“KNOWN UNTO GOD”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 3, 25 March 1927, Page 1

“KNOWN UNTO GOD”

THE EMPIRE D.EAD A MILLION GRAVES WORLD CHAIN FORMED (Copyright.) Received 11.15 a.m. LONDON, Thursday. “It is sad to remember that the commonest head-stone of all is erected to soldiers unknown, and bearing the words: ‘Known Unto God.’ ” This sentence i 3 taken from the seventh annual report of the Imperial War Graves Commission, which describes graphically how the graves of 1,075,038 Empire dead form a chain round the world. The report states that there .o nearly 1,000 war cemeteries betw , en the English Channel and the Vosges Mountains, in addition to 1,500 French and Belgian cemeteries and churchyards where English and Dominion troops are buried. In Switzer' nd. where British prisoners of war re gathered together, there was th Cemetery. There were 90 cemeteries in Italy, and from there the chain stretches to Macedonia, the Balkans and the Greek Islands, where there are 25 cemeteries. Thence to Gallipoli, where there are 31—six in Helles and 23 in a chain from Suvla Bay to Anzae Beach. There are 46 graves in Palestine, including one on the Mount of Olives. Branching south and east there are 35 in Egypt, where hundreds of Australians are buried. In East Africa there were 40, 29 in Irak and thence the chain extends to India, China, Australia and New Zealand, back to the United Kingdom, where there were 77,000 graves in 7,500 churchyards and cemeteries.

Moreover, there are 80 other countries off the main track followed where English and Dominion soldiers are buried.—“ Sun.”