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Category: Cemeteries

Cemeteries of the Great War

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) and Der Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. (Volksbund) the organizations tasked with Honouring The Fallen featured extensively by CEFRG. Over 600 of these cemeteries of the Great War visited by CEFRG on the Western Front.  Lest often visited cemeteries include those of the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), Belgian national cemeteries, and French national cemeteries, such as  La nécropole nationale de Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, the world’s largest French military cemetery.

IWGC

The CWGC formerly known as the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC). Two men had a vision for the IWGC, and their contribution must be Remembered to better appreciate Great War cemeteries.  Major-General Sir Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware KCVO KBE CB CMG was a newspaper editor and the founder of the IWGC. Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English writer and poet. He was the Commission’s Literary Adviser and also one of its original founding members in 1917.

Sir Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware KCVO KBE CB CMG

On 21 May 1917, Ware was appointed as Vice-Chairman of the IWGC, established by Royal Charter. By the end of the war, Ware had been twice Mentioned in Dispatches and had been made the rank of Major-General. In 1920, he became a Knight of two orders in recognition of his work during the Great War. Major-General Sir Fabian Ware died on 29 April 1949, aged 79. Buried in Holy Trinity Churchyard, Amberley, his grave marked with a Commission headstone.

Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling wrote pamphlets and poetry in support of the war effort, essentially writing propaganda in support of the war and to encourage men to enlist and fight.  While he did not himself fight in the war, Kipling not without his own personal loss during the conflict. His son, John Kipling, fought and died at the Battle of Loos in 1915. John’s body not identified after the war, and buried as an unknown soldier, with John’s name inscribed on the Loos Memorial. In 1992, nearly 60 years after his  death, former Chief Records Officer, and current Canadian War Historian Norm Christie found John’s body.  John Kipling rests in St. Mary’s A.D.S. Cemetery, now commemorated alongside his comrades.

  • Etaples Military Cemetery in the Great War

    Etaples Military Cemetery in the Great War

    During the Great War, the area around the small fishing port of Etaples was the scene of immense concentrations of Commonwealth reinforcement camps and hospitals. At first, it was remote from attack, except from aircraft. Accessible by railway from both the northern or the southern battlefields. The railways, and the hospital, key targets during the Final German Offensive in 1918. By the end of the Great War, thousands of casualties buried at Etaples Military Cemetery.

    At its peak, 100,000 troops housed with Commonwealth army training and reinforcement camps and an extensive complex of hospitals. Then, in 1917, 100,000 troops camped among the sand dunes and the hospitals, which included eleven general, one stationary, four Red Cross hospitals and a convalescent depot, could deal with 22,000 wounded or sick. Finally, in September 1919, 10 months after the Armistice, three hospitals and the Q.M.A.A.C. convalescent depot remained.

    The cemetery the final resting place of 20 women, including nurses, army auxiliaries and civilian volunteers of the YMCA and Scottish Church Huts organisations. So many killed in air raids or by disease. By the latter part of the war, more than 2,500 women were serving at the Étaples base. Hailing from many parts of the British Empire as well as France and America, they included ambulance drivers, nurses, members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment and those employed by the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps as bakers, clerks, telephonists and gardeners.

    At first, in its early years, the cemetery visible as the train from Boulogne to Paris passed close by. Sir Fabian Ware, the founder of the Imperial War Graves Commission, ensured that trains would linger for a minute or so to allow passengers a glimpse.

    Hospitals stationed again at Etaples during the Second World War. The cemetery used for burials from January 1940 until the evacuation at the end of May 1940. Finally, after the war, a number of graves brought into the cemetery from other French burial grounds, of the 119 Second World War burials, 38 unidentified.Please subscribe to CEFRG to be notified by email when there are new posts.

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