BRITISH GRAVES IN FRANCE.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16503, 2 August 1919, Page 4

BRITISH GRAVES IN FRANCE.

TOUR OF THE BURIAL-GROUNDS. A REVIEW' OF THE WORK. (Times Correspondent.^ LONDON, Juno 4. The present condition and future aspect ott tiic war graveyards in Franco anfl Flanders iras been exercising lire minds of many correspondents i , he ■Times during the last two weeks, i Laving just finished a 500-mile liof. i-car tour of the principal graveyard-. . i the battle area, 1 think some accou... of it may interest the many thousands of people to whom this sneject will always have a sacred and. abiding interest. It is quite true to say mat the parents and relatives of our beloved and honoured dead fail to understand the magnitude and complexity of the problem which is being faced and boldly undertaken by the Graves Registration Department of tho War Office. In Franco and Belgium already 37-5,351 soldiers’ graves have been identified and registered. .Most of those soldiers are lying in beautifully arranged and properly tended cemeteries, which for ever will be “little bits of England,” as the ground is being purchased by the French and Belgian Governments to be held in perpetuity as British military graveyards.

A vast-number of isolated dead, howwer, stilt remain outside those vesting, pieces-. Owing to the violence' of rifle o-r shell fire nien were buried whore they fell j leaving in. many cases only tlio deadVma-n’s upturned rifle or tin hat to mark'the spot. It is a tremendous fact to bea>r in mind that there are more dead soldiers lying in isolated areas than constituted the whole of the Expeditionary Force of 1914. METHODS OF ORGANISATION. There are over 1200 British graveyards in Flanders and France, and the work of completing them is in capable hands. At the headquarters of the Graves Registration and Inquiries in France, this work has been admirably organised by the Chief Director and his assistants. The battlefields have been divided into areas, so that there is no overlapping or wasted effort. An assistant director is in charge of the southern •area with‘Pei onne as headquarters ; another assistant director is operating from Douai, and a third has Lille as his .base. These areas anc further subdivided and controlled by deputy assistant directors for (1) linos of communication, (2) Nicuport and Passchendnele, (3) Aisne and Marne, (4) the occupied parts of Germany. The jSxia|ent staff-consists of 2460 officers and men, divided into Graves Registration units, cemetery caretakers, and working parties. In addition to these, the • Canadians have 1000 men working on the Viniy Ridge, and 1000 Anstra-liijto? are clearing the Fillers Brettonneanx sector; together with several companies of the Labour Corps, which have been taken over from tho armies originally responsible for this work. People at home scarcely realise that the work of reconstruction and restoration of the work which was done during the war" by Graves Registration units is only in the initial stage. Before the ! Armistice vast areas in which lay thou- j sands of our belovedi dead were in the possession of the enemy. In many cases where cemeteries had been laid out in tho forward- areas all tho work was undone by the advance of the Germans. Fortunately, all those cemeteries had been surveyed, planned, and registered, ! eo, that reconstruction is possible. At! Locre, for instance, tho whole of the church fell over the graveyard, and last week I saw this earns cemetery being reconstructed, with every grave in the position it originally occupied. Take -other instances. The Guards’ burial ground at the famous “Windy Corner,” after being laid out, was so heavily shelled last year that it became literally a series of shell holes. During the last two months this graveyard has been entirely rearranged, and is now in a good condition, with every cross in its' original place. Tile Post Office Rifles cemetery at Festubert, on the road from Bethune, consisted of 39 graves. Only six were left standing in March last, the remainder being in waterlogged shell holes. Now its condition would gladden the heart of every mother whoso son is buried there. At Morville, a cemetery of 2000 graves was swept by German fire until nothing "remained. Thanks to<a thorough survey having been made, ©very cross is hack in its place. ' Down the Menin Road from Yprcs, in the communaJ extension cemetery, whol e lie the remains of Prince Maurice of Battenberg, every trace of heavy shell fir® has been removed. Only the marble i monuments of the former inhabitants of j Ypres bear evidence of the awful'explo- j ehre force that swept over that district.) EXHUMATION AND REBURIAL. It is, however, in the great work of exhumation and reburial that the Graves Registration Department is doing a mar- : velious and notable work. Lot mo try 1 to give a faint idea of what this means, j As I motored 1 from Bapaume to Poronne j one could) look down from the ridge and I see a great rolling prairie in front. Imagine a vast moorland in Yorkshire, with not a tree or a village in eight. Ouly blackened stumps now represent what were once flourishing plantations, and as for the villages—they do not exist. The eye can see on a clear day 30 miles of terrain as hare as a billiard table. This area- is dotted and scarred by millions of shell holes; they are closer together than the cells of a honeycomb. Over this lonely expanse one could detect here and there a little cross marking the resting place of sqmo British soldier. Some are in shell holes, others by the side of the road, some with only a gun or a knapsack to indicate who lies beneath.

Every yard of this area—and, of course, this is only a small part of the whole —has to he searched for isolated graves. When found tho body is reverently disinterred, covered with the Union Jack, and conveyed to a properly organised cemetery, where it is reinterred with the usual religious rites. There are 150,000 such graves! In opening them traces are often found which enable the body to be identified. A search party came across a wooden post marked by a kindly German, "To 41 unknown Englanders who died like heroes.” On opening the grave it was possible to identify the greater number of them-—a source of much consolation to many broken hearts —and they were all interred in the nearest cemetery. In another case a cross was found marked *‘To an unknown British soldier.” On searching: the spot 43 hsdies were un-i

covered, of which 37 were identified and registered, and the news communicated to their parents and relatives. 15,000 MEN RECRUITED. For this important work tho "War Office is recruiting 15,000 men at high rates of pay. This force is not too largo. As every month passes the work becomes increasingly difficult. Nature tlvis year appears to have been working double shifts to repair the ravages of war. Over those millions of .shell holes she lias thrown a shield of tall grass, nettles five feet high, and masses of yellow flowery weeds. Vegetation is fast covering up all traces of tile dead. This makes tho task oi finding them extremely difficult as well as hazardous, for many of the shell holes have six feet of water in them.

One must . boar in mind that the French peasant is not going to allow these vast areas to remain uncultivated. Many British farmers would imagine that'this bat tlc-scarrcd land would never again bo fit for the use of man. The French farmer thinks otherwise. In some places he has begun to fill in the shell holes, remove tho scrub and plough the land, and unless those isolated bodies are recovered while there .is a trace of them the hones of our Heroes will be mingled with the soil. 1 noticed one acre of ploughed land in the centre of a great area of shell-torn territory, and right in tho middle was a simple soldier’s cross. The farmer had ploughed all round it and left it standing in the centre of his plot. I saw one exhumation party at work at Hocge, where a great concentration cemetery is being made. Into this graveyard 109 bodies arc brought every day and reverently rointerml. Every one has been identified, and each cross will have its name and regimental number.. This.is one illustration only of the work which is going on ever tho whole of tho battlefields. This work of 'exhumation is not confined only to the open country where fighting wont on. A good deal of warfare took place in towns, and many soldiers died, and were buried amongst the ruins. These towns arc now being cleared. The Mayor of Pennine specially asked that that town should be attended to as it was urgent to reconstruct the town in consequence- of the number of returning civilians. This was quickly done, and tho same attention is being paid to other towns in the devastated districts. • ‘DESECR A TIN G GR AV ES. ’ ’ Those operations have probably given rise to the talk of “desecrating graves.” There is no desecration in tho sense in which that word is understood. As I have pointed oul, owing to tho exigencies of war men were often buried near where they fell, and' the only desecration —if such it can be called—-is that the Graves Registration workers are removing tho crosses over these isolated bodies and replacing them and tho remains of the dead soldiers in a cemetery where they will rest for ever with their comrades. If the dead warrior could he asked which ho would prefer, is there any doubt of his reply? The work of tho Graves Registration comes to an end when these isolated bodies are recovered' and the 1200 graveyards arranged in -methodical and proper order. They are then visited bv a representative of the Tmßefial' War Graves Commission, who takes them over to bo for ever under their supervision. I went into the beautiful cemetery at Lijssenthook where Lord Goroll, I D. 5.0., and many distinguished sqldiers are sleeping. In ibis cemetery are 1 17,000 graves, and it is a. picture of { quiet and reposeful beauty. This is the j largest cemetery in the Ypres salient. | There is already a fine avenue of young trees planted in 1916, while each grave.) has its little odrpet «f mown grass and I n border of flowers. Fouquieres and Louvaneourt are also in this condition of peaceful and’ serene beauty—a sight to gladden the heart of anyone who may have loved ones sleeping there. At 1.0 Trepori, Donllens, St. Hilaire and other old areas behind the 1915 line which were never captured by tho Germans, 82 graveyards are in process of being taken over by the Imperial War Graves Commission. In addition there are 230 which have at cne time been completed but through the shortage of men during the winter months have fallen into various degrees of disrepair, but can be made ready in a. short time for transfer to the Commission. It is that body—and not the Graves Registration Department—which will determine the final and permanent aspect of those groat resting places of our loyal dead in Flanders and France and all the other territories over which war has raged during tho last five years.