Commonwealth War Graves Commission
World War 1
August 1914 saw the first battle of World War 1 in a place just outside of Mons. Here British and German soldiers fought each other.
Interesting Fact:
The First and Last WW1 British Soldiers to die lie opposite each other in the Saint Symphorian Cemetery.
Private John Parr - the First to die
Private John Parr was in the Middlesex Regiment. He was shot and killed by German soldiers on 21/8/1914 whilst out on a scouting mission on his bicycle. He was only 16! Private Parr was buried by the Germans in 1915 in the cemetery
Private George Ellison - the Last to die
Just opposite Private Parr's grave lies the body of Private George Ellison who was in the British Expeditionary Force. He died 90 minutes before the war ended at 11am on 11/11/1918. He was shot and killed by a sniper bullet. Private Ellison was moved from a "makeshift" grave by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in the 1920.
These two men are officially recognised as the first and the last to die in World War 1 and it is mere co-incidence that they are buried facing each other just 6 or 7 paces apart
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Commonwealth Graves
Before World War 1 those who died in battle were, for the most part, buried in mass graves, however it was during the First World War that great effort was made to provide permanent, marked graves, for all soldiers - even if it was not possible to identify them.
It was Sir Fabian Ware who argued and pressed for the makeshift burial grounds created by the soldiers themselves to be recorded and to become permanent. He created the Imperial War Graves Commission in 1917 and it was he, together with Rudyard Kipling and Edwin Lutyens who formed a group which recommended that cemeteries in Belgium, Italy, France, Turkey and the Middle East should be preserved "in perpetuity" as the main memorials of the war to those who fell fighting for the British Empire.
It was also where the uniformity of the CWGC headstones began with the simple idea that all ranks would be treated equally and that grave would be marked by a slab not a cross. The cemeteries would be of a standard design with standard inscriptions such as "Lest We Forget" and "Their Name Liveth Forever More" and standard symbols. The Imperial War Graves Commission did, however, upset very many people with the other standard rule that no bodies were to be repatriated and that the fallen should lie forever in the country where they died.
It is thought that Rupert Brooke's poem in 1914 may have inspired this idea
"If I should die, Think only this of me
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England"
It is known that in the March of 1915 the British government issued a decree that no bodies of Imperial soldiers were to be exhumed or repatriated back to Britain. However the wealthy relatives of a British officer caused the ban to be re-iterated “on account of the difficulties of treating impartially the claims advanced by persons of different social standing”.
From this early beginning it is that today's Commonwealth War Graves Commission continues this work of ensuring that all graves are tended and cared for whether they are in one of the main cemeteries or whether they are in municipal or church and chapel graveyards in the United Kingdom.
The Unknown Soldier
It was France which created the idea of "The Unknown Soldier". Each man has his own grave and his headstone just identifies he is unknown. In the Serre Road No 2 cemetery there are 4,944 graves and 70% of these contain no name on them.
Repatriation Smuggling
In 1931 an article published by the Sunday Express described how Belgian smugglers were exhuming and shipping bodies back to the UK.
The title of the article was “British War Dead Smuggled Home: Bodies exhumed from graves in Flanders. – Families pay thousands to Belgian smuggler” caused a major uproar and indeed the paper said
“When wealthy persons are approached to pay for the transport of their war dead home to their family graves they should think first whether they are not rather dishonouring than honouring the dead by removing them from the great family of heroes.”