Armistice Day, Remembrance Sunday are both rapidly approaching. Strangely more is being made of remembering the world wars now than ever it seems. I know there are all the World War One 100th anniversary commemorations and I suppose the poor sods still getting killed aboard has given it a new focus.
Interesting to see that more civilian organisations take part in the Remembrance Sunday march past at the Cenotaph and rightly so, they too bore the brunt of losing loved ones not to mention homes and livelihoods etc.
A chap I know has a Flickr site called 'The home fallen of the Great War' where he and others (including me) photograph Commonwealth Wargraves where they are situated in UK graveyards and cemeteries and add them to this site, personally I also like to do some research into the person with varying degrees of success, if you want to have a look at it follow this:
https://www.flickr.com/groups/homefallen/ it's very interesting, further to this I visited the cemetery in Hatfield Road in St Albans recently, they have about 90 WW1 graves mainly soldiers who died of wounds having been transferred back to Blighty to Napsbury Hospital in St Albans ( a former 'lunatic asylum' cleared to take war wounded) .
The first soldier to be buried here was an Aussie, 4442 Private William Martin Gillin 22nd Bn Australian Imperial Force. He was only 21 years old and from Melbourne ,Australia, he'd been a labourer in civilian life. He enlisted on 2nd February 1916 and arrived in France on 29th March 1916. He was probably wounded and evacuated during the battalions part in the Somme action at Pozieres, a battle that cost them 683 killed and wounded. His fate was to be severely wounded in the upper left thigh causing a hemorrhage, his leg was amputated but he died of shock and hemorrhage. He was buried with full military honours with a Royal Artillery gun carriage from Luton and troops from the Army Veterinary Corps and Royal Flying Corps doing the final honours. He was buried on 22nd August 1916. In 1918 an area called 'Soldiers Corner' was designated in the cemetery and he was exhumed to be reburied in this area, though an error was made on his headstone as it now reads that he died in 1918.
The cross of sacrifice that stands in this and many other cemeteries throughout the UK and abroad came about when Edwin Lutyen, Herbert Baker (both architects) and Charles Aitken Director of the Tate Gallery were brought in to design memorials to the 'Glorious Dead' of the Great War. Lutyen wanted a more abstract symbol rather than a cross, the others argued that most of the dead would have been Christian so a cross was appropriate. This was probably true but there would have been an awful lot who weren't Christian, the thousands from the Indian Army for instance and in London The Royal Fusiliers had three battalions made up of Jewish volunteers, it wasn't their symbol their!
All the graves are the same regardless of rank, regiment or creed, next of kin were allowed to have a short inscription added though it seems most do not, its just name, rank, number, regiment, age if known and date of death.
They are melancholy places really and if you start to look closely at the ages you cannot help but feel sad, particularly as our boys are similar in age, but they do hold a morbid fascination for me. I haven't visited any of the really big Commonwealth Wargrave cemeteries in France or Flanders though I'd like to. There's a cemetery near La Boiselle in France near where my Grandads 2/Middlesex went over the top on 1st July 1916, they lost 260 men mostly buried in one cemetery, that's one I'd like to visit as my Grandad must have known some of the soldiers buried there.
Not all the troops died of wounds sustained at the front, there are two burials here of pilots in the Royal Flying Corps who died due to accidents. Lieut ER Mackay DCM was killed in mid air when his aircraft collided with another. An eye witness at the coroners enquiry said he'd seen seven or eight aircraft in the air and two came close together and collided dropping like a stone a verdict of Death by misadventure was returned.
Another, 2nd Lieut James Lionel Andrews was executing a number of stunts in the air and appeared to not be able to pull out of one of them and crashed into the ground. He was 31 years old and left a widow and two children, another death be misadventure verdict returned.
There's a grave I found in another cemetery which flies in the face of the 'Glorious Dead.' he'd only been in the army afew months and was discharged, his records stating that he was 'Congenitally unsuited to being a soldier, he threatened to bayonet a sergeant,' yet when he died a few months later he was afforded a war grave! They'll always be 'anomalies' I suppose.
They are interesting places to wander round and all the more interesting to find out just a little about the individuals but there is and always will be a great sadness to these places.
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| Cross of Sacrifice next to Soldiers Corner in Hatfield Road, St Albans. |
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| View of Soldiers Corner. |
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| Information sign installed by the CWGC |
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| Close up of the inscription on the Cross of Sacrifice. |
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| Lieut ER Mackay DCM killed in a mid air accident. |
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| 2nd Lieut LJ Andrews also killed in an aircraft accident. |
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4442 Pte WM Gillin 22/AIF. First war dead to be buried in the cemetery.
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Here's afew photos for evening including a bottle of wine that Tara got me, she tried to get beaujolais nouveau but unfortunately Lina who runs the restaurant couldn't get any from her supplier so she gave be a very nice bottle of Cote Du Rhone which I shall look forward to tasting in due course. 
