Lunchtime Speaker – Rebecca Bale – Commonwealth War Graves

This week’s speaker was Rebecca Bale a volunteer from the Commonweath War Graves Commission. It
was set up in 1917. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Fabian Ware, a director of Rio Tinto, finding
that he was too old at 45 to join the British Army, but wanting to help the war effort, obtained the position of
Commander of a mobile unit of the British Red Cross. Once in France, Ware was struck by the lack of any
mechanism for documenting or marking the location of graves of those who had been killed. He thus created an
organisation within the Red Cross for this purpose. In March 1915, with the support of the Adjutant-General of
the British Expeditionary Force, the unit was transferred to the British Army as the Graves Registration
Commission. In 1917 this became the Imperial War Graves Commission. After the WW1, the Commission
constructed a number of purpose-built military cemeteries, Having consulted with garden designer Gertrude
Jekyll the architects created a walled cemetery with uniform headstones in a garden setting, augmented by
Blomfield's Cross of Sacrifice and Lutyens' Stone of Remembrance. The Forceville cemetery in France became
the model for the commission's building programme. The headstones were to a standard design containing
name, rank, number, age at death and a symbol denoting their religious faith. They could also have a personal
inscription. The Commission constructed memorials to deceased servicemen and women who had no known
grave such as the Menin Gate in Ypres Belgium and Thiepval in France. After WW2 there was a need for more
war cemeteries and memorials such the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede. The name of the commission was
changed to Commonwealth War Graves Commission in 1960. It has now has 5 members: Australia, Canada,
India, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom, which jointly finance it. The Commission is currently
responsible for the commemoration of 1.7 million deceased Commonwealth military service members in 153
countries and 67,000 civilians who died as a result of enemy action during the WW2. Military service members
are commemorated by name on either a headstone, at a cemetery or on a memorial. There are 23,000
separate burial sites including the Brookwood military cemetery. Terry Smith gave the vote of thanks. He
thanked Rebecca for her very interesting presentation. She offered to organise a visit to Brookwood for us.