireland Memorial) and ends in the town of Albert. In each site a

guided tour can be organized or a MP3 player given to know more about the history of the

site. Planning such a trip to the North of France is not difficult but can be quite stressful for

people who fear they won't find accommodations or will lose a lot of time because they do

not know the language. They must not worry, a high majority of accommodations around

the CWGC sites realized where their customers came from and adapted to it: they speak

English, offer British breakfast in hotels and have names like “Le Canberra” in

Bullecourt27 or “Le Canada” a hotel restaurant decorated with red maple leaves, found in

Neuville Saint Vaast, a village right outside of the Vimy Ridge Memorial.

Other solutions exists for the visitors who wish not to worry about anything.

2. Organized tours on the battlefields of France

People who do not want to plan out their trip in the North of France prefer to turn

themselves towards professionals of the tourism of the battlefields. With their experience,

knowledge and low fares in hotels and restaurants they take every year several buses full of

tourists wishing to visit the main sites of the Great War. It is a rather cheap way to travel

and discover the Great War in the North of France if you don't mind being with a group

and are fine with the fact that you might not be able to see the grave of a relative, as the bus

cannot take a detour for each of the passengers wishing to stop in a particular cemetery. For

those who mind, there are also more expensive but more private tours, with small groups

and a personal guide for example. The most expensive ones are private tours, with a guide

that takes you and only you wherever you want. All you have to do is enjoy the trip.

A great number of people from different countries visit the sites of the CWGC each

year, even almost a century after the war. But will it be the same in another century?

26 “History Museum of the Great War”27 In Bullecourt is found the Australian Memorial called “The Digger”, homage to the Australians who dug

the trenches.

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D. The future of the Commission

1. The modernization of the Commission.

The Commission today is a strong, well-oiled international organisation funded by

the countries involved in the war. The maintenance and care of the cemeteries and

memorials have a certain cost. But when dealing with remembrance and honouring the

soldiers who fell for their country in a foreign land, the cost of the maintenance is not a

debatable subject. Furthermore, the modernization of the techniques improves the work of

the Commission and reduces the cost of the maintenance. As an example, at the beginning

of the building of the cemetery, each headstone had to be carved by hand, a long work that

necessitated many carvers. Today, the headstones made are only replacement of old ones

that became unreadable and only exceptionally, new headstones for soldiers recently found.

And those headstones are carved thanks to a computerized machine that carves a headstone

in a few minutes with an extreme precision. Even replacing panels at the memorials

became an easy task. The use of new tools also helps in maintaining and cleaning better,

faster and for a cheaper price.

The launching of the internet website of the Commission also helped the finances

due to the fact that searching for a relative can be done easily on the website, and not on

the phone or by mail any more. Each cemetery in the file “A Debt of Honour” is also

linked with its location on Google Maps®.

Even if the Commission cares for the graves of soldiers, and is not an international

private company, they still find a way to innovate and modernize their system, the records,

their communication with the visitors, etc.

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2. Remembrance

Another example of innovation from the Commission are the DVDs and the leaflets

they edited, some are made for general information, some are more precise while some are

educational tools to be used in school by children. Through the use of a DVD and a story,

children can be made aware of what the First World War was and what the Commission

does to keep honouring the dead who paid the ultimate sacrifice. Remembrance is

something that needs to be taught and many pupils go on field trips with their school to

visit the Commission's sites. Canadians are extremely proud of the Vimy Ridge Memorial

and as shown in April 2012, young Canadians do not hesitate to spend a lot of money to

cross the ocean and pay a tribute to the soldiers fallen there. What is happening is that the

sites built for the families of the soldiers to visit are now national sites of memory of the

slaughter that the Great War was. People pay a tribute to all the men who died when they

visit a site, not only to one man any more, a man that was for most a great or a great-great

uncle.

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Conclusion

Half a million men. Half a million men fighting for the Commonwealth died in the

North of France. In four years of war, the countries of the Commonwealth involved paid a

high price their entry in this global conflict.

At the outbreak of the war, the British and the members of its Empire who fought

alongside decided that they would do everything to honour their dead in the best way

possible. It started in 1917 with the creation of the Imperial War Graves Commission by

Sir Fabian Ware and still goes on today. Thanks to their values and the principles they

applied, the families of the soldiers were made sure that their sons and husbands would

have the resting place they deserve: buried where they fell, between comrades, without any

distinction of race, age or rank. Those principles were applied partially through the design

of the cemeteries and memorials to the missing: park-like cemetery, with rows of white

headstones surrounded by small of white stones and red bricks, sometimes shadowed by a

weeping willow or an oak tree, with the Stone of Remembrance and the Cross of Sacrifice

watching over them. The missing soldiers were not forgotten, and instead of an empty

grave they were given a place on one of the majestic memorials that stand high in the sky

of Northern France. Today, the beauty and serenity that lies in those cemeteries and

memorials shows once again the hard work and care given by the workers of the

Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The families of the soldiers were the first

witnesses of the harmony of the design that each site gave and more than 90 years after

their creation, they still look as peaceful and well-maintained. Still today, the 2,942 sites of

the Commission found in the North of France are not forgotten and thanks to what is

engraved on each headstones, the soldiers are remembered too. Visits from the families and

other people played a important role in the act of remembrance, an act clearly expressed

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during the different ceremonies that take place every year. Remembrance for the fallen

soldiers of the Great War is still as strong today as it was before, even though the grief is

gone.

Remembrance in the future will therefore be more a mass communion of the

incredible number of young life wasted in a useless war rather than an individual

commemoration from each family, for the soldiers who still have relatives. This is why the

commemorations and acts of remembrance will still continue even a hundred years from

today, because the fallen soldiers of the First World War are the symbol of the horror of the

war and the damages conflicts can create. Those war cemeteries are today not just simple

cemeteries, they are symbols of peace.

Those symbols of peace are not hidden, they are clearly visible and when I drive

around Arras or Lens, I encounter many cemeteries and I always tell myself “People fought

here. People died here. It was a living Hell.”. But trying to imagine what this small village,

this valley, this hill, used to be like during four years of war is an extremely difficult task.

We cannot imagine the horrors of the Great War, but we are reminded all the time that it

happened here by the number of places dedicated to the war scattered all over the Western

Front, places such as military cemeteries of different nations, memorials, museums, etc.

But there are reminders of the Great War that are still hidden, buried in the fertile soil of

the Flanders and Artois: missing soldiers, buried trenches, unexploded shells, bullets, guns,

and many other items. For example, I recently found a cap badge of the Royal Engineers

Corps while gardening ( Appendix N p.99), a lucky found, but it could have been a shell,

which would have maybe exploded when hit by the spade... The number of items left in the

ground by the First World War is incredible and archaeologists working in the North of

France are almost certain to find bodies or objects from the Great War when studying a

site. What is left underground raises many questions: what should we do with the shells

found ? We cannot keep on stocking them forever. The bodies discovered are buried in

military cemeteries today but what will happen to them in a century or two when they are

found? But mainly, the question is: what else can we learn that we do not already know

about the First World War from those buried items? Probably a lot.

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Bibliography

Primary sources:

Documents from the British National Archive:

– CAB/24/95 CHURCHILL Winston. Memorials on Battlefields. The Prime Minister

Cabinet, November 1919.

– CAB/24/103 CHURCHILL Winston. Travelling concessions for relatives visiting

graves of the fallen in France and Belgium. The Prime Minister Cabinet, April 1920.

– CAB/24/105 W. BURDETT COUTS War Graves. Statement of Reasons in support of

the Imperial War Graves Commission. House of Commons, April 1920.

– CAB/24/172 The War Office The Imperial War Graves Commission. The Prime

Minister Cabinet, February 1925.

– CAB/24/236 The War Office Anglo-German-French War Graves Agreements. The

Prime Minister Cabinet, July 1936.

Monographs:

• KIPLING Rudyard. The Graves of the fallen. London : H.M. Stationary Office, 1919.

• Guides illustrés Michelin des champs de bataille (1914-1918) Arras, Lens, Douai et les

batailles d'Artois, Clermont-Ferrand: Michelin, 1920.

• Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Cemeteries and memorials in Belgium and

Northern France, Clermont-Ferrand: Michelin, 2008.

• La Voix Du Nord. La leçon de mémoire des jeunes Canadiens. April 10 2012. N*21284.

Page 2-3.

• Leaflets and intern procedure documents from the Commonwealth War Graves

Commission Office, Beaurains, 2012.

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Secondary sources:

• AMERY Colin, RICHARDSON Margaret, and STAMP Gavin. Lutyens, the work of the

English architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) : Hayward Gallery London SE1, 18

November 1981-31 January 1982.

• DESFOSSES Yves, JACQUES Alain and PRILAUX Gilles. Great War Archaeology.

Rennes: Editions Ouest-France, 2009

• Major GIBSON Edwin. Courage Remembered: The Story Behind the Construction and

Maintenance of the Commonwealth's Military Cemeteries and Memorials of the Wars of

1914-18 and 1939-45. London : HMSO, 1989.

• GRAILLES Bénedicte Mémoires de pierre : les monuments aux morts de la première

guerre mondiale dans le Pas-de-Calais. Arras. Archives départementales du Pas-de-Calais,

1992.

• JONES Trefor. On Fame's Eternal Camping Ground: A study of First World War epitaphs

in the British cemeteries of the Western Front. Trowbridge: Cromwell Press Ltd, 2007.

• KIPLING Rudyard. War Stories and Poems, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

• LONGWORTH Philip. The Unending Vigil: the history of the Commonwealth War

Graves Commission. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military. 1985.

• RIVE Philippe. Les monuments aux morts de la Première guerre mondiale, Paris :

Mission permanente aux commémorations et à l'information historique, 1991.

• SUMMERS Julie. Remembering Fromelles: A new cemetery for a new century. CWGC

Publishing, 2010.

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• WINTER Jay Souvenir de la Grande Guerre dans l'histoire culturelle britannique depuis

les années soixante, Paris: Issor-Credhess, 2006.

Master's dissertation:

• PIETRZAK Karine. Le monument commémoratif du Canada à Vimy. Villeneuve d'Ascq,

2001.

Periodical:

• WINTER Caroline. First World War Cemeteries: Insights from Visitor Books. Tourism

Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment Volume

13, Issue 3, 2011. pp 462-479.

Internet sources

• BAKER Chris. “The British Army of 1941-1918”. The Long Long Trail – The British

Army in the Great War. 1996 <http://www.1914-1918.net/army.htm>

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission. “Casualties database”,

<http://www.cwgc.org/search-for-war-dead.aspx>

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission .“Cemetery search”

<http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery.aspx>

• DUFFY Michael. “Battlefield maps – Western Front”, FirstWorldWar.com, August 22nd

2009

<http://www.firstworldwar.com/maps/westernfront.htm>

• HEARD Terry and WHITTAM Brent. “Regimental Badge Archive”. WW1 Cemeteries.

1998

<http://www.ww1cemeteries.com/regimentalarchive/regimental_archive_mainpage.htm>

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• MCCANN Mick. “Photographs of the Fallen”. British War Graves.

<http://www.britishwargraves.co.uk/page35.htm>

• McMaster University Libraries “World War 1 Military Maps & Aerial Photography,

France and Belgium”, April 1st 2009.

<http://library.mcmaster.ca/maps/ww1/ndx5to40.htm>

• MORGAN Tom. “The Commonwealth War Graves Commission – Area France”. The

Hellfire Corner. August 1996.

<http://www.fylde.demon.co.uk/cwgc.htm>

• The Great War 1914-1918 “WW1 Battlefield of the Western Front”

<http://www.greatwar.co.uk/places/ww1-western-front.htm>

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Table of contents

Acknowledgements................................................................................................................2

Summary.................................................................................................................................3

Introduction............................................................................................................................4

I. The History of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission............................................8

A. The British Empire in the Great War......................................................................8

1. The casualties of the Empire................................................................8

2. The need for the families to know......................................................11

B. The creation of the Imperial War Graves Commission........................................13

1. The founders of the Commission.......................................................13

2. The philosophy of the Commission...................................................14

C. The decisions taken at the end of the War.............................................................14

1. Architecture .......................................................................................14

2. Finance...............................................................................................16

II. The Cemeteries and Memorials in the North of France...................................................18

A. The implantations...................................................................................................18

1. Worldwide and in the North of France...............................................18

2. The particular case of the North of France ........................................19

B. How a cemetery is made........................................................................................21

1. The organisation.................................................................................21

2. The atmosphere..................................................................................24

3. The names..........................................................................................25

C. The graves of the fallen soldiers.............................................................................27

1. The engraved history of the soldier....................................................27

3. The badges.........................................................................................28

3. The missing........................................................................................31

4. The epitaphs ......................................................................................32

D. The families of the soldiers.....................................................................................40

1. The visits of the families....................................................................40

2. The visitor's books..............................................................................41

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E. The records..............................................................................................................44

1. A need for the families.......................................................................44

2. Searching for casualties......................................................................44

III. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission today and tomorrow. ...........................46

A. Finding missing soldiers........................................................................................46

1. Archaeology of the First World War..................................................46

2. The role of the Commission. .............................................................47

B. The Ceremonies......................................................................................................48

1. Annual ceremonies.............................................................................48

2. Special ceremonies.............................................................................48

C. The tourism of the battlefields and the war graves................................................50

1.Planning a trip to the memorials, cemetery and war sites...................50

2. Organized tours on the battlefields of France....................................51

D. The future of the Commission...............................................................................52

1. The modernization of the Commission..............................................52

2. Remembrance ....................................................................................53

Conclusion............................................................................................................................54

Bibliography.........................................................................................................................56

Table of contents...................................................................................................................60

Table of illustrations.............................................................................................................61

Appendices...........................................................................................................................63

Table of appendices..............................................................................................................64

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Table of illustrations

Illustration 1: Map of the the Western Front with repartitions of the different armies.

Credits: www.greatwar.co.uk..................................................................................................8

Illustration 2: The Cross of Sacrifice (left) and the Stone of Remembrance (right) in a

cemetery................................................................................................................................16

Illustration 3: Map of the Cemeteries and Memorials in the North of France. Credits:

Philip Longworth in “The Unending Vigil” (see bibliography)...........................................19

Illustration 4: Plan of the Faubourg D'Amiens Cemetery in Arras. www.cwgc.org............23

Illustration 5: A grave in the Dainville British Cemetery. Credits: author's own collection.

27

Illustration 6: Headstone badges of the Commonwealth armies. Credits: Author's own

collection..............................................................................................................................29

Illustration 7: Headstone badges of the Air Force and the Army. Credits: Author's own

collection..............................................................................................................................30

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Appendices

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Table of appendices

Appendix A: Burial of British soldiers on the battlefield. .........................................64

Appendix B: Some memorials of the Commission in the North of France................65

B.1: The Thiepval Memorial................................................................................66

B.2 The Vimy Ridge Memorial............................................................................66

B.3 The Ulster Tower ..........................................................................................67

B.4 The Arras Memorial and the Faubourg d'Amiens Cemetery........................69

B.5 The Newfoundland Memorial of Beaumont Hamel......................................70

B.6 The South-African Memorial of Delville Wood............................................72

B.7 The Vis en Artois Memorial ..........................................................................73

Appendix C: The Stone of Remembrance in the Thiepval Memorial........................74

Appendix D: Adolf Hitler at the Vimy Memorial......................................................76

Appendix E: Graves of soldiers of different religions and nationalities....................77

Appendix F: Commonwealth and German grave side by side. .................................79

Appendix G: Entrance of the Commission's office in Beaurains...............................80

Appendix H: Organisation of a headstone.................................................................81

Appendix I: Badges of the British Army (non-exhaustive list)..................................82

Appendix J: Personal inscription form.......................................................................92

Appendix K: British soldiers found near Arras..........................................................93

Appendix L: ANZAC Day ceremony in Bullecourt...................................................97

Appendix M: Canadian students at the Vimy Memorial, April 2012.........................98

Appendix N: Cap badge of the Royal Engineers.......................................................99

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Appendix A: Burial of British soldiers on the battlefield.

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Credits: Imperial War Museum

Appendix B: Some memorials of the Commission in the North of France

B.1: The Thiepval Memorial

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Credits: author's own collection

B.2 The Vimy Ridge Memorial

Credits: Juliette Lebrun

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B.3 The Ulster Tower


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B.4 The Arras Memorial and the Faubourg d'Amiens Cemetery


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B.5 The Newfoundland Memorial of Beaumont Hamel


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B.6 The South-African Memorial of Delville Wood


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B.7 The Vis en Artois Memorial


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Appendix C: The Stone of Remembrance in the Thiepval Memorial


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Appendix D: Adolf Hitler at the Vimy Memorial

Credits: www.ww2talk.com

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Appendix E: Graves of soldiers of different religions and nationalities


Chinese grave Indian grave (Hindu)

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Indian grave (Muslim) Indian grave (Sikh)

French grave American grave

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Appendix F: Commonwealth and German grave side by side.


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Appendix G: Entrance of the Commission's office in Beaurains


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Appendix H: Organisation of a headstone


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Appendix I: Badges of the British Army (non-exhaustive list)

Credits: author's own collection and some from http://www.ww1cemeteries.com/regimentalarchive/regimental_badge_archive1.htm

1st Royal Dragoons 1st (The King's) Dragoon Guards

1st Life Guards 2nd Life Guards

2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen's Bays)

2nd Dragoons (Royal Scots Greys)

3rd (The King's Own) Hussars

4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

5th (Princess Charlotte of Wales's) Dragoon

Guards

5th (Royal Irish) Lancers

10th (The Prince of Wales's Own Royal)

Hussars

13th Hussars

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16th (The Queen's) Lancers

17th (The Duke of Cambridge's Own)

Lancers

18th (The Queen Mary's Own) Hussars

Alexandra, Princess of Wales' Own (Yorkshire

Regiment)

Army Cyclist Corps Army Pay Department Army Ordnance Corps Army Service Corps

Army Veterinary Corps Coldstream Guards Corps of Military Police Corps of Royal Engineers

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Grenadier Guards Guards Machine Gun Regiment

Honourable Artillery Company

Irish Guards

Labour Corps Leicestershire Yeomanry ('Prince

Albert's Own')

Lothians and Border Horse Yeomanry

Machine Gun Corps

Northamptonshire

YeomanryNorthumberland

Yeomanry (Hussars)Oxfordshire Yeomanry

(Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars)

Prince Albert's (Somersetshire Light

Infantry)

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Princess Charlotte of Wales's (Royal

Berkshire Regiment)

Princess Louise's (Argyll and Sutherland

Highlanders)

Princess Victoria's (Royal Irish Fusiliers)

Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service

Royal Army Medical Corps

Royal East Kent Yeomanry (The Buffs)

Royal Field Artillery Royal Guernsey Militia

Royal Horse Artillery Royal Marine Light

InfantrySeaforth Highlanders

(Ross-shire Buffs, The Duke of Albany's)

South Irish Horse

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The Bedfordshire Regiment

The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders)

The Border Regiment The Cambridgeshire Regiment

The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles)

The Cheshire Regiment The Connaught Rangers The Devonshire Regiment

The Dorsetshire Regiment

The Duke of Cambridge's Own

(Middlesex Regiment)

The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry

The Duke of Edinburgh's (Wiltshire

Regiment)

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The Duke of Wellington's (West Riding Regiment)

The Durham Light Infantry

The East Lancashire Regiment

The East Surrey Regiment

The East Yorkshire Regiment

The Essex Regiment The Gloucestershire Regiment

The Gordon Highlanders

The Herefordshire Regiment

The Highland Light Infantry

The Inns of Court Training Corps

The King's (Liverpool Regiment)

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The King's (Shropshire Light Infantry)

The King's Own (Royal Lancaster Regiment)

The King's Own (Yorkshire Light

Infantry)

The King's Own Scottish Borderers

The King's Royal Rifle Corps

The Lancashire Fusiliers

The Leicestershire Regiment?

The London Regiment (Artist Rifles)

The London Regiment (Rifle Brigade)

The London Regiment (Post Office Rifles)

The London Regiment (Prince of Wales' Own Civil Service Rifles)

The London Regiment (Queen's Westminster

Rifles)

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The London Regiment (London Scottish)

The London Regiment (Kensington Battalion)

The London Regiment (London Irish Rifles)

The London Regiment (7th Battalion)

The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment

The Manchester Regiment

The Monmouthshire Regiment

The Norfolk Regiment

The Northamptonshire Regiment

The Northumberland Fusiliers

The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light

Infantry

The Prince of Wales's (North Staffordshire

Regiment)

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The Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians)

The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire

Regiment)

The Prince of Wales's Volunteers (South

Lancashire Regiment)

The Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment)

The Queen's Own (Royal West Kent

Regiment)

The Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders

The Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort's Own)

The Royal Fusiliers

The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers

The Royal Irish Regiment

The Royal Irish Rifles The Royal Munster Fusiliers

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The Royal Scots Fusiliers

The Royal Sussex Regiment

The Royal Warwickshire Regiment

The Royal Welsh Fusiliers

The Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment)

The South Staffordshire Regiment

The South Wales Borderers

The Suffolk Regiment

The York and Lancaster Regiment

Tyneside Scottish (from Northumberland

Fusiliers)

Welsh Guards The Green Howards

Those pictures represent some of the badges that can be found carved on graves in the North of France.

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Appendix J: Personal inscription form

Credits: David Avery

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Appendix K: British soldiers found near Arras

Credits: “Great War Archaeology”, DESFOSSES Yves. 2009.

Notice the persistence of leather in the fact that the soldiers still have their boots on.

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Appendix L: ANZAC Day ceremony in Bullecourt.


Warren Snowdon, Australian Minister for Veterans' Affairs, at the ANZAC

Day ceremony in Bullecourt, 2012.

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Appendix M: Canadian students at the Vimy Memorial, April 2012.

Credits: Pascal Bonniere, La Voix du Nord

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Appendix N: Cap badge of the Royal Engineers

Credits: author's own collection.

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The Commonwealth War Graves in the North of France

-

Benoit Dambrine

Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2012

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