The primary founder of the CommonwealthWar Graves Commision was Clifton born, Fabian Wave. Albeit he was too old to serve in the army when the war started in 1914, he volunteered to serve in the Red Cross ferrying wounded soldiers from the front line to medical stations further back. He started recording details of the dead and where they were buried and persuaded other Red Cross units to start to do the same. In 1915 the War Office incorporated the Red Cross into it's organisation calling it the Graves Registration Commission.
On returning home he remembered the dreadful scenes that he had witnessed and determined to do something to improve the way in which the dead were treated. As editor of a major newspaper he lobbied for each dead soldier to be identified and buried in a marked grave in a Military Cemetary and he received great support for his ideas.
The Imperial War Graves Commission was established in 1917 by Royal Charter and headed by Brigadier-General Sir Fabian Ware.(It was renamed the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in 1960), The Commission was tasked with registering graves and planning cemeteries and memorials to be built after the 1914-18 war and now.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s mission is to ensure those who died in service, or as a result of conflict, are commemorated so that they, and the human cost of war, are remembered for ever.
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is a global leader in commemoration. Founded in 1917, we work on behalf of the Governments of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom to commemorate the 1.7 million men and women from the Commonwealth who lost their lives in the two World Wars.
We believe that remembering individuals who have died in conflicts is of universal, perpetual relevance, and that reflecting on their deaths is of continuing and paramount importance for us all.
The cemeteries, memorials, graves, landscapes, and records in our care will be found at 23,000 locations and in more than 150 countries and territories. They are both the practical means of our commemoration of the fallen and vehicles for discovery, inspiration, and engagement.
We believe that each one of those we commemorate were people like us, with their own ambitions, hopes, and dreams. It is our duty and privilege to care for their graves and memorials and through our charitable Foundation, keep their stories alive.
OUR COMMITMENT NEVER ENDS
Every year remains are discovered, identified and reburied with honours, their names no longer on our many memorials to the missing but over their final resting place.
Our active public engagement and education programmes ensure the stories of the fallen are told to all generations through talks and tours at our sites and in schools, clubs, societies and organisations. Our War Graves Week every May throws a spotlight on the work we do and the men and women we commemorate.
We constantly care and repair our sites, some of them have reached or will soon be reaching their centenaries and are facing challenges our founders could not have envisaged requiring new materials and processes to ensure their longevity.
Our founders were determined that all the men and women of the British Empire who fell on the former battlefields of the First World War, on land and at sea, should be commemorated equally. The CWGC takes great pride in the principles that drove this work, which said that the organisation would not differentiate between the dead on the grounds of social or military rank, or by religion.
Our Non-Commemoration project works to identify any cases where names have been missed from our records, with extensive research already yielding important information helping ensure all Commonwealth war dead are commemorated as originally promised.
Every year remains are discovered, identified and reburied with honours, their names no longer on our many memorials to the missing but over their final resting place.
Our active public engagement and education programmes ensure the stories of the fallen are told to all generations through talks and tours at our sites and in schools, clubs, societies and organisations. Our War Graves Week every May throws a spotlight on the work we do and the men and women we commemorate.
We constantly care and repair our sites, some of them have reached or will soon be reaching their centenaries and are facing challenges our founders could not have envisaged requiring new materials and processes to ensure their longevity.
Our founders were determined that all the men and women of the British Empire who fell on the former battlefields of the First World War, on land and at sea, should be commemorated equally. The CWGC takes great pride in the principles that drove this work, which said that the organisation would not differentiate between the dead on the grounds of social or military rank, or by religion.
Our Non-Commemoration project works to identify any cases where names have been missed from our records, with extensive research already yielding important information helping ensure all Commonwealth war dead are commemorated as originally promised.
The CWGC is a global organisation, caring for war graves at 23,000 locations in more than 150 countries and territories. We commemorate almost 1.7 million individuals, ensuring that all the Commonwealth men and women who died during both world wars are commemorated in a manner befitting their sacrifice.
Our global estate is run by a multinational and multilingual workforce numbering approximately 1,300 – the vast majority of whom are gardeners and stone masons.
Since our establishment by Royal Charter we have constructed 2,500 war cemeteries and plots, erected headstones over graves and where the remains are missing, inscribed the names of the dead on permanent memorials.
Fabian Ware and his team believed the war cemeteries should have consistent features that distinguished them from their civilian counterparts. However, what those features should look like – and even be called – was hotly contested.
Charles went on to tell us about the significance of each element of the design and, that whilst most are identical, certain parts may reflect the the origins or religious beliefs of the person.
More than a million burials are now commemorated at military and civil sites around the world.
Our work is constant, amending records, searching for missing names, building new memorials and where historical inequalities in commemoration are found, ensuring all those who fell are equally remembered.
We also have a duty to ensure our sites remain well visited so remembrance of the war dead continues, creating information centres, volunteering opportunities and education programmes designed to engage and educate generations to come.
Charles finished by answering numerous questions which only went to prove the intense level of interest in a subject that many had a personal interest.