War Graves 'Have Enormous Power To Engage'

Caring For Graves Of Servicemen

Updated: 9:45pm UK, Saturday 09 November 2013

By Peter Francis, Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintains the very fabric upon which remembrance of the war dead is focussed.

It is all too easy, for those of us who have grown up with the two minute silence, the poppy, the war graves and the memorials and think there was an inevitability about the commemoration of the war dead. That is not the case.

Before the First World War it was unusual to remember the sacrifice of "ordinary" soldiers.

One only has to look around London and see the memorials to Generals, or go to the battlefield at Waterloo (just 100 years before the Great War) to see that there was very little to mark the sacrifice of the soldier.

The First World War and the CWGC change all that.

For the very first time you have an organisation that starts to mark and care for the graves of all servicemen and is determined that they should be remembered in perpetuity and with equality of treatment. This is largely down to our founder, Fabian Ware.

Today, the war graves and memorials are perhaps the only physical reminder of the war left.

They have an enormous power in my experience to engage the individual in the war and the sacrifices made.

I still recall as a 13 year old standing in floods of tears at Tyne Cot in Belgium. I didn't know then that I would be working for the CWGC but it had a profound impact on me and sparked my love of history.

Interestingly, the numbers of visitors to our sites is growing but increasingly they may be young people, many generations removed from the individual whose grave they are visiting.

However, it has been my privilege to lead some of these trips and it never ceases to impress me how these young people connect to a grave of their relative, or a former pupil, or perhaps just someone with their name.

I have also attended funerals for discovery of remains cases where, despite not knowing the war casualty personally, the family have become deeply moved and grateful that their loved one is now at rest in one of our war cemeteries. It is an overused expression but there is a sense of truism in the word "closure".

And even today, it surprises me how many traces of our records we do for the public and they say they are the first member of the family to find that information or visit the grave. It is a very rewarding part of the job.

I'm also always deeply moved by the veterans I have met, who often keep thanking you for the work we do in commemorating their friends when I feel we should be thanking them for what they did for us!

The Commission is probably the world's largest horticultural organisation. You may measure your borders at home in metres, we measure ours in kilometres!

But maintaining the big constructed military cemeteries is actually not that difficult. They were designed so well, and we are structured in such a way, that we just know what we do and how to do it.

Every site, every grave is inspected, assessed and maintained by our dedicated workforce - some 1,300 strong worldwide (the vast majority gardeners and stone masons).

With hundreds of thousands of visitors to our sites each year - and with those numbers expected to increase by perhaps as much as 30% over the next four years - the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is engaged in a major renovation programme to get those locations ready for the expected level of visitors and events. The Commission's maintenance programme ahead of the centenary is on target.

For example, 418 of the 452 memorial panels we have scheduled for replacement in advance of 2014 have been completed, while our headstone replacement capacity is now at 22,000 headstones a year and we are re-engraving some 19,000 headstones a year in situ - maintaining the very fabric upon which remembrance of the Great War is largely based and keeping alive in stone the names of those who died.

Interestingly, here in the UK we face a very peculiar challenge. Most people do not realise that in the United Kingdom, the Commission commemorates more than 300,000 Commonwealth servicemen and women who died in the two world wars - their graves and memorials to be found at a staggering 13,000 locations. There is little awareness of this. 

These range from small rural churchyards to large urban civic cemeteries. In essence we have to enter into 13,000 agreements to maintain these sites.

We recently completed a project to map these graves to MP's constituencies and it is the Commission's aim (through this initiative) to work with MPs, educators and local communities to raise awareness of this nationally important commemorative heritage and to create a sense of "public ownership" that encourages communities to use these places as part of their efforts to remember those who died.

An increased awareness of, and sense of ownership in, war graves in the UK, will greatly assist the Commission's task of caring and maintaining for these sites, some of which may have been abandoned to nature over the decades.

In the main there are only a few places where we have difficulty with access and then the Commission tends to take a long term view.

For example, our cemetery in Beirut was badly damaged during the civil war but we remained engaged and when the time was right, repaired the cemetery. If you were to visit it today it looks pristine.

There are times and places where maintenance becomes more challenging but even here, the Commission does everything it can to ensure those who died in the two world wars are commemorated in a manner befitting their sacrifice.

From Gallipoli in Turkey, to Tobruk in Libya, to a village in Sutton Veny in Wiltshire (the latter a particular "favourite" of mine because the local primary schoolchildren make posies and lay them on each of the ANZAC graves in the churchyard next to their school) there are literally thousands of events.

The Commission is extremely grateful for the unwavering support we receive from our member governments - each of whom pays a sum in proportion to the number of graves that nation has and so the UK is about 78% of our budget.

We are an efficient and well run organisation and although I hate to use this phrase, we believe we offer good value for the work we do - maintaining war graves to 1.7 million individuals at 23,000 locations in 153 countries.

We employ 1,300 staff worldwide and they are all trained to our high standard and supported throughout their careers with us. Some may stay at one cemetery their entire career, others will move from country to country. Some are even the third generation of their family to work for us - one of the nice things about the organisation is that we do have a sense of "family".

Of course maintaining the sites is just one part of the story. We have to increasingly help people understand and engage with these locations and the act of remembrance.

Earlier this year we conducted a survey which indicated that the public think it is important to remember the war but feel less confident in understanding the historical events.

This November the Commonwealth War Graves Commission will install a new Visitor Information Panel at Etaples Military Cemetery in France - the 100th panel to be installed at a CWGC cemetery as part of a global initiative to provide more information to the public during the Centenary of the First World War.

Each panel carries information about the cemetery or memorial and the historical context which brought that site into being. Each panel also carries a QR (Quick Response) code which when scanned with a smartphone provides access to further information, including the personal stories of some of the men and women buried or commemorated at the location.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is at the heart of events to mark the centenary of the First World War.

Our cemeteries and memorials will be the focus for many acts of remembrance over the coming years and this initiative will help inform visitors of the historical context which brought these places into being, while putting a human face to the names of those who died. It is a powerful means of combining traditional methods with new technology to ensure we never forget.

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