Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

War cemeteries: An empire of the dead

By Ken Robertson, Herald Executive Editor

Veterans Day always reminds me of our nation’s commitment to honoring its veterans by establishing and maintaining an impressive network of cemeteries where so many thousands of them rest.

Whether a national showpiece like Arlington National Cemetery or the rather modest Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Fort Harrison near my hometown of Helena, all bear an air of precisely ordered beauty with their clipped grass, manicured shrubs, bright flowers and uniformly sized headstones.

The commitment of the caretakers and guardians always stands out as I pause to read the stories hinted at by the headstones, which usually tell only such basics as name, length of lifetime, branch of service and era served.

As marvelous as our system for memorializing our veterans is, it pales beside the far-flung graveyards where the soldiers of Britain’s one-time empire have been laid to rest.

An Associated Press report produced for Monday papers to honor veterans and mark the Nov. 11, 1918, armistice ending World War I notes that Britain still manages a global system of graveyards in 150 nations.

These contain 1.7 million fighting men and women who gave their lives to defend and protect the former empire.

Men and women from at least five continents are buried in those cemeteries, most of them developed for the dead of World War I and World War II. They contain 935,000 who have been identified and 212,000 whose names remain unknown, plus memorials for almost 760,000 still listed as missing, the AP reported.

The dead are “Britons, Irish, Australians, Africans, Canadians, New Zealanders, Indians and others,” AP reporter Matti Friedman wrote. They were of every race under the sun in an empire where “the sun never sets.” You can learn more at the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

The cemeteries include sites in the Gaza Strip outside Jerusalem, Iraq, South Africa, North Africa, Italy, France, Hong Kong and scores more nations.

France, one of our other staunch allies in both world wars, maintains more than a million graves inside its borders and in 64 other countries.

To put the numbers in perspective, the United States lost 522,000 in the two world wars and 125,000 are buried outside our nation.

So on Nov. 11 as we pause to honor our veterans, it’s also worth remembering our allies who served just as bravely and suffered such grievous losses.

The inscription that the AP’s Friedman found on the gravestone of British soldier Lt. Francis A. Dickson, 27, who died in 1918 and is buried in the Jerusalem cemetery, applies to all:

“All you had hoped for, all you had you gave.”

w Ken Robertson: 582-1520; krobertson@tricityherald.com

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