DEAD AND MISSING

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 234, 24 May 1932, Page 7

DEAD AND MISSING

WAR MEMORIALS e • ?, "I J . UNVEILING CEREMONY ON OLD-WESTERN FRONT ' battlefields. thierval and arras. A memorial twice- the size of the Menin Gate and bearing on -its panels 20,000 more names was to be unveiled by h.r.h. the Pirnce of Wales at Thiepval, on the old W.estern front battlefields on Monday of this Weelc. • This, and the Arras memorial to the missing, to be dedicated on the same day, will compl'ete the chain of monuments erected in France and Belgium by the Imperial War Graves Commission, and the name of eyery officer and man k-illed,. seving with the British and Dominion, forces in the war, and "with no known grave,". will have been recorded,. thus making complete the post-war- constructional task of the Commission., The Tbiepval memorial bears 73,000 names, and that adjoining the Faubourg d'Amiens British Military Oemetery .at Arras, a further 36,000. The Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment) contributes the huge total of 3924 to these rolls of hono.ur, exceeded- only by the. Northumberland Fusiliers ("Fighting Fifth") with 4309 names. Other extensive county representations are made by the Durban Light Infantry, and the Middlesex, Gloucestershire and Royal Warwickshire Regiments. ' Lutyen's Design at Thiepval. Sir Edwin Lutyen's design at Thiepval Stands 150 feet high, on a base almost as big, upon a forty-acre site between Thiepval and Authuille, and completely dwarfs all other memorials in the neighbourhood. These include the famous Ulster Tower on the opposite slopes, and the battle memorial of the Eighteenth Division. A platform at the top provides the visitors with a wonderful panorama of the Somme and Ancre battlefields. "The choice of Thiepval was dictated both by the nature of the site and by historical association," an Imperial War Graves Commission official explained. "Of the low ranges of hills which mark the Somme battlefields, those which rise eastward from the lower Ancre are the barest and among the most abrupt. Thiepval, of all the positions attacked in the Battle of the Somme of July 1, 1916, was perhaps the strongest, and certainly the most obstinately defended. It alone of the villages ;razed in the war was threatened, with a permanent erasure. "The land," he added, "was generously set apart by the French Government as a site for the memorial under renewable lease free of rent." The missing of many f amous battles are recorded on the pi'ers, notably those of the engagements of Delville Wood, High Wood, Pozieres Ridge, and Mouquet Farm, Guillemont, and Fl'ers Courcelette, where tanks went into action for the first time. The German retreat to the Eiindenburg (or Siegfried) Line in the spring of 1917 likewise enters into the period

of hostilities covered by the memorial. ' *• ' The Arras Memorial. The Arras memorial, also to the design of . Sir Edwin Lutyens, is of an entirely different character. A cloister, twenty-five feet high and 380 . feet long, has, been erqcted " on Dorie columns, facing west. The colonnade returns in the broader part of the site to form a recessed and open court, ended by an apse, in- front of which is a memorial to the Flying Services. The names of the missing are carved on stone panels fixed to the Air memorial and to the cloister walls. South Africa and New Zealand, in addition to Great Britain, are represented on the panels, and pilots from these. Dominions with Australia, 'Canada, and India as well, are com- ' memorated on the Flying Services monument. Two major actions contributed to the Arras memorial — the British pffensive lannched from that town in 1917, and Ludendorff's final attack on the grand scale on March 21, 1918, -almost a year later.