CARE OF BRITISH WAR GRAVES

Evening Star, Issue 22631, 24 April 1937, Page 26

CARE OF BRITISH WAR GRAVES

884 MORE BODIES FOUND LAST YEAR The discovery of British dead on the battlefields in France and Belgium continues. It is recorded in the seventeenth annual report of the Imperial War Graves Commission, just published, that during the year 1935-36 821 bodies were found in France and 63 in Belgium. Of those found in France 721 were recovered from the Somme battlefields. The bodies were reburied in British cemeteries, and in 96 cases identification was established and notification was sent to relatives. In the same period French official search parties found and reburied 795 French and 810 German soldiers. Major-general Sir Fabian Ware, in an introduction to the report, states that the presidency of the Duke _of York, now terminated by his accession to the Throne, saw the strengthening of the foundation laid by the Anglo-German-French War Graves Agreement. The King has nominated the Duke of Gloucester to succeed him as president of the commission. With regard to the maintenance of headstones in France and Belgium, the report states that maintenance falls into two categories—renovation and repairs. Renovation consists of the rubbing down of the stones, the renewal of inscriptions either by touching up the letters or complete recutting and the treatment of the stones with zinc silicofluoride. The total number of ■headstones dealt with during the year was 45,000. Repairs consist of total or partial replacement due to breakage and of work on displaced or broken headstone foundations resulting from subsidence of the soil. Severe frost, such as was experienced in the March quarter, is a frequent cause of breakage. During the year 41 headstones were replaced and 281 repaired out of a total of over 560,000 in France and Belgium. The total number of maintenance repairs carried out during the year amounted to 367. Repairs, consisting chiefly of the renovation of brickwork, were carried out in 31 cemeteries. As the cemeteries grow older repairs such as replacement of copings, stone margins, pavings, etc., tend to increase, INCREASED STAFF. The total personnel in France and Belgium on March 31, 1936, numbered 598, compared with 587 on the corresponding date in 1935. Of this number 524 belonged to the permanent maintenance staff, 507 being employed in the horticultural branch. Eight vacancies in the gardening staff were filled by probationary gardener caretakers from the United Kingdom in January and February, 1936, of whom four were post-war ex-service men from the Army ’Vocational Centre at Chisledon, Wiltshire. The six sons of members of the staff who have been appointed as pupil gardeners are doing satisfactory work. The Eton Memorial School at Ypres continues to benefit the children of the staff who live in that area. Of the 102 pupils attending the school at the end of March, 1936) 86 were children of men employed by the commission. The annual maintenance grants, designed to enable parents living out of reach of Ypres to send their children to England to be educated, are much appreciated ;' during the year under review over 40 children received maintenance grants towards the cost of education In England. A small number in France and Germany took correspondence courses conducted by the Parents’ National Educational Union.

Reference is made to the many pilgrimages organised by the district branches and the women’s sections of the British Legion, and it is recorded that during the year approximately 100,000 people signed the visitors’ books at the cemeteries and memorials. Favourable reports have been received on the condition of the cemeteries and memorials on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and those on the condition of the cemeteries in Palestine and Syria are uniformly satisfactory. The British war cemeteries in Iraq have been greatly improved by arrangements for th© provision of water. Trees and grass have been made to flourish., In Egypt and_ the Sudan the caretakers and gardening staff have succeeded in making the cemeteries dignified and impressive. Satisfactory reports have also been received on the condition of war graves in Italy, Greece, Macedonia, and the Balkans, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the dominions.