WAR GRAVES.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18265, 26 December 1924, Page 2

WAR GRAVES.

NINE CEMETERIES IN EGYPT. IMPRESSIVE PICTURES. (HlOJt OTJB OWN COKBESPONDKJT.) LONDON, November 13. Very little reference has hitherto been made to the war graves in Egypt, but even here the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission has been going on steadily for the past Bix years. Just under 9000 war graves have now been collected into nine war memorial cemeteries at Cairo, Chatby, Hadra, EI Kantara, Port Said, Ismailia, Suez, Tel-el-Kebir, and Minia. All the cemeteries, the land for which has been a free gift from the Egyptian Government to tho Imperial War Graves Commission, aro designed (says the Cairo correspondent of "The Times") on the same plan, with a boundary wall, a Cross of Sacrifice, a Stone of Remembrance, and a Chapter House for the- records. With certain exceptions, where a special memorial has been erected, all the graves have the standard type of war headstone. Only a small number of these headstones have still to be set up, and the work of putting them in place is rapidly coming to an end. One of the great difficulties with which the committee has had to contend has been the question of growing flowers in tho cemeteries. In this the problem of maintaining an adequate supply of water during the summer time has played a great part. In many cases special apparatus has been erected, but the outlay and trouble have been well repaid, for all the cemeteries, even in the height of the summer, now make peaceful and impressive pictures with turfed soil between the serried lines of graves, flowered borders and hedges marking the various sections, and flourishing trees down the avenues and along the walls.

A. Model Desert Cemetery. The exception is EI Kantara Cemetery, which is situated in the desert on the east side of the Suez Canal, and remains an expanse of sand entirely unrelieved by any form of plant life. In time some arrangement may be possible so as to relieve its present austerity, but the provision of water presents considerable difficulty. Nevertheless, as a desert cemetery it is a model of its kind.

Detailed records have been made of each cemetery, and most of the registers have now been completed, and are ready for deposit in the Chapter House. The work of recording and searching out graves has not been confined to Egypt proper, but has been extended into Sinai; and along the route followed by tho Egyptian Expeditionary Force much has been done. In many instances, in order to safeguard the graves and facilitate their maintenance, exhumation and reburial have been necessary. The case of the military cemetery at El Arish deserves particular attention. Its 550 graves were situated at/the foot of a steep bank in the Wadi El Arish, where they stood in danger of damage by water which flows down the valley in the winter rainy season, sometimes in great volume. The bodies from tiese grat'es were, therefore, exhumed, and removed to El Kantata Cemetery, at the other end of the peninsula. In addition to the laving out of these war cemeteries and arranging for regular inspection and maintenance, the committee has taken in hand certain other works, such as Indian war memorial cemeteries, a memorial to the missing of the Indian Army, and a memorial to the Egyptian Labour and Camel Transport Coro»,