Sad local history
Published: Fri, 09/20/24
We had a week of Heritage open days here in Beverley and the East Riding of Yorkshire. There were all kinds of interesting places open to the public and my choice on Friday night was a guided tour of the 22 Commonwealth War graves which can be found in St Martin’s cemetery on the outskirts of Beverley. The walk was ably led by a David Barton who is a local volunteer with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) and there must have been at least 20 people who joined the tour.
There are apparently around 1,700,000 burials registered with the CWGC from the 2 ‘World Wars’ of 1914 to 1918 and 1939 to 1945. Wars in previous centuries had never generated enough casualties for military burials to be given much consideration by the wider public. The Boer war led to the establishment of war memorials in many towns in the first decade of the last century, there is a fine example opposite the rail station in Hull. However, during the first world war the number of casualties was so huge that hardly a family in the land had not received a telegram notifying them of the death of a son, husband, brother, or cousin. Perhaps even worse, many were left in limbo by a message which just said. ‘Missing in action.’ which actually meant that the body could not be identified, while leaving open the slight hope of seeing the loved one alive once again.
At the start of the war some bodies were repatriated for burial, especially officers from influential families. Then it became a matter of policy that all who fell in action would be buried on the battle field or nearby. The two main reasons were:
Firstly, the sheer logistical challenge of repatriating so many bodies to their home communities. Secondly, the arrival of so many (often badly mutilated) corpses for public burial in every cemetery would have devastated public morale and probably brought about a demand to end the war as soon as possible. Which would have been a good thing, but was not what the government wanted.
The interesting concession to a ‘citizen army’ as created from 1915 onwards, rather than a traditional fighting force made up of aristocratic officers and professional volunteers, was an equality in death which can be seen as quite progressive. Everyone was buried in the same grave yards, no areas for officers and another for ‘the men’, and everyone got an effectively identical plain grave stone. So, in a military grave yard, you might find a titled general lying next to an 18 year old private soldier who might have been a farm laborer before the war. If you served and died before 1921 (I believe it was 1947 for WW2) you were entitled to have your service recognised by a standard portland stone memorial with your name, date of death, your service number, and your regimental insignia. An extra inscription could be paid for by the family which is why some stones have an extra line or two and some don’t. The lists of names on war
memorials are also in strictly alphabetical order rather than in order of rank.
So, if the vast majority of war causalities are buried where they fell in France or Belgium why is there still a scattering of easily recognisable Commonwealth War Graves in our local cemeteries? If you look at the dates on many of the local CWGs you will find that the interred died after the war ended, sometimes by a couple of years, in these cases there might have been a failure to recover from wounds received in combat. However, in St Martin’s cemetery there is a wide variety of stories. In a couple of cases men died during the early stages of their training, one drowned while swimming in a river in his time off, another just collapsed on parade and died of appendicitis. In another case a soldier who was recovering from wounds went to a funfair and was thrown from a switchback ride. There was a 19 year old who killed himself after being jilted. There are also several older men who were clearly not fit for active duty. The
last option in the army for the physically downgraded was a labour battalion. Such a unit was stationed at Wenlock Barracks in Beverley and the members worked on nearby farms. If they died of pneumonia or the flu then they were still entitled to a CWG. On Sergeant major who had served in the Boer war finished his career in a labour battalion and yet apparently got a funeral with full military honors.
I was going to draw out some social history lessons from my tour of St Martins. However, I am feeling that there may be a more important point to make.
Firstly. Don’t we ever learn? Every community has the public war memorials and the individual ones described about. And yet, the stakes are raised higher than ever in Ukraine with talk of missile strikes deep into Russia. The conflict in the Israeli occupied territories and neighboring countries continues to escalate with the utterly bizarre weaponisation of Hezbollah’s communication devices and now, barrages of rocket attacks. The Great War was supposed to be the war to end all wars, if only.
Secondly.
Grave yards are special, even sacred spaces, where the continuity of the community is located and preserved. The war graves are just one chapter in a history that will go back generations. A community which lives alongside the graves of their ancestors is demonstrating that this is where it belongs and plans to stay. If another group arrives, decides to drive out the established community, and take their land then obliteration of burial sites and memorials will be part of their agenda. If there are no memorials to ancestors, and their burial places are unknown, then the community can prove no real history or continuity. I know today we like to think everything important is recorded digitally, but one major power outage, or a serious solar storm, and history will be erased. A couple of hundred weight of Portland stone carefully inscribed with names and dates is a lot more durable. Which is why we still know the names of those who
served in the Great War. It is also the reason that the IDF is destroying cemeteries in Gaza. Palestinians, what Palestinians? https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/why-is-israel-bulldozing-cemeteries-in-gaza/
regards
Graham
PS I like to think that martial arts are about personal development and conflict resolution rather than escalating violence. Come and judge for yourself in Salisbury on the 16th of November http://iceandfire.org.uk/salisbury16112024.html
Or Monday evenings in Beverley http://iceandfire.org.uk/selfdefence.html
Graham Butcher
21 Beaver Road
Beverley East Yorkshire HU17 0QN
UNITED KINGDOM
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