Revealing laudable collective wisdom, the Imperial War Graves Commission was guided by its principles, rather than chained to them, which meant that pragmatism and what was perceived as the greater good informed its decisions. In turn, this means that a wander around the cemeteries can reveal fascinating anomalies and unexpected features. Among the most interesting are the memorials of individual miliary units. These memorials, which can be stumbled across at a good handful of sites, had their roots in the wartime cemeteries, and came under the jurisdiction of the Army’s Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries section. As individual cemeteries often contained a number of discrete plots of men from the same unit, their comrades had the opportunity when they were buried to place memorials over their graves, instead of the standard wartime wooden cross. Materials used varied, as did quality of construction, but some were very fine pieces of craftsmanship and very nearly permanent in terms of foundations and footings.
Recognising the importance of these memorials, in 1918 the War Office established the Battle Exploits Memorials Committee and invited units of the British imperial forces to outline their plans to replace or erect new memorials. The establishment of this separate committee reveals that a distinction had been made between the commemoration of a unit’s military achievements and the apt commemoration of the dead, which was now the responsibility of the IWGC. In turn, this made unit memorials in cemeteries a grey area; one that became obvious when some units insisted that they wished to make permanent their wartime memorials erected within cemeteries.
Rather than insist on a blanket ban, the Commission decided to treat each case on its merits paying careful attention to the aesthetic qualities and durability of the memorial. Only when satisfied on both was permission granted, with a good example being the 14th Royal Welch Fusiliers memorial bench in Dantzig Alley Cemetery. Sometimes, the permission was a largely post-facto recognition, as on occasion it was found that the job had been started and it was too late to unpick. Sometimes, the process seems to have been smoothed by the Commission employees on the spot, which is hardly surprising given that they were almost entirely ex-servicemen and therefore had a deep understanding of regimental and corps loyalty and identity.
And that brings us to Gommecourt Wood British Cemetery. In 1924 the cemetery’s gardeners took the decision to bring a wooden cross with a bronze plaque, erected in 1917 by the 46th (North Midland) Division, from a nearby field being returned to agriculture into Gommecourt Wood New British Cemetery. Two years later the cross was blown over in a gale, and the maintenance teams detached the plaque and send it back to Britain for a decision on its future. After much discussion as to whether to replace the memorial, the Derbyshire Territorial Association requested that a bronze plaque (seemingly the original) be affixed to the cemetery wall, a request approved by the Commission. The desire to have a fragment of the original wartime cross, erected by men of the division, placed where its men had attacked and now lay buried reveals much about the value placed on precise sites and artifacts. Finding this modest memorial requires careful scrutiny of the cemetery’s architecture (see if you can see it in the photo below), but its discovery is a very moving experience.
As this example shows, every cemetery deserves to be slowly considered in detail and context. Book me as your battlefield guide and I will show you how to interpret and understand the different symbolism in each of these beautiful cemeteries.
