THE UNIDENTIFIED DEAD

Evening Post, Issue 59, 10 March 1924, Page 6

THE UNIDENTIFIED DEAD

MEMORIAL I.N TYNECOT CEME^ TERY.

(PBOM OUK 08-Jt COKRSBPO.VDE.NT.)

LONDON, 10th January. At the top of the Tynecot Cemetery in' Belgium, the Imperial War Graves Commission is to place a decorative piece of architecture describing the .arc of a. circle. At each end is to be a chapel in which will be engraved the.names of.all the British soldiers who are supposed' to have fallen in that portion of the Salient but whose bodies have not been identified. In the centre of the semi-circular wall or building is to be what is known as an apse, or a semi-circular recess. In front of this is the entrance to the covered ways to the chapels. The main pathway of the cemetery leads up the centre to the "pill-box" on which is to be erected the Cross of Sacrifice. The pathway then leads on to the top of the slope and to the, further edge of the cemetery, and so into the entrance to the chapel in honour of the unideutified dead.

Sir James Allen has now arranged with, the Imperial War Graves Commission that the walls o£ the apse shall be reserved for the names o£ those unidentified New Zealand soldiers who are presumed to have iallen in this section or the Ypres Salient. Over the entrance ia an archway, and here a brief inseriotion is to be placed.

The Tynecot Cemetery, of course; is the largest British field cemetery in Trance or Belgium. It is admirably "plac* ed on gently sloping ground, and contains three German "pill-boxes," one of which, at the suggestion of His Majesty the King, is to be used as-tie base oi£ the Cross of Sacrifico.

Other memorials to the unidentified ■will be placed in the Butte new British cemetery, at Polygon Wood, and probably in the Messines Bidge British Cemetery. No decision has yet been arrived at, however, as to what part of tho masonry •of the cemeteries will. he inscribed with the names.

Two positions have yet to be chosen in the Sommo area for the commemoration of the unidentified dead. As bodies, even at this late date, are being recovered and identified the longer this matter of inscribing the names of the niksing is. delaye.d the better.