Maintaining Remembrance

There's a very interesting piece for Remembrance Sunday on the Sky News website from Mark Stone in Burma. 

He visits the Taukkyan War Cemetery near the country's new capital. 6,426 Commonwealth soldiers are buried there, their headstones "lined up in perfect uniformity," many mere teenagers.

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.

Mark notes there are 23,000 war cemeteries around the world, in 153 different countries, bearing the graves and names of 1.7 million people.

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.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is the organisation we have to thank for tending to many of them. They help preserve the memories of more than 300,000 Commonwealth people killed in both world wars, "their graves and memorials to be found at a staggering 13,000 locations."