War Graves 'Have Enormous Power To Engage'
Updated: 1:51am UK, Sunday 10 November 2013
By Mark Stone, Asia Correspondent, in Burma
Just outside the chaos and the buzz of Burma's largest city, Rangoon, is a place of remarkable peace and tranquility.
Set back from the busy highway linking Rangoon to the Burma's new capital city Naypyidaw is the Taukkyan War Cemetery.
Taukkyan is the final resting place for 6,426 soldiers of the Commonwealth who fought and died in one or other of the two world wars.
The headstones are lined up in perfect uniformity. I spot a Private Jones and a Corporal Johnson.
Their names seem oddly incongruous so far from 'home'. It is a reminder of just how global the two world wars were.
As always at war cemeteries, the ages are sobering. Most of those I pause by in Taukkyan are teenagers.
Around the world there are a staggering 23,000 war cemeteries just like Taukkyan.
You will find them in 153 different countries, they hold the remains and bear the names of 1.7 million individuals and they are all managed and beautifully maintained by an organisation called the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).
"The CWGC maintains the very fabric upon which remembrance of the war dead is focussed," Peter Francis, from the CWGC, told Sky News.
"Today, the war graves and memorials are perhaps the only physical reminder of the war left. They have an enormous power in my experience to engage the individual in the war and the sacrifices made."
The gravestones that line the fields of Northern France are well-known, but similarly poignant cemeteries can be found in every country where battles of either world war were fought.
From Burma to Libya and from Turkey to Thailand they are all as moving as they are magnificent.
Some are in deserts, some in mountains, some under snow and some lined with palm trees.
Many of the cemeteries are the legacy of an extraordinary pledge made during the two world wars.
These were the days before repatriations of the like we see today. Back then, soldiers were buried where they fell, but admirable efforts were made to record each individual burial location.
When the guns fell silent, as many of the bodies as possible were 'repatriated', not home, but to a central cemetery where they could lie side-by-side.
Mr Francis points out that World War One marked a step-change in how the victims of war were remembered.
"Before the First World War it was unusual to remember the sacrifice of 'ordinary' soldiers," he explained.
"One only has to look around London and see the memorials to Generals, or go to the battlefield at Waterloo (just 100 years before the Great War) to see that there was very little to mark the sacrifice of the soldier. The First World War and the CWGC changed all that.
"It is all too easy, for those of us who have grown up with the two minute silence, the poppy, the war graves, the memorials, to think there was an inevitability about the commemoration of the war dead. That is not the case."
Along with the 6,426 marked graves at Taukkyan is a memorial wall on which are etched the names of a staggering 27,000 others who died during the battles in Burma and who have no known grave.
Burma, now Myanmar, was a battle ground for both wars and has been for many more since.
The upkeep of so many cemeteries, some in countries now the frontline of new wars, is a huge undertaking.
Mr Francis tells me about one cemetery which is a 45 minute boat ride to a remote Scottish Island. Access to another involves a dangerous journey across Libya.
"Every site, every grave is inspected, assessed and maintained by our dedicated workforce - some 1,300 strong worldwide (the vast majority gardeners and stone masons)," he told me.
"Some may stay at one cemetery their entire career, others will move from country to country. Some are even the third generation of their family to work for us - one of the nice things about the organisation is that we do have a sense of 'family'."
While there are cemeteries in unstable counties like Syria, Iraq and Libya, there are challenges even in places like the UK.
"Here in the UK we face a very peculiar challenge," Mr Francis said.
"Most people do not realise that in the UK, the Commission commemorates more than 300,000 Commonwealth servicemen and women who died in the two world wars - their graves and memorials to be found at a staggering 13,000 locations.
"There is little awareness of this. These range from small rural churchyards to large urban civic cemeteries. In essence we have to enter into 13,000 agreements to maintain these sites."
The CWGC, which is well-funded by grants from Commonwealth-member governments, expects that visitor numbers will increase by up to 30% over the next four years.
It has now embarked on a renovation and modernisation programme.
"Our headstone replacement capacity is now at 22,000 headstones a year and we are re-engraving some 19,000 headstones a year in situ - maintaining the very fabric upon which remembrance of the Great War is largely based and keeping alive in stone the names of those who died."
The commission's website now contains an interactive database allowing people to search for a relative who died in a far-away battle.
Initiatives like this help younger people connect to a past with which they no longer have a direct generational link.
"An increased awareness of, and sense of ownership in, war graves in the UK, will greatly assist the Commission's task of caring and maintaining for these sites, some of which may have been abandoned to nature over the decades," Mr Francis said.
Back at Taukkyan, I watch one of the commission's volunteers, an elderly Burmese man. He rakes away fallen leaves from the pristine grass around the rows of graves.
Two young Burmese boys wander past. I wonder how much they know of their country's troubled history. Hopefully for them, the troubles are history.
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