Ascension : News From The Grotto - Thought For The Week
Submitted by The Islander (Shari Parkhill) 19.11.2009 (Article Archived on 03.12.2009)

This past week, with Remembrance Day falling during it, I received a link to an article about the preservation of British War Graves around the world. It was a touching reminder of those who gave their all for their country.

Unfortunately, I also received the news that back home in the city of Fredericton, near to where my son and his family live, the cenotaph honouring the war dead was vandalized three days before Remembrance Day.  The outrage was so great that over 5,000 people showed up to the Remembrance Day Memorial ceremonies as a tribute.  My son posted a message on his Facebook page decrying the vandalism, and the chat that followed included the sadness he and his friends felt that it was probably young people who did the damage, and they wanted others to know that it was an isolated incident, and that their generation still honours, and gives thanks to, the veterans who fought for their freedom.  Kind of gives us hope that the children we have raised have grown into caring, thoughtful adults who realize and recognize the service and sacrifice of those who came before them.

The story of the war graves reminds us that although so many wars are in the past, some continue and unfortunately, we are still losing those who fight for freedom.  The stories remind us that these were real people, not just names.  They had lives, loves, dreams and aspirations.  And for each, it ended on a battlefield usually far from home.  These were the men and women buried where their lives ended, and whose graves are carefully maintained and lovingly tended by not only the War Graves Commission, but local people who refuse to let them fade into obscurity.  Here are some excerpts from the report by Matti Friedman.

“It is the British empire of the dead.  Scattered across 150 countries and managed from a modest office building near London’s Heathrow Airport, a global patchwork of graveyards constitutes a beautiful memorial to the ugliest carnage: the 1.7 million fighting men and women who died for Britain and its dominions in the world wars of the last century.

Most were buried where they fell, and their graves are still tended by dedicated growndskeepers even as the wartime generations dwindle and visitors to the cemeteries become rare.

The caretakers are men like Mohammed Odeh, a Palestinian who grew up with only the dead for neighbours, or Rosario Savarese, an Italian haunted by the one-legged veteran who couldn’t bear to be far from his fallen comrades.  And there’s the Welsh graves official who is lately coping with 350 World War I tombstones damaged when war came to the Gaza Strip.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, representing Britain and its former colonies, tends the graves of more than 935,000 identified servicemen and of 212,000 who have never been identified, as well as memorials to the almost 760,000 still listed as missing.

They are Britons, Irish, Australians, Africans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Indians and others, all from the swaths of the world that were once ruled from London.

On November 11, the day World War I ended and became known as Armistice Day, Veteran’s Day or Remembrance Day, some of the cemeteries draw officials and other visitors.  For the rest of the year they are largely left to their gardeners.

A typical inscription for a British soldier, Lt. A. Francis Dickinson, killed in 1918 at age 27:  “All you had hoped for, all you had, you gave”.

May God bless all those lost to us who lie in war graves around the world, to those who tend the graves with care and compassion, and to those who remember the lives behind the names inscribed in the stone.