Road to Home 2023 Day 11: Arras - Bapaume

The biggest single bit of work since any of the Pharaohs – and they only worked in their own country. 

- Rudyard Kipling

The highlight of today's walk for me was not actually on the Via Francigena. But it was only a brief detour, and one I would definitely recommend! 

I met up with the Canadians this morning to walk together out of Arras: six kilometres of urban walking before we were truly out of the city! 

Here, where Arras becomes Beaurains, I saw a sign that caught my attention: The CWGC Experience.  I recognised those initials: the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is the source of the information I have on the site of my great-grandfather's grave. On their excellent website, you can trace any soldier from any Commonwealth country who died in World War I or II, find out exactly where he is buried, and download the related documents. 

I decided to walk the extra couple of blocks to see the Commonwealth War Graves Commission headquarters and visitor centre.  A self-guided tour with an audio guide takes visitors to see the workshops where the tombstones and all the fittings for the war cemeteries are made, while panels provide information and statistics on the Commission's work.

And what a lot of work that is! The CWGC cares for 23,000 war memorials and war cemeteries around the world commemorating 1.7 million Commonwealth casualties from both World Wars.

The organisation began its work shortly after the First World War started, when it was the Graves Registration Commission, at first under the Red Cross and then as part of the British army, documenting and recording the location of the graves of the fallen. By May 1916 the organisation had registered over 31,000 graves of British and Imperial soldiers. The commission began to receive letters of enquiry and requests for photographs of graves from relatives of deceased soldiers. In March 1915, the commission, with the support of the Red Cross, began to dispatch photographic prints and cemetery location information in answer to the requests; by 1917, 17,000 photographs had been dispatched to relatives. 

In 1917 the Imperial War Graves Commission was established by Royal Charter, and its work began in earnest after the war was over. Once land had been obtained for cemeteries and memorials, the enormous task of recording the details of the dead began. By 1918, some 587,000 graves had been identified and a further 559,000 casualties were registered as having no known grave.

The scale, and associated high number of casualties, of the First World War produced an entirely new attitude towards the commemoration of war dead. The 1918 Kenyon Report, produced by a committee chaired by the Director of the British Museum, envisioned the development of the cemeteries; two key points were that bodies should not be repatriated, and that uniform memorials should be used to avoid class distinctions. 

Beyond the logistical nightmare of returning home so many corpses, it was felt that repatriation would conflict with the feeling of brotherhood that had developed between serving ranks.

In 1918, three of the most eminent architects of their day, Sir Herbert Baker, Sir Reginald Blomfield, and Sir Edwin Lutyens were appointed as the organisation's initial Principal Architects. Rudyard Kipling was appointed literary advisor for the choice of language in the memorial inscriptions.

The commission had also been mandated to individually commemorate each soldier who had no known grave, which amounted to 315,000 in France and Belgium alone. The Commission initially decided to build 12 monuments on which to commemorate the missing; each memorial being located at the site of an important battle along the Western Front.

The programme of commemorating the dead of the Great War was considered essentially complete with the inauguration of the Thiepval Memorial in 1932, which I will visit two days from now.

But the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission carries on. The organisation employs 1300 people all over the world to care for the cemeteries, monuments and records, from the gardeners who mow almost 100 million square metres of grass and water the flowerbeds planted on all those graves to the stonemasons who make the headstones and the archivists. The remains of around 50 soldiers are unearthed every year in France, by farmers or construction workers, and the sites are instantly cordoned off and closely examined to ensure that every little bit of bone and any possessions are recovered, after which they are studied by anthropologists to attempt to determine the person's nationality and identity before giving them the decent burial they deserve.

It is the least we can do for them.

Photographs taken at Sunken Road Cemetery, Boisleux-Saint-Marc

Today's accommodations: Hotel-Restaurant Le Gourmet, Bapaume (pilgrim rate available)

Arras - Bapaume 29.5 km