SOLDIERS’ GRAVES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18445, 5 January 1922, Page 3

SOLDIERS’ GRAVES

DEAN REGNADLT’S PILGRIMAGE. The Very Rev. Dean Regnault, S.M., who left Christchurch last May, spent a few weeks in England and Ireland before the opening of the General Chapter of the Society of Mary, which was held in Belgium in August. After the .conference, in order to carry out the promise given before he left Christchurch, he set out on a pilgrimage through the war cemeteries in Northern Franco, with a view to locating the graves of fallen parishioners of St. Mary's, Manchester street. His quest' took him from Meta, to on to Lille, thence to Arras, Albert, and Amiens. He was successful in finding a number of the graves marking the resting place of young men who had been in his flock, but in the course of a conversation with a Christchurch Press reporter, he remarked; that it was very difficult ,to discover any particular grave unless one had obtained all possible information either from relatives of the deceased soldiers or from the Imperial War Graves Commission. This, in the case of the New Zealand fallen, was made more difficult because, through the concentration operations during the time of hisvisit, and the exhuming of the bodies, the records of the New . Zealand section were not*, quite up-t9 : dato., /He said that the War Graves Commission was performing a great), work in an efficient way, though beset with many difficulties.

The Dean gave a description of the scheme, the principal points of which have already been detailed in The Press. All the battlefields of Europe are divided into areas, with about 250 cemeteries in each, containing from 300 to 14,000 or more soldiers’ graves. In a cemetery near Rouen, where the, body of Sergeant T. Dwyer, eon of Mr John Dwyer, Christchurch, is buried, there are 14,000 graves. But with the splendid organisation of the Graves Commission it is, notwithstanding the above figures, no difficult task to locate a particular grave if the identity of thefallen soldier has been recorded by 1 the officers, the system being to define each grave into a cemetery, witn its respective block; plot, and vow. The white cross marking each grave has on it the name, number, regiment, and other details respecting the buried soldier. The men tending the flowers and paths are as ready and willing to give directions to a grave as is the olerk in the “cemetery office,” or the officials in the head office in London. In all his queries, the Dean met with groat courtesy from the staff of the Graves Commission. It was with a sad feeling that he gathered flowers off the graves of boys of his parish to send to their parents in Christchurch. In returning through the Suez Canal by tho Omar, Dean Regnault met Major Viokery, secretary of the Graves Commission for Gallipoli and the East, and he was infonned that the work was being Carried on in those past battle areas under the same system, out was hampered on account of climaftio conditions and the unsettled state of the_ different countries. The great work is being carried out from Gallipoli to the Caspian Sea and Vladivostok. .