What will I see at a CWGC Cemetery?

Battlefield cemeteries

These are cemeteries that were created during the war, with graves dug by soldiers for their fallen comrades. As a result, these are often quite small sites, that would’ve been created very quickly.

Although small, these cemeteries can also contain mass graves, where a number of men were buried together in a trench or shell hole. The proximity of these sites to the fighting meant that they could be later damaged or destroyed and carefully marked graves might then be lost. This leads to battlefield sites often containing a large number of soldiers ‘known unto God’.

Medical cemeteries

These cemeteries were also created during the war for casualties that died as a result of injuries or illness. They are much more carefully laid out than battlefield cemeteries to make the most of the space available.

The burials at these cemeteries were often made in date order, which means that the successive units taking part in a battle can be traced in order of participation through the row and plots within the cemeteries as the war dead were buried each day. These cemeteries were often further from the front lines, so tend to be intact with identifiable graves.

Civilian/churchyard cemeteries

These sites have burials made during the war in existing civilian burial grounds. In the early years of the war, or when military units first arrived in a new area, the existing civilian cemeteries were often used for the burial of military dead. These graves are often scattered amongst the civilian burials, in small plots, or along the cemetery boundary. In France and Belgian, municipal village or town cemeteries are usually called ‘Communal’. In the UK, the majority of our war graves are in local churchyards or cemeteries, scattered amongst the civilian graves.

Extension cemeteries

After a period of prolonged military presence, existing civilian cemeteries and churchyards would often run out of space for further burials. At this point, a new cemetery would be begun. Sometimes this meant creating a new cemetery alongside the civilian site, and these are known as ‘extension’ cemeteries. These sites tend to share characteristics with medical sites, e.g. ordered to take advantage of available space but without any overarching design.

Concentration cemeteries

These cemeteries were created after the war. After the Armistice, the former battlefields were cleared of the debris of battle. Thousands of small cemeteries and isolated battlefield burials littered the landscape and the decision was taken to concentrate all the isolated graves and many of the smaller cemeteries into existing sites or to create new cemeteries where the graves could be better tended.