Hello everyone and welcome to Peter Battlefield. The past week has been Wargraves Week for the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission, and I've been to several of the sites over the past weekend, try to do a podcast every day, but sadly life gets in the way. So today I want to tell you about an amazing opportunity if you ever get a chance. It runs all the way through the year, and it's to visit the Brookwood Commonwealth Wargraves Cemetery. It's the largest Commonwealth Wargraves Cemetery in the United Kingdom and contains the graves of nearly 5,000 men and women who've died in conflict. Now this was I've been to that cemetery several times, but with the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission Foundation, they actually offer free tours of the site, and throughout the year they do different events outreaching to different members of the community. So if you get a chance to go one of these amazing free walks around this amazing cemetery, please go on the Commonwealth Wargraves site. I'm going to put a link to it in the comments. But this cemetery is located in Brookwood, not too far from Woking, about half an hour on the train from Waterloo. And this is one of the big five cemeteries. So at the end of the Victorian period, the cemeteries were overflowing and they built these massive necropolises, which is very similar to many of the large cemeteries you find in all major cities throughout the world. But this is located out in the Surrey countryside, and it was chosen because there's not a lot you can do with this land. It's very sandy soil in amongst pine trees, and by the end of 1917, it would become possibly the first proper Commonwealth Wargraves cemetery in the world. So the Commonwealth Wargraves came into fought in early part of the war. Now, prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the British Army hadn't fought in Europe for nearly a hundred years, and the conflicts we'd had all the way through the world had led to basically the war dead being forgotten, placed in mass pits, covered with lime or with a cairn, and left there. And they most people had nothing to grieve for. And it was discovered at the start of the First World War with the sheer amount of loss that we needed to have somewhere, some way of recording and some way to remember these men for generations to come. So by 1917, the Imperial War Graves Commission is created, and later it became the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission, a commission that we know today, that looks after graves, 1.7 million graves in over 150 countries, at over 20,000 sites with 2,500 purpose-built cemeteries. There are 170,000 Commonwealth Wargraves located in cemeteries in the United Kingdom alone, and wherever you go in the world, you'll find them tended to the same way and looked after. And the average taxpayer pays about £2 a year for this amazing service. It's looked after by six different nations: Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India, and the United Kingdom. And to say this is a is a mammoth task, and even after the First World War, there was an entire army of people who were out in France and all the way around the world trying to remember the war dead, and to this day they still do some groundbreaking and amazing work. And the commemoration of soldiers from the first and second world war is something that is still in our eyes today that we can see, and to be honest, in the 20 years I've been tour guiding and travelling across the battlefields, something that we can still touch, that practical reminder of the first world war. The fact that there are no first world war veterans left, and within the next five years, there'll be no one from the second world war left to talk to. So these are lasting memories and memorials. Something that the Imperial War, sorry, the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation want to carry on, and they're the charitable branch of the Commonwealth Wargraves. For three pounds a month, you get newsletters and information about unique activities that the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission still do today, and it also goes to help future generations remembering these amazing sites. So please give them a look. I'll also put a link to them in bio. And I've been contacted by the um the Commonwealth War Graves to do some podcasts and do some some of the TikToks about this. So you'll see if you follow us on TikTok and there's a link in the bio, you'll be able to see some of the sterling work we've been doing alongside with them. But Brookwood, there are just over 5,000 graves in this cemetery, and compared to some of them on the Western Front, it's small small potatoes. Um if we think about the Tynecott Cemetery, which has nearly uh just over 12,000 graves, Lisionhook with 11,000, Cabray Rouge, 7,000, and then the other massive concentration cemeteries that we know so well on the Somme. And it's a unique place to go to. If you're driving there, the first site you'll come to is the Canadian plot, and this is entirely Second World War. There are 2,400 Canadians buried in this plot. Many of them will die as part of Bomber Command and the Royal the Royal Air Force. You have some who died in training in that area, those who died at the Battles of the Eppe, and then the post-Normandy campaign, those who have come back to the United Kingdom and died of wounds, and you're walking amongst this sea of Canadians. As you walk to the back, you'll see the cross of sacrifice and the stone remembrance. Now, a stone remembrance we find at cemeteries that are more than a thousand graves, and on that stone we see their names live forevermore. This was penned by Roger Kipling after the loss of his son during the First World War. We also have the Cross of Sacrifice, and this is one of the largest ones in the United Kingdom. We have some of the last Canadians to be buried in the United Kingdom, and this would be post-Second World War. There was a sinking of a ship in the 1960s, but then after this, the Canadians decided that all their war dead would be repatriated, very similar to the Americans. Behind this plot, we also have from the 19 from 1969 onwards a plot dedicated to the Chelsea pensioners. Now, when it comes to the history of the Chelsea pensioners, they have several plots throughout the United Kingdom. And whenever Chelsea pensioner dies, it's up to them or the family where they're buried. And for those who've decided to be buried amongst their mates, you see what are very similar to the Commonwealth Wargraves, but they have their the notches taken out of them to show that they're not Commonwealth Wargraves graves. This is tended to by the Commonwealth Wargraves, but it's paid for by the Chelsea pensioners. And just remember this, but we'll get on to that a little bit later. The difference between Ministry of Defence Graves and the Commonwealth Wargraves. We come out of this plot and we walk back through the Canadian plot and we turn to our left. We then come to not a Commonwealth Wargrave within this site of the military cemetery. This is the only bit not tended to by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, and this is the American plot. It's the mass congregation of Americans who died during the First World War, many of them at sea, and also those who died of disease whilst training in Britain. It's good to see as it's looked after by the American Monuments Association, and they have uh full-time staff there all the time, and just as I was going there, they were getting ready for their Memorial Day, which was the 24th of May, and you can see the large amount of work that was going into it from there. There is also a tiny chapel, and this is their memorial to the missing, to all those from the Coast Guard and the US Navy who died off the coast of the United Kingdom but have no known grave. So at the turn of the century when the Americans were fighting in the Philippines and also out in Cuba, this was at the time they decided that all those who died in warfare could be repatriated, and they've got a large large numbers of graves all over the world where you'll find these congregations. Within the United Kingdom, there are two main sites. This one here at Brookwood for the First World War, and then there was land donated by Cambridge University for all those who died during the Second World War. And sadly, I've never made it to that Cambridge Cemetery, but I will go there soon, even though my parents don't live too far from it. I will have to get myself down there. But when we look at the different um the difference in the graves, now what we need to remember is that America is a land built on immigration. And after the war, relatives were told that they could have their sons brought back to America or wherever they laid. There are several cases of those Irish immigrants who had emigrated that their uh their parents were contacted and their actual remains were taken back to Ireland. There are some cases where much of the time the families asked to be repatriated, but they wouldn't do this until after the war, and then many of them decided to lay them in rest. We do have some cases out in Lisenhoek or in the area of Ypres. There used to be a large American plot there for the Americans who died at Kemmel. And after the war, only one grave would be left there. The family decided to. Some of them would be moved to Wallacham, not the other American cemetery there, but then one son, one family decided to have their son buried there, as he's buried close to his brother, someone on those who died on the Western Front. And when you go through this plot, we're just going to do a very sweeping broad strokes around this cemetery. When you walk out of the American plot, we now walk into the first world war plot. And very very different to many of those Commonwealth Wargrave cemeteries we go to, there is an individual plot for every nation of the First World War. When you turn to the left and back, we do have a Second World War plot to some Germans. To the right hand side, we'll see some graves closely all packed together, and many of these men died in the tail end of 1918 with the outbreak of Spanish flu. There are Australian plots now. Australia during the Second World War didn't have that much of a foothold in the Western European campaign. So there are not many from the Australian Army from the Second World War. There are a lot of Anzacs from the First World War. We even have two men from Rhodesia, as it was at the time, Canada, New Zealand, and we can see a small plot of those from Newfoundland, which will become part of Canada in 1949. We then walk through the REF plot, and there are loads of individual stories, and when you go on this tour, they will tell you the individual stories of many of these men and women because there are members of the uh of the Women's Auxiliary Air Corps, there are Kunaks, Queens, Queen Alexandra's Nurse and Yeomanry, and the ATS, and you'll see the difference in these graves. And it is a it is a good space to actually do a battlefield tour if you haven't got an opportunity to go out to the Western Front here within this large cemetery. We can give you so much information. We then come out onto the uh the lower road. We have a plot dedicated to Belgium, Poland, these are all Second World War graves, Czechoslovakia. But as in relation to Czechoslovakia, so the Czech and the Slovak side, just outside the walls, there's a small plot of graves for those who have died in the post-war period. Very similar to Poland, those from Czechoslovakia couldn't return home as they would be seen as enemies of the Soviet nation. So they many of them remained in the United Kingdom. Sadly, many would go back home and would sadly be murdered by the Soviets. We also have a large plot dedicated to the French, the free French fighting forces of the Second World War. And we just carry on going until we come back round, we can see the flag of the American plot. We now wander on to the two memorials to the missing. Now, the memorial to the missing that I saw, the worst used to be free memorials to the missing, there was a memorial dedicated to those who died in the Russian campaign of 1919, Operation Archangel, which after this after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, it was taken away. But today, if you go about now, it should be opening in the next couple of weeks. There is a memorial to the unknown soldiers of the First World War who died in the United Kingdom. Now it used to be a small memorial, but of course, with family history as it is today, we can learn so much more. And there are many men who slip through the cracks after the post-war period, many of those who would be wounded, discharged, and sadly die as a result of their wounds, and many of them will be placed in paupers' graves up and down the country. And the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission are now striving to make sure that these men aren't forgotten. So they knocked down the first memorial, and now there is a beautiful garden with these large plimps where they can add more and more names. And that should be open in the first week from June. So the next couple of days, have a look on the Commonwealth Wargraves website, um, or just go back and have a look at this. This is a it's going to be an amazing plot, and I'll I will go back there and once they've released all the records, I'll try and give some of the stories for those on TikTok about some of these men and what happened to them after the war. We then have another large circular memorial to the missing, and this is the army's memorial to the missing of the Second World War. There are some naval and there are some from the Air Force, but it's very, very technical what we need to place this. So we have the Runny Mead Memorial to the Missing, not too far away, um, not too far from Windsor, which is for all the airmen who died over the sea or in Europe who have no known grave. The army one, obviously, in many places of conflict, we have memorials to the missing where there's been large amounts of battles, and these men and women have been remembered these men and women have been remembered, but some are not on memorials to the missing out on the battlefields. So this memorial here has the names of those who died out in Norway. There is an entire plimph dedicated to the men and women of SOE, special operations executive, who many of them would be murdered by the Germans, and several of them would be murdered at actual concentration camps, so their remains have never been found and they're remembered here. And this memorial is still being added to. I don't believe it will be added to as much as the first World War one, so I believe it will stand here. It was opened by Her Majesty the Queen in the 1950s. Now there is a little bit of controversy about this memorial, as there for those who have no known grave, there are 16 men who died in prison, and these are men who were buried at Penthamville, Wandsworth, executed for many of them for capital crimes and murder, and the names are remembered on those memorials. And there is some large campaigns for to have these remains, these names re-removed by the family, and this is something that we shall see over the next couple of years, but that generation of the sons and daughters of these victims will slowly start to fade away. But we've now done a full circle around the cemetery, and it's only a this is only a very short part, short podcast, short part short podcast. Sorry, I'll put my teeth back in to try and give you an idea and definitely go and visit this site if you're in the South England. It's very similar if you go to Canick Chase. This is a place that you can lose yourself for several hours. But thanks to the guide of the Commonwealth Wargraves Commission, it's an hour and a half tour. We tend to try and do an hour, but we were so busy chatting away, and it's great to have someone who has so much knowledge because when you're a tour guide, you do you learn where you are, and it's always lovely to go to somewhere new and discover new things. So we're always learning. We can never be experts of the uh of the first and second world war, we're always just custodians of the information, and we're always learning day by day. So once you're finished there, you may want to walk to the train station. Now, this is a dedicated train station just for the cemetery, it was part of the necropolis line. So, London Waterloo, they had to get the bodies out of London, and next to Waterloo Station, you can still see the facade of the London Necropolis railway line. The bodies were taken out of there and taken to Brookwood, which is a very macabre bit of history. Sadly, the railway was bombed during the Second World War, so it would end its service, but there is a memorial to the necropolis. But when you walk on the pathway from the cemetery back to the train station, there is a large Muslim plot. There is there are graves from the first and second world war for Indian troops, Muslim troops, um, that were moved from a memorial in Woking, which I will do a separate podcast about another day. But you also find a plot dedicated to Muslims of the First and Second World War who were buried in their own individual plot at the time. It wasn't a case of we wouldn't let them be buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery, they were buried in the Hallow Cloud, dedicated to them. And there is an amazingly interesting plot. It's only about 14 graves, and this is dedicated to men of Turkey who came over during the Second World War and fought with the REF. Many of them sadly would die of accidents like many airmen did for the Second World War, but very little known of Turkish airmen fighting for the British Army or British Air Force. And yeah, no, so and there are outside the main Commonwealth War Graves plot, you will see other graves dedicated. Some other Commonwealth War graves that are in family plots. If you actually go to Brookwood itself, it's a completely separate entity, and there are loads of notable graves. So you could spend an entire day here, half a day at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery and half at the Civilian Cemetery. So Brookwood in Surrey, an amazing necropolis to have a wander round on a sunny afternoon.