With the British Army in Flanders & France

On this particular Remembrance Day, my thoughts are going to be with those men and women who survived the war but not the peace.  Many British service personnel would die in the days, months & years following the cessation of hostilities, and this was recognised by the Imperial War Graves Commission who, one hundred years ago, were still burying those who died because of their war service beneath British military headstones, should their families wish, and would continue to do so officially until the end of August 1921, nearly three years after the Armistice.  Continue reading →

On this Remembrance Sunday, I invite you to spend a few minutes with the men on the other side.  In the years immediately following the Great War, many of the foreign burials in British military cemeteries, and there were thousands, were moved to burial grounds administered by the countries from where the casualties originated.  And, for whatever reason, and as this photograph shows, many were not. Continue reading →

Row upon row of unidentified Australian soldiers, seemingly still on parade after all these years. Continue reading →

The Indian Army, or at least the infantry divisions of the Indian Army, would only see action on the Western Front for a year – from October 1914 to October 1915 – but nonetheless you will still come across the graves of many Indian soldiers, both known and unknown, in the British military cemeteries in France & Flanders, with once again many small variations in the headstones that mark their final resting places.  Continue reading →

A selection of Scottish, Welsh & Irish headstones this post, beginning with the Scottish regiments, and three unknown men of the Black Watch.  Continue reading →

Across the hundreds of CWGC cemeteries in Flanders and France, among the many thousands of unidentified soldiers buried within, you will frequently come across headstones marking the graves of unknown men – those pictured above from the Notts & Derby Regiment – whose regiments, if not their names, have been identified.  Continue reading →