Hello everyone and welcome to Beater Battlefield. This week, the 16th to the 24th of May 2026, Marks Wargraves Week. This is a very special week in the life of the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission. All over the world, there are three events tasking and showing the different types of work that the Commonwealth War Graves do. Formerly the Imperial War Graves Commission, it was created in 1917 for something that was completely new in the history of warfare. Prior to the outbreak of the First World War, there had been no fought for the dead. But with the mass numbers of men dying during the First World War, it was seen fit that these men needed to be remembered. And all those years later, we're still doing a great job. So, in this series of episodes, I've picked some of my favourite cemeteries to go to, but we're going to do some of the different countries. The Commonwealth War Graves looks after 1.7 million graves around the world in over 150 countries at 2,500 purpose-built cemeteries, and in the UK alone, there's 170,000 Commonwealth Wargraves that you can find in every little churchyard and major cemetery. So I hope you enjoy. Hello and welcome to Peter Battlefield. Today we're going to be in Belgium talking about the Commonwealth Wargraves there. There are 160,000 Commonwealth Wargraves in Belgium. Over 386 sites making up the cemeteries, memorials, and burial grounds of the First World War, and there are 327 other sites of those who die during the Second World War. Of course, we know on the Western Fronts we have those main cemeteries. We think of the 12,000 graves at Tynecott, the near 11,000 graves at Lisenhoek, and the countless numbers on memorials. We have, of course, the 35,000 on the Tynecott Memorial and the 54,000 on the Menningate Memorial. If you're ever visiting Ape and you are interested in the Commonwealth War Graves, if you're a lone traveller or going with your family and not as part of an organised tour, please visit just opposite the Menningate. You have the Commonwealth Wargraves Centre, and that's who we're probably pretty much doing these talks for today. Those are the Commonwealth Wargraves and the Commonwealth Wargraves Foundation. So if you pop in there, they can give you all manners of different information, and they have an amazing coffee shop. In there, when you buy your coffee, you actually get given a little card, and that tells you a story behind someone who's buried somewhere in the Ypres salient. And of course, no visit to Ypres would be without the visit to the last post ceremony. Every single night since 1927, the men of the Belgian Fire Brigade at eight o'clock in the evening have blown their bugles and played the last post ceremony to remember all those who died in that conflict. Of course, it would be not blown for a short period of time during the Second World War, but even within the moments that Epe was liberated in September 1944, those buglers came out and played. The Belgians did ask the Germans whether they could carry on doing their service. And the camp commandant asked the question, Is it for all people who died in war? Or is it just for the British? And the Belgian buglers said, Well, no, it's just for the British, so they refused to. However, I believe if they'd had the opportunity and said it was for all those who died, perhaps it would have carried on during that period of time. And just brings me on to a short thing. With the Second World War, who looked after the gardens? Most of the Commonwealth Wargraves gardeners were arrested, and some of them were sent to internment camps in Germany, and some of them died at Lamsdorf. But the locals did come and tend to many of those war graves, and we there are amazing sets of photographs from 1940 and 1945 and 44 of British troops visiting those graves who, for some, may have been their fathers who died out in those battlefields just 20 years before. I've covered Ypres in several different podcasts, and I am going to do there are quite a few in the back catalogue and those coming up which will tell you about certain cemeteries in that area, but I want to tell you a little bit more further afield, a little bit off the beaten track of the Western Front. If you head towards the coast, you have the Newport Memorial to the Missing. Newport was a Belgian area of operations, however, in the later part of the war, we wanted to hold on to the coast and perhaps create a new form of amphibious landing to attack the Germans on the coast. And of course, on St. George's Day 1918, there would be the Zebrugerade, but there wasn't that mass amphibious landing as you thought there would be. But just below the Albert Memorial, and there's the amazing Western Front Museum there, you have a small memorial to remember 1200 men who have no known grave who died on the Belgian coast from all different regiments. And then as you go from that point where you stand at Newport, and that's the point where the trenches met the sea, we can then go along that 500 or so miles of Western Front all the way to the Swiss border with all those memorials all the way along. But I want to tell you a bit more about the other side of this of the war. And of course, Belgium would be invaded twice during the First and Second World War, and it would pee. Belgium, brave little Belgium, has always been a stomping ground for armies on their way through to these sets of warfare. But if you get a chance and you're ever in the Antwerp area, there is the Schunzelhof Cemetery. This is a very vast cemetery, and it has near 1250 burials, sorry, close to 1,400 burials from the First and Second World War. Not a lot of people talk about the siege of Antwerp in 1944, as this would be a time where, being a port city, we needed to hold on to it for dear life, and the men of the Royal Naval Division did their best to try and hold it off until the September of 1914. And you visit that cemetery at Schoenhoff today, and you can see many of those graves of men who were more or less forgotten. In that post-Mon's Mons retreat and the battles of the first Ypres, we tend to forget about the other little actions that happened in that area. And of course Antwerp being a port city is majorly important. There are air crews that try to take that area, and there would also be men who, in the attempted liberation of Holland, would be brought back to the hospitals and sadly die in those areas. There is a large plot to remember men who were killed by the V one rocket attacks and V-2s. After June of 1944, when the Germans started firing their vengeance weapons on London, they actually targeted them on the city of Antwerp, and there would be more dropped on Antwerp than there would be London, and there were many casualties, both civilian and from those who were staging, getting ready to liberate Holland and move across the Rhine into Germany. The cemetery is made up of several different plots, and you'll find in front of one of the Belgian plots a large area. Today it's a memorial to remember those who were killed by those vengeant weapons. But once upon a time there was actually a German cemetery here from the First World War, and in the 1950s, all those first war burials were dug up, taken across Belgium, and were buried at Langemark German Cemetery, just outside the city of Ypres. As I say, there are 386 burials in Belgium, or memorials and cemeteries. But what I do find in Belgium, because in 1914, the Commonwealth War Graves, the idea of the Commonwealth War Graves was banded around in 1915 and it wouldn't go into effect until 1917. And quite often in consecrated ground in little churchyards all over Belgium, you'll find the war dead, those who were captured by the Germans and then looked after by those locals. There are still the concentration cemeteries that we think of in France, but for for me, sometimes in Belgium, they seem to leave our men lying, and it's you know it's quite nice to go there, and very similar to the the Dutch way of thinking, they still look after and remember those men, especially the air crews, as all over Belgium on their way flying back from Germany or to bomb many of the industries, many of them would crash over Belgium and were buried by the locals. And there are quite a few cases where First World War cemeteries were turned into Second World War cemeteries, so if you're anywhere on the Western Front and you have a little look, sometimes you'll see individual plots dedicated to those who died in 1940 or 1944. Obviously we think of the Battles of Dunkirk, but the Battle of Dunkirk, Operation Dynamo, was far vaster than this. All the way along the Belgian coasts, if we go to De Pan or Alinkirk, there's a major cemetery from the First World War, but was then used as a German cemetery during the second, and you've even got Russians, Czechs, and a man from the Egyptian Labour Corps who's buried there. And then just inside Adenkirk itself, there's a massive German cemetery, along with a British cemetery, which we have the First World War cemetery, and we also have those who died in 1940, because Adenkirk itself in Japan would be the centre of British operations, part of the HQ, during Operation Dynamo. And of course, the other side of Antwerp, we slowly make our way into Holland, and this would be a fierce fight in the autumn of 1944, at the end of the summer. As I spoke to one of my veteran friends, Don Hawkins, who is now 105 at the time of recording, he always talked about he was a he was in the Royal Artillery at Normandy in June 1944, and then when we spoke about the invasion and the liberation of Belgium, he said, Oh, we did it very quickly. And he was at Ostend for a short period of time. If you ever get a chance, go and visit any of the little cemeteries around Bruges, and you'll find men who were kept as prisoners around Bruges. Bruges was a U-boat station, and many we have many photographs of men coming out of the Belfry collecting their food as they were prisoners of war of the Germans during the First World War. And I can't talk about Belgium without talking about the escape lines. There were many members of the Belgian Resistance who tried to move men out of Belgium and safely home. And on this a little link to those men of the Imperial War Graves Commission, as I said, you find do find them buried all over in previous podcasts, you do find them buried all over the place. If you go to Eape Town Cemetery, you'll find a plot of men and women from the Imperial War Graves Commission who are buried there. But it just brings the two world wars together. As in Ypres itself today, we have St. George's Chapel, one of the first new buildings to be built in Epe after the First World War. It's an Anglican chapel, and next door to it was a school where you had the children of those gardeners, and they hose a British school, and they had a British scout group as well. And of course, in the summer of 1940, they had to make a choice whether they evacuated themselves or remained there. Many of those young children would go on to fight for the British Army and liberate them against fascism, and many would stay there and fight for the resistance to try and liberate their own home country, or a country they would call their home. Belgium, as I say, has had many wars over the time, and it brings into aspect the great work of the Imperial Warcraft Commission and then the Commonwealth Warcraft Commission. A hundred years before the First World War would be the last time we fought in Europe at the Battle of Waterloo, and after that battle, scavengers came to the battlefield, took teeth off of those soldiers who died in that battle. The rest were placed in mass pits and turned into compost, and many would be used as fertilizer at a sugar factory. And then a hundred years later, during the First World War, we came to a time where we needed to remember those men. Even at the time of the Boer War, there was no fault for the dead. They'd be placed in mass graves and completely forgotten about. And now, nearly 110 years later, we are thinking and remembering those dead. And the Commonwealth War graves do an amazing job still to this day. Just two pounds a year is the average that the British taxpayer pays, and the Commonwealth War Graves is tended to by six nations and paid into India, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. And it does lead me on to here if you want to perhaps pay a bit more to the Commonwealth Wargraves, or you want to learn a bit more about the work they do, please join the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation. For just three pounds a month, you will receive newsletters and information about those letters. In the show notes, you can find out about this week Wargraves Week, but the Commonwealth Wargraves are forever doing different activities to remember the War Dead.