Université Lille 3 Première année de Master Enseignement de l'anglais The Commonwealth War Graves 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 Page 3 of 95
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 Page 4 of 95
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 1425 1 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 Page 5 of 95
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 CWGC 3 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. Page 6 of 95
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. Page 7 of 95
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. Illustration 1: Map of the the Western Front with repartitions of the different armies. Credits: www.greatwar.co.uk 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: Page 8 of 95
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. Page 9 of 95
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. Page 10 of 95
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 policy 4 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 Page 11 of 95
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 Page 12 of 95
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 Page 13 of 95
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 Page 14 of 95
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 it 9. 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 above 9 French Military Cemeteries use Christian crosses for most of the soldiers and flat stones for Muslim and Jewish soldiers. Page 15 of 95
Illustration 2: The Cross of Sacrifice (left) and the Stone of Remembrance (right) in a cemetery. 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. Page 16 of 95
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. Page 17 of 95
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. Page 18 of 95
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: Illustration 3: Map of the Cemeteries and Memorials in the North of France. Credits: Philip Longworth in The Unending Vigil (see bibliography) 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 Page 19 of 95
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 4 th of August 1914 to the 31 of August 1921 for the First World War and from the 3 rd 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. Page 20 of 95
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 bombdisposal 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 Page 21 of 95
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. Page 22 of 95
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 Page 23 of 95
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 Page 24 of 95
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 difficult 15. 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. Page 25 of 95
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 Page 26 of 95
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 Illustration 5: A grave in the Dainville British Cemetery. Credits: author's own collection. Page 27 of 95
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. Page 28 of 95
Illustration 6: Headstone badges of the Commonwealth armies. Credits: Author's own collection 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 Page 29 of 95
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 Illustration 7: Headstone badges of the Air Force and the Army. Credits: Author's own collection 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 Page 30 of 95
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 selfsacrifice, 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 Page 31 of 95
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. Page 32 of 95
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 REMEMBRANCE A FLOWER THAT NEVER FADES WHEN WATERED BY A MOTHER'S TEARS THERE IS A COTTAGE HOME IN ENGLAND WHERE HIS MOTHER SITS AND WEEPS YOUR MOTHER DOES NOT CEASE TO THINK OF YOU FOR A SINGLE MOMENT TILL CHILD AND MOTHER MEET AGAIN MY ONE MY ALL MOTHER RACHEL BOUCH Page 33 of 95
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 YOU BUT IT'S HONOUR ON YOUR NAME REST IN PEACE TILL WE MEET AGAIN. EMMA & BOYS SADLY MISSED BY HIS LONELY WIFE MARY A BROKEN HEARTED CHILD 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 ARMIES WHICH ARE IN HEAVEN FOLLOWED HIM UPON 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... CHRISTIANS NEVER 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. Page 34 of 95
Duty: MY ONLY BELOVED CHILD YOU HAVE DONE YOUR DUTY I AM WAITING TO MEET YOU MOTHER THE CLARION CALLED HE 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 HISTORY IN BLOOD HE DIED TO HELP THE MAPLE LEAF TO LIVE NO KING OR SAINT HAD TOMB SO PROUD AS HE WHOSE FLAG BECOMES HIS SHROUD AUSTRALIA IS PROUD OF HER HERO WHO WAS ONLY A PRIVATE THAT'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. Page 35 of 95
Anger and pacifism: SOME DAY GOD'S VOICE WILL SPEAK AND TELL US WHY WOE TO THE WORLD SHOULD HE DIE IN VAIN AN ONLY SON 'TO WHAT PURPOSE IS THIS WASTE?' S.MATT.26.8 FOR PEACE HIS SOUL WAS YEARNING AND NOW PEACE LAPS HIM ROUND IF THIS IS VICTORY, THEN LET 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 DEAD WE YOUTH? ALL YE THAT PASS BY FORGET NOT STOP TRAVELLER A HERO LIES HERE LOOK ON US THOU WHO PASS BY FROM OUR DEAD HANDS THY FREEDOM CAME GO STRANGER TELL OUR PEOPLE WE LIE HERE HAVING 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. Page 36 of 95
Mentioning France distance with the grave AN AUSTRALIAN'S GIFT TO FRANCE LET NO FOEMAN DESECRATE HIS SOIL HE SLEEPS NOT IN HIS NATIVE LAND BUT 'NEATH SOME FOREIGN SKIES AN ENGLISH FLOWER IN A FRENCH GARDEN FORGET THEM NOT O LAND FOR WHICH THEY FELL MAY IT GO WELL WITH ENGLAND STILL 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 LAND FOR WHICH I FELL I CONSIDERED IT AN HONOUR TO 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 WRITTEN HIS NAME ON HER PAGE Page 37 of 95 AGE 17 YRS. 1 MON. 10 DYS. IN THY KEEPING OUR FATHER
ANSWERED HIS COUNTRY'S CALL OCT. 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: NATURE MIGHT STAND UP IT IS A FAR, FAR BETTER THING AND SAY TO ALL THE WORLD THAT I DO THIS WAS A MAN! THAN I HAVE EVER DONE From William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, From Charles Dicken's A Tale of Two Cities. Act5, Scene 5. THAT THEIR DUST MAY REBUILD A NATION AND THEIR SOULS RELIGHT THE STARS From Songs Before Sunrise by A.C Swinburne. THEY SHALL GROW NOT OLD AS 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. Page 38 of 95
Double epitaphs (brothers or son/father): ALSO IN MEMORY OF SERJT. WILFRID H.HOLROYD NORFOLK REGIMENT MISSING 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 KNOW WHERE YOU ARE DEAR LAD BUT HARD TO SAY YOUR BROTHER IS MISSING This young lad's brother is commemorated on the Nieuport Memorial to the Missing. ONE OF SEVEN BROTHERS WHO 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 Page 39 of 95
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 Page 40 of 95
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. Page 41 of 95
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 Katie 22 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. Page 42 of 95
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. Page 43 of 95
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 Page 44 of 95
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 Page 45 of 95
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 Page 46 of 95
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. Page 47 of 95
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 Page 48 of 95
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 25 th 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 90 th, 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 9 th of April 2012, 5000 Canadian students travelled to Vimy Ridge to celebrate the 95 th 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 Page 49 of 95
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: Page 50 of 95
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. Page 51 of 95
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. Page 52 of 95
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. Page 53 of 95
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 Page 54 of 95
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. Page 55 of 95
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. Page 56 of 95
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. Page 57 of 95
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> Page 58 of 95
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> Page 59 of 95
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 Page 60 of 95
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 Page 61 of 95
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 Page 62 of 95
Appendices Page 63 of 95
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 Page 64 of 95
Appendix A: Burial of British soldiers on the battlefield. Credits: Imperial War Museum Page 65 of 95
Appendix B: Some memorials of the Commission in the North of France B.1: The Thiepval Memorial Credits: author's own collection Page 66 of 95
B.2 The Vimy Ridge Memorial Credits: Juliette Lebrun Page 67 of 95
B.3 The Ulster Tower Credits: author's own collection Page 68 of 95
B.4 The Arras Memorial and the Faubourg d'amiens Cemetery Credits: author's own collection Page 69 of 95
B.5 The Newfoundland Memorial of Beaumont Hamel Credits: author's own collection Page 70 of 95
B.6 The South-African Memorial of Delville Wood Credits: author's own collection Page 71 of 95
B.7 The Vis en Artois Memorial Credits: author's own collection Page 72 of 95
Appendix C: The Stone of Remembrance in the Thiepval Memorial Credits: author's own collection Page 73 of 95
Appendix D: Adolf Hitler at the Vimy Memorial Credits: www.ww2talk.com Page 74 of 95
Appendix E: Graves of soldiers of different religions and nationalities Credits: author's own collection Chinese grave Indian grave (Hindu) Page 75 of 95
Indian grave (Muslim) Indian grave (Sikh) French grave American grave Page 76 of 95
Appendix F: Commonwealth and German grave side by side. Credits: author's own collection Page 77 of 95
Appendix G: Entrance of the Commission's office in Beaurains Credits: author's own collection Page 78 of 95
Appendix H: Organisation of a headstone Credits: author's own collection Page 79 of 95
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 Page 80 of 95
16th (The Queen's) Lancers 17th (The Duke of Cambridge's Own) Lancers 18th (The Queen Mary's Alexandra, Princess of Own) Hussars 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 Page 81 of 95
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 Yeomanry Northumberland Yeomanry (Hussars) Oxfordshire Yeomanry (Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars) Prince Albert's (Somersetshire Light Infantry) Page 82 of 95
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 Infantry Seaforth Highlanders (Ross-shire Buffs, The Duke of Albany's) South Irish Horse Page 83 of 95
The Bedfordshire Regiment The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) The Dorsetshire Regiment The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) The Border Regiment The Cheshire Regiment The Connaught Rangers The Cambridgeshire Regiment The Devonshire Regiment The Duke of The Duke of Cornwall's The Duke of Cambridge's Own Light Infantry Edinburgh's (Wiltshire (Middlesex Regiment) Regiment) Page 84 of 95
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) Page 85 of 95
The King's (Shropshire The King's Own (Royal Light Infantry) 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) Page 86 of 95
The London Regiment The London Regiment The London Regiment (London Scottish) (Kensington Battalion) (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) Page 87 of 95
The Prince of Wales's Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians) The Prince of Wales's Own (West Yorkshire Regiment) The Prince of Wales's The Queen's (Royal Volunteers (South West Surrey Regiment) Lancashire 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 Page 88 of 95
The Royal Scots Fusiliers The Royal Sussex Regiment The Royal Warwickshire Regiment The Royal Welsh Fusiliers The Sherwood Foresters The South Staffordshire (Nottinghamshire and Regiment Derbyshire Regiment) The South Wales Borderers The Suffolk Regiment The York and Lancaster Tyneside Scottish (from Regiment 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. Page 89 of 95
Appendix J: Personal inscription form Credits: David Avery Page 90 of 95
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. Page 91 of 95
Appendix L: ANZAC Day ceremony in Bullecourt. Credits: author's own collection Warren Snowdon, Australian Minister for Veterans' Affairs, at the ANZAC Day ceremony in Bullecourt, 2012. Page 92 of 95
Appendix M: Canadian students at the Vimy Memorial, April 2012. Credits: Pascal Bonniere, La Voix du Nord Page 93 of 95
Appendix N: Cap badge of the Royal Engineers Credits: author's own collection. Page 94 of 95