UNLOCATED GRAVES.

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15361, 9 October 1923, Page 6

UNLOCATED GRAVES.

OF NEW ZEALAND SOLDIERB. STATEMENT BY MINISTERS. Although exhumation operations have been completed as far as- possible in France. Belgium, Gallipoli, Egypt, and Palestine, the search parties of the Imperial War Graves Commission have been unable to trace and identify a great many graves, stated the Minister for Defence (the Hon. Sir Heaton Rhodes) to a N.Z. Times representative the other day. During the war burials on the battlefields were carried out under the greatest difficulties, and the graves were hastily marked with whatever material might be readily available, the marking on the graves by the simple wooden crosses being left for the attention of the Graves Registration Unit at a later date. Map references indicating the locations of the graves were supplied to this unit, but in a regrettably large number of cases subsequent military operations destroyed all trace of r the graves, thereby greatly increasing the list of men for whom no confirmed burial reports have been received.

A perusal of the returns made of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force gives some indication of the great number of unlocatcd graves as applied to the whole of the British,Forces, whose dead number approximately 1,000,000. In France the New Zealand Ezpcditionary Force left 12,153 dead, and of this number 7758 graves have been identified, while 4395 remain unlocatcd. At Gallipoli 2081 died, but only 392 graves are known, and 1689 are unlocated. The percentage of unlocated graves in Egypt and Palestine is very much less. Memorials to the Missing. The most suitable manner of honouring the memory of those whose graves are not known has received the serious consideration of the New Zealand Government, and it has been decided that memorials to the missing shall be erected in selected cemeteries in the various theatres of the war, each memorial bearing the names of the missing in the area represented by the memorial. Arrangements have now been completed with the Imperial War Graves Commission for the erection of such memorials in the following cemeteries: —France: Tync Cot and Butt (representing Ypres area); Gallipoli: Lone Pine, Chunuk Bair, and Hill 60 (representing Anzac area) ; and Twelve Tree Copse (representing the Cape Relics area). Similar memorials are to be erected in cemelries in other sectors as the permanent work on war graves progresses."