Some
750,000 British and Commonwealth service personnel died on the Western
Front. They are remembered in over 1,000
military and 2,000 civilian cemeteries, or, for the more than 300,000 who have
no known grave, are commemorated on Memorials to the Missing.[1] The
particular way in which these cemeteries and memorials came to be is the result
of one man’s effort to ensure that these deaths would have continued meaning;
that these lives lost would not be forgotten.
Sir Fabian Ware, working with the British Red Cross who was “saddened by
the sheer number of casualties...felt driven to find a way to ensure the final
resting places of the dead would not be lost forever.”[2]
Beginning with painstaking recording and maintaining the first gravesites by
1915 his “work was given official recognition by the
War Office and incorporated into the British Army as the Graves Registration
Commission.” [3]
Death comes to
us all. Knowledge of this somber fact is
the burden created by self awareness.
Our evolution to this level of intellect has also given us the ability,
through a psychological theory known as “Terror Management”[4] to
successfully deal with the difficult notion of individual mortality. By and large, this is accomplished, as are so
many unpleasant life aspects, by avoidance and denial. At times, particularly in the event of the
death of someone close, those coping skills are insufficient. Psychology professor Nathan Heflick describes
that “humans developed cultural symbols of meaning and value that offer a sense
of significance and importance, and ultimately, immortality...as a means of
coping with their own death.”[5] Such
things have been part of our cultural heritage for millennia. Anthropologist Philip Lieberman cites the
oldest known intentional burial is at least 100,000 years old. These are “the oldest fossil hominids who
possessed speech producing anatomy and brains that are the biological bases of
speech and syntax. The evidence of their
burials with grave goods is consistent with their having possessed cognitive
abilities that approach our own....If we assume that the minds of our distant
ancestors worked like ours, we can take burials that include grave goods as
evidence for religious beliefs.”[6]
If it is
difficult enough to appropriately cope in an emotionally healthy way an
individual death; such numbers of deaths as were caused by the First World War must
have been beyond normal comprehension or ability to process. When dealing with numbers in the hundreds of
thousands of lives all taken in violent circumstances, it no longer becomes
necessary to have a personal connection to the dead for it to have
resonance. By year’s end in 1914,
Britain alone recorded 26,886 deaths.[7] At the
point of such a volume, it becomes a communal event. When paired with the notion that these lives
were lost in an act of preserving that community, society copes en masse by assigning a higher level of
importance to lives lost in war. It
assuages fears of our own mortality by assuring ourselves that those who died
on our behalf have achieved that level of immortality. That we can assign a higher level of
significance to particular circumstances relating to death goes a long way to
reason why war graves are so revered.
Professor
Heflick’s research indicates that things which inspire thought of death, “death
reminders” as he puts it, cause people to defend cultural worldviews more
strongly, identify more with members of their own group, show increased
interest in close relationships, show preference for clear, well structured
information, become more religious and believe more in the supernatural; and
show reduced self control and self regulation.[8] This becomes a salient point when discussing
veteran’s issues so close to November 11th. Prof
Heflick says “I would suspect that the death thoughts activated naturally by
Remembrance Day would make people more defensive of their belief systems. This
would conceivably include any political issues, related to Veterans or not. So
basically, people's views should become more strong/extreme. If they are
liberal, they would become more liberal; if they are conservative they would
become more conservative, for instance…. I would think most people would become more
extreme.It is a bit more complicated than this,
as it always is when leaving the lab and trying to extrapolate it into the real
world. But, this would be what terror management theory would predict.”[9]
Sir Fabian Ware’s devotion to ensure proper burial for the war’s
dead would not be an easy task. The war
would continue another three years, cause millions of deaths and be fought in
dozens of places throughout Europe, Africa, Asia Minor and the Middle
East. Due to the intensity of battle
along with considerations for hygiene and morale, bodies would be buried as
quickly as practicable; often with little regard to ceremony or within an
established cemetery. “It was often
impractical to dig individual graves, and bodies were laid side by side in a
long trench”[10] The static nature of the
First World War would complicate matters of burial and identity of the dead
further “the worst of improvised burials close to the front line was the near
certainty that the body would be disinterred by shellfire.”[11]
Many of the men taken out of the line as casualties who would
later die of their wounds had been brought to Advanced Dressing Stations-
“These were mobile treatment centres...far enough back to be out of the line of
fire.”[12]
These locations “later formed the basis for several Commonwealth War Graves
Commission cemeteries on the Western Front.
Perhaps the best known former dressing station is Essex Farm, just north
of Ypres, where the Canadian medical officer John McCrae wrote the poem In Flanders Fields.”[13]
Ware and his staff would continue in their work of recording
burial sites, but the task the Commission had set for itself would really begin
after the Armistice. Using the collected
registry, bodies would be exhumed and re-interred in uniformly designed
cemeteries, as close to the initial burials as possible. Ware had set guidelines for this purpose-
that the grave markers be identical in shape and size; to promote the idea of
equality amongst the dead, and that every man be remembered, regardless of
known burial. The psychological notion
of immortality is interrupted when there is no closure; particularly in these
cases of no definitive burial. It would
tend to deepen the feeling of loss because it is paradoxically finite and
inconclusive.
An immense undertaking such as this can have its oversights. To this day, remains of individuals buried in
haste and not recovered directly after the war are still being discovered. In other instances, known burial sites have
been lost over time, like that of Grave CA40, in Thelus, France. CA40 is known to contain the bodies of 44
Canadian soldiers of the 16th Battalion killed during the Battle of
Vimy Ridge. Norm
Christie, author, TV presenter and battlefield tour operator has made his
latest project the investigation into and search for CA40, believed to be a
mass grave made from a mine crater in no man’s land.[14]
In the unfolding
years, the Imperial War Graves Commission, later taking on its current
designation of Commonwealth War Graves Commission would assume further
responsibilities with the dead of the Second World War. The CWGC is responsible for the care and
maintenance of cemeteries and memorials dedicated to the more than 1.7 million
individuals who died in the two World Wars at 23,000 locations in 153
countries.[15]
The CWGC has done this, tirelessly, for almost a century, relying on funding
cooperatively contributed by the governments of the six member nations: “Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South
Africa and the United Kingdom. The cost of the Commission's work is met by the
member governments in proportion to the number of their war graves. The
Secretary of State for Defence in the United Kingdom is the chairman of the
Commission. Each of the other member governments appoints its High Commissioner
in London to be its Commission representative.”[16]
Under their care
these sites and memorials are kept from falling into disrepair or neglect,
ensuring the continued memory of our war dead and offering the comfort to those
still living, of that sense of immortality.
"If Ye Break Faith" values your input. Comments, questions and suggestions can be made through our Facebook Page or following us on Twitter.
[1] Holmes, Richard “Tommy,
The British Soldier on the Western Front 1914-1918” Harper Perennial, 2005, pg
14
[2]
http://www.cwgc.org/
[3]
http://www.cwgc.org/
[4] http://www.psychologytoday.com/
“How We Cope With Death: A theory of Terror Management”, Dr. Nathan A Heflick
(University of Kent)
[6] Lieberman, Philip,
“Uniquely Human: The Evolution of Speech, Thought, and Selfless Behavior”
Harvard University Press 1993 pp 163-64
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