The Glorious Dead

Why And How War Memorials Came To Be

Commemorating The Fallen on Foreign Fields

“The First World War introduced killing on such a mass scale that few nations were prepared to cope with it. Millions of bodies were never recovered, or were recovered long after any identification could be made. Hundreds of thousands of bodies were buried on the battlefield where they lay. It was often impossible to dig trenches without unearthing remains, and artillery barrages often uncovered bodies and flung the disintegrating corpses into the air. Many bodies were buried in French municipal cemeteries, but these rapidly filled to capacity. Due to the costs and sheer number of remains involved, Australia, Canada, India, Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom barred repatriation of remains.

Fabian Ware, a director of the Rio Tinto mining company, toured some battlefields as part of a British Red Cross mission in the fall of 1914. Ware was greatly disturbed by the status of British war graves, many of which were marked by deteriorating wooden crosses, haphazardly placed and with names and other identifying information written nearly illegibly in pencil. Ware petitioned the British government to establish an official agency to oversee the locating, recording, and marking of British war dead, and to acquire land for cemeteries. The Imperial War Office agreed, and created the Graves Registration Commission in March 1915.

Above photo: Fabian Ware, 1916
(Wikipedia)

“Prior to the First World War, the British (as well as continental European) tradition was to bury officers who died on the battlefield in individual graves and common soldiers in mass graves. The Great War changed this sentiment, as it was a total war, one in which nations engaged in the complete mobilization of all available resources, modes of production, and population to fight. Subsequently, as the war continued, there was a growing expectation among the people of the United Kingdom that foot soldiers as well as officers should not only be buried singly but commemorated. Many British families had already tried to visit the graves of loved ones, and could not locate them. Numerous letters appeared in newspapers decrying the problem, and Ware realized the British war effort was heading towards a public relations disaster. Ware, too, felt that the experience of war in the trenches was reducing socio-economic and class barriers. He firmly believed that British policy should be to treat all war dead alike, regardless of class or ability to pay. Wealthy families should not be able to repatriate their dead, inter remains privately in France, nor erect ornate memorials over their loved ones.

A large number of soldiers who died in the war were never found, and similarly bodies were recovered that could not be identified; once again, this required new forms of memorial. The scale of the issue was huge: 73,000 Allied dead were never found at the Somme, for example, either because their bodies had been lost, destroyed or were unrecognisable, more than one in ten of the losses in the battle.

Such was the extent of this problem that King George V declared, ‘We can truly say that the whole circuit of the Earth is girdled with the graves of our dead.’ (1)

In Britain, the commemoration of the ‘fallen’ soldiers “would be shaped by two factors; the huge numbers of men whose bodies either could not be found or identified; and the decision not to bring bodies home, but to bury them in special cemeteries near where they had fallen.” (2)

Above photo: Grave of an unknown British soldier near Ginchy, 1916 (NAM)

“Burying fallen servicemen on the Western Front was extremely challenging. It could usually only be undertaken when a lull in the fighting allowed bodies to be recovered. Hastily dug graves sprang up in widely scattered and often unsuitable locations.” (3)

Above photo: Killed during the final battles on the Western Front, the bodies of Australian troops, each with its simple wooden cross, are gathered for burial at a cemetery being constructed at Guillemont Farm, 3 October 1918 (IWM)

Graves Registration Units carried out the difficult and sombre task of recording and caring for the graves of fallen servicemen.

“By March 1915, Graves Registration Units were officially recording where British soldiers were buried.” (4)

“This work was vital to maintaining the morale of both the troops still at war and the families at home, desperate for information about their fallen loved ones.” (5)

“Body Density Maps like the one below which shows the area around Delville Wood, were created later to record the number of known burials. These were used to help find, remove and rebury soldiers in the larger cemeteries.” (6)

Above photo: Body Density Map, Delville Wood (IWM)

“During the conflict itself, monuments were erected near the battlefields and the temporary cemeteries being used to store the dead. It had been hoped in Britain to repatriate the war dead, but this rapidly proved entirely impractical, leading to haphazard, improvised arrangements around the battlefields.

Above photo: Tending a temporary graveyard at Etaples, 1918 (NAM)

By 1916 over 200 war cemeteries had been commissioned in France and Belgium, prompting debate about what longer term memorials might be appropriate at these sites.

Above photo: Woman’s Army Auxiliary Corps gardeners tending to the graves of the war dead at Etaples (IWM)

The government was concerned that unsuitable, even distasteful memorials might be erected by relatives at the cemeteries and the decision was taken that the cemeteries would be controlled by the state, and that a uniform design would be applied to the memorials at the graves.” (7)

“Plenty of anger was directed at the Commission as it established the ground rules for a uniform style of commemoration. Many people resented what they perceived as state-controlled bereavement, losing the ability to make personal decisions about how and where their loved ones would be remembered.

There were several key issues that inflamed public opinion:

The bodies of those who had died abroad would not be repatriated. This contrasted with American forces, who were usually returned to the USA.

The rounded headstones were neutral, rather than overtly Christian. Some felt they should take the form of crosses, as with American and French war graves.

Large numbers of bodies were scattered across former battlefields in isolated graves and makeshift burial grounds. They had to be exhumed and ‘concentrated’ into larger cemeteries, potentially causing further distress and confusion for relatives trying to locate a grave.

Memorials to the missing were still contentious, as there was no standard design for them.

Above photo: Relatives of a dead soldier visiting a cemetery, 1927 (CWGC)

Following vocal opposition from some MPs and other prominent figures, a debate was held in Parliament on the “resentment aroused amongst relatives of fallen soldiers” by the Commission’s philosophy and methods.

With some coaching from Rudyard Kipling, the MP William Burdett-Coutts eloquently presented the case for the work. Assuring the House that the Commission was guided by “infinite consideration and sympathy”, he emphasised the breadth of military, religious and diplomatic figures who had been consulted in developing the cemeteries. He declared that “Nothing could be further from the truth than to say that the Commission is animated by the spirit of officialdom and bureaucracy”; rather, it strove to represent “the union of all, in motive, in action and in death”.

Winston Churchill, the then-Secretary of State for War and thereby the Chair of the Commission, closed the debate with words of resounding approval.

“THERE IS NO REASON AT ALL WHY, IN PERIODS AS REMOTE FROM OUR OWN AS WE OURSELVES ARE FROM THE TUDORS, THE GRAVEYARDS IN FRANCE OF THIS GREAT WAR SHALL NOT REMAIN AN ABIDING AND SUPREME MEMORIAL TO THE EFFORTS AND THE GLORY OF THE BRITISH ARMY, AND THE SACRIFICES MADE IN THE GREAT CAUSE”. Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 1920.

After the debate it was generally agreed that the Commission would be able to continue its work unimpeded.” (8)

The cemeteries were designed by prominent architects and aimed to incorporate the principles of equality, individuality and cultural sensitivity. The graves proved controversial: initially they were marked by wooden crosses but, after some argument, it was agreed to replace these with Portland stone markers. (9)

“Portland stone is a commonly used material in CWGC war memorials, due to its compressive strength, longevity and aesthetic qualities.”

Each marker was identical in shape and individualised only through the inscription of the name, regiment, date of death, a religious symbol and a short text agreed by the next of kin.”

Above photo: The grave of Private John Parr in St Symphorien Military Cemetery, Belgium (Wikipedia)

Above photo: IWGC war cemeteries featured grass and flowers within a walled area, intended to resemble an English garden; almost all were constructed around a War Stone and a Cross of Sacrifice” (10) (CWGC)

“Sir Reginald Blomfield, one of the senior architects overseeing the design of British war cemeteries drew the inspiration for the sword from a sword (the Cross of Sacrifice) which hung in his home in Rye. Blomfield wanted a design that reflected the war, which had stripped away any notions about glory in combat and nobility in death on the battlefield.

Above photo: Sir Reginald Blomfield’s Cross of Sacrifice, Ypres Reservoir Cemetery in Belgium (Wikipedia)

"What I wanted to do in designing this Cross was to make it as abstract and impersonal as I could, to free it from any association of any particular style, and, above all, to keep clear of any sentimentalism of the Gothic. This was a man's war far too terrible for any fripperies, and I hoped to get within range of the infinite in this symbol.” His design featured an elongated cross of abstract design, on the front of which was a bronze longsword, blade pointed downward.” (11)

“To commemorate the missing, the Commission built memorials on which soldiers’ names were listed. The largest of these, the Menin Gate at Ypres and Thiepval Memorial on the Somme, list tens of thousands of names.”(12)

Above photo: The War Cemetery in Thiepval (Wikipedia)

“As with most structures, practical requirements heavily influenced the design of war memorials. The challenge with large memorials was to provide space to record the names of thousands of casualties. This required a large surface area, and at Thiepval, Sir Edwin Lutyens designed an ingenious system of arches that would provide multiple internal elevations to accommodate some 72,000 names.

Above photo: Thiepval Memorial to the missing (13)

In part, this was a response to the practical problem of commemorating such large numbers of dead, but it carried additional symbolic importance; in some ways, the physical presence of a name acted to compensate for an absent body.” (14)

Commemorating The Fallen at Home

Given that many soldiers who died in the war were never found, and similarly bodies were recovered that could not be identified, this required new forms of memorial.

“One of the key developments in memorials to the war, the cenotaph, used an empty tomb to symbolise these aspects of the war. In 1919, Britain and France planned victory marches through their respective capitals and as part of this France decided to erect a temporary cenotaph, an empty sarcophagus monument, which would be saluted by the marching troops. The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George decided that a similar but non-denominational memorial should be built in London, despite ministerial concerns that a cenotaph was an inappropriate, Catholic form of monument, and that it might be desecrated.” (15)

Above photo: The temporary Cenotaph, in an etching by William Monk, published in 1920 (Wikipedia)

“The London cenotaph proved very popular and hundreds of thousands flocked to see it. The popularity of the temporary Cenotaph resulted in its remaining open until the following year, when the decision had to be taken about what to do with the decaying structure. There was concern from the government that a permanent memorial might be vandalised, while the popular press criticised any suggestion of dismantling the existing structure.

A new, permanent cenotaph designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens was commissioned and unveiled on Whitehall on Armistice Day 1920, effectively turning this part of London into a memorial to the war; over a million people visited the site during November that year.

Above photo: The Cenotaph, London (Wikipedia)

The memorial style became very popular and spread to other countries in the subsequent years.

Above photo: The Cenotaph, Auckland (Wikipedia)

“In Britain and Australia, local community leaders were expected to organise local committees to create war memorials. Britain had a strong tradition of local government, and mayors, council chairmen or similar leaders would usually step forward to establish a memorial committee. These committees might then bring in a wider cross-section of local community leaders, including Christian clergy, Jewish leaders, voluntary organisations, rifle clubs and volunteer police, although sometimes committees were more tightly controlled by local government officials.

Raising the sums required could be quite difficult, and many committees tried various means, including moral blackmail, to exhort larger sums out of the more wealthy members of the community.

Former servicemen occasionally felt that their opinions were excluded from the formal processes, while in other cases complaints were made that the wealthier members of the community were given a disproportionate role in decision-making.”

For symbolic memorials, numerous designs were possible, from simple monuments through to much more complex pieces of sculpture. Obelisks had been a popular memorial form in the 19th century and remained so in the inter-war years. One factor in this popularity was that obelisks were relatively cheap to build, while they also fitted well with the existing civic architecture in many towns. (16)

Above photo: Aldsworth, Gloucestershire (IWM)

“Soldiers, either individually or in groups, were a popular sculptural feature in most countries. Although the trend pre-dated the First World War, very few Western war memorials portrayed heroic commanding officers, as had been popular earlier in the 19th century; if soldiers were depicted, they were invariably ordinary soldiers, usually infantrymen.” (17)

Above photo: Kendal Cenotaph (IWM)

“Many memorials drew on a classical style of architecture to produce their effect. This had been a popular style for many pre-war memorials, such as those for the dead of the Boer War, and used Greek or Roman structures, styles and symbolism. A key feature of the classical style was the concept of the "beautiful death" – classical memorials might include figures of soldiers, sometimes dying in conflict, but always heroically and, ultimately, peacefully. Soldiers in these memorials were still frequently depicted as Homeric warriors, rather than more realist figures. The classical symbolism was often used to distance the event of death from the observer, appealing to allegories for sacrifice, justice and victory, in an attempt to make mourning easier to bear. (18)

Above photo: The Machine Gun Corps Memorial. Derwent Wood’s figure of David stands above the dedication to the ‘glorious heroes of the Machine Gun Corps’ and two Vickers machine guns garlanded with bay wreaths (19)

“In some countries, particularly Germany and England, memorials used a medieval style, reaching back to a more distant past. Some of these medieval styled memorials were set in existing medieval buildings, fusing older and newer themes. Memorial church windows, for example, could combine medieval and modern features, including armoured knights on horseback, modern weapons-including-tanks and aircraft-and modern national flags.

Medievalism was popular with mourners because it reached back to the past, attempting to heal some of the discontinuities and ruptures of the war. In a period of great uncertainty, the style was reaffirming and apparently immutable, lost in a distant past. By placing the recent dead alongside those who had fallen before, the style gave reassurance that World War I dead would not be forgotten.” (20)

Above photo: Part of the Baltic Exchange Memorial Glass, now displayed at the National Maritime Museum
(Wikipedia)

“Only a minority of war memorials used some of the newer styles emerging in the inter-war period, such as modernism, realist and Art Nouveau approaches. As noted above, typically existing, traditional themes were preferred for memorials as a way of grounding mourning in a more familiar perspective.

But realism and early modernist principles were applied in Britain to produce a critique of the conventional classical approach and the concept of a "beautiful death", most notably by Charles Jagger. Jagger's later work during the inter-war period, most notably his Royal Artillery Memorial, uses realism techniques to portray an oversized BL 9.2 inch Mk I howitzer in detail, mounted on a huge, architecturally simple plinth with detailed carvings of military events involving ordinary artillerymen. The sheer size of the piece creates a dehumanizing impact, despite the portrayal of a team of artillerymen, including a covered corpse. Critiqued by much of the British press when unveiled in 1925, many veterans however felt that the style connected to them in a way that more classical themes could not.

Above photo: For casualties of the Royal Regiment of Artillery in the First World War (Wikipedia)

“Across most of the theatres of conflict, the participants attempted to respect the memorials to World War I. After the Second World War there was no equivalent mass construction of memorials to the war dead; often local World War I memorials were adapted for use instead: additional names might be inscribed to the existing lists.

As a whole, interest in the war memorials diminished considerably in the 1950s and 1960s, reflected in a reduced level of ceremonies and a simplification of the commemorative events around memorials. (21)

Also, there was a shift in deference and attitude to the 1st World War.

“The popular view of World War I underwent a big revision in the 1960s, with at least part of the change following the success of the stage show “Oh! What a Lovely War”.

By the end of the 60s it was less daring to criticise the way the war had been conducted.

In 1964 the BBC had broadcast the 26-part TV series The Great War. It featured rare archive film and survivors talking candidly about what happened to them.

Several history books of the decade set out to prove the folly of the military high commands. Typical was “The Donkeys” by the military historian and politician to be, Alan Clark, who sourced the title of his book from the phrase “Lions Led By Donkeys” The book helped to form a popular view of the First World War (in the English-speaking world) in the decades that followed and was one of the most scathing examinations of British First World War generals’ military and tactical incompetence, As such, the book was constantly used as a reference by Joan Littlewood, the stage director of “Oh! What a Lovely War”.

And there was a reassessment of the WWI poets. Wilfred Owen, full of doubts about the war, gradually replaced the more jingoistic Rupert Brooke as the era's dominant voice.

As the decade progressed “Oh! What a Lovely War” also tapped into growing disquiet about the war in Vietnam. The show, followed by the film, helped foster a new anti-war orthodoxy, openly sceptical of promises and assurances made by those in power.” (22)

In the 1990s, however, there was a resurgence of interest in World War I memorials. This was driven partially by a sequence of academic works on the social and cultural character of the conflict, as well as revisionist works by military historians such as the book “The Forgotten Victory” by Gary Sheffield which exploded many of the 1960s myths of the 1st World War which had revolved around the sheer futility and senselessness of the war, the mindset of which had become embedded in the nation’s consciousness. Sheffield, among others, while acknowledging that the war was a human tragedy, disputed the notion that it was futile. In reality, according to Sheffield, the British citizen army became the most effective fighting force in the world, which in 1918 won the greatest series of battles in British history.

Generational change in many countries also played its part. As the generation who had lived and fought during the war died off, explaining the context of the memorials became more important.

For a history of The Pembridge War Memorial see link below -

http://mediaeval-pembridge.com/2020/06/27/100-years-of-the-war-memorial/

Rory MacColl

Sources

1/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Sacrifice#

2/ https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/honouring-fallen

3/ http://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/honouring-fallen

4/ https://www.iwm.org.uk/learning/resources/remembrance-in-the-first-world-war

5/ http://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/honouring-fallen

6 / https://www.iwm.org.uk/learning/resources/remembrance-in-the-first-world-war

7/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_memorials

8/ https://www.cwgc.org/who-we-are/our-story/the-public-reaction/