Marking Sacrifice: Commonwealth War Graves Commission

The scene is stark, yet somehow comforting. Uniform grey headstones etched with names and crosses form perfectly straight rows, grass neatly clipped to their edges. Low shrubs and red brick walls create a peaceful, garden-like setting. It is a place of reflection and remembrance. Similar Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) sites are found in 153 countries, funded by six Commonwealth member countries (Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom). They mark where Commonwealth soldiers fell in each of the two Great Wars.

Originally established as the Imperial War Graves Commission in 1917, the commission emerged from the vision of Sir Fabian Ware, who was commander of a mobile unit in the British Red Cross during the Great War. Saddened by what he saw, Ware was determined to honour those who had fallen by marking and recording the graves. After the war, he worried the gravesites would fall into disrepair and be forgotten. He made the maintenance, care and documentation of these graves his life’s work.

The commission engaged prominent architects of the day and asked Rudyard Kipling to advise them on inscriptions. He selected the biblical phrase “Their Name Liveth for Evermore” for those whose identities were known, and for the unidentified, “A Soldier of the Great War Known unto God.” Kipling had supported the war effort, wrote propaganda for the British government and encouraged his son to sign up with the Irish Guards. John Kipling was killed in battle at age eighteen. His father later wrote: “If any question why we died / Tell them, because our fathers lied.”

The CWGC now cares for the graves and memorials of almost 1.7 million servicemen and women, Chinese labourers and Commonwealth citizens killed during conflict. Monuments to the missing include the Thiepval Memorial in France, which carries the names of over seventy-two thousand casualties from the Battle of the Somme.

There are more than 130 sites here in British Columbia where Commonwealth casualties are commemorated. From single markers like the one at St. Eugene Mission near Cranbrook to Esquimalt’s Veterans’ Cemetery, where eighty-one casualties are honoured. Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery includes a special Soldier’s Plot where 319 World War I soldiers are commemorated.

To locate a cemetery or to learn where a soldier is buried, visit the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website at www.cwgc.org.

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