THE WAR GRAVEYARD.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 November 1917, Page 3

THE WAR GRAVEYARD.

CEMETERY OF OUR RACE. A SACRED PLACE IN ENGLAND. (From C. E. W. Bean, Official Correspondent with Australian Forces). London, July 10. Those who are killed in battle in France lie for the most part exactly where they fell. Little rows and clusters of crosses on the green slopes opposite La Boisellc mark the line of machine-gun or of a barrage. A number of cemeteries, largo and small, from two to twenty miles behind the battlefield, hold a great proportion of those who died of wounds. Some are British, some Scotch or Irish, .and some are almost filled with Canadian and Australian graves, according as the battle which filled them belongs to the history of those countries. And still another proportion of those who are hit in battle in France linger on with their wounds until they die in hospital in England. Quite a considerable number of those who give their lives on the battlefields of France are thu s buried in England, and I daresay some in Australia, too. Australian soldiers are buried near all the English hospitals—the Australian authorities generally try and have them buried by the side of one another, where there is more than one. But the most important proportion is that of the men who die in or around London.

By the policy of Sir Francis Lloyd, who commands in the London district, all the men who die in this command aro to be buried alongside others of the country from which they come, British, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders. The policy has only recently been settled. But there will grow up within the next few months,, in the ground that has beer, selected, for the war graveyard—which is a sweep of land at the southern end of Brookwood cemetery—a great assembly of the graves of soldiers who died for their country—British troops (the most southerly, then lying next them in order—Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders. The land reaches back over a heather and pine-covered bank to the main railway line from London to Portsmouth. Some day, in the not far distant future it will be the privilege of British people to come down from London and visit this place—the only one in England or indeed anywhere, where the graves of those who fought for all branches of the British race lie crowded round some great monument worthy of the men whom it commemorates.

That gathering of the men who have given their best to their country had already begun In the heather below the still untouched pinewood on the hillside there lie already twenty-six New Zealand graves, fifty-three Canadian next them, then fourteen Australian. Each graveyard grows by two or three each week. They arc of every unit; I saw the graves of men of the 9th Australian Battalion, which is re.puted to have been by some seconds the first ashore in Gallipoli—of the latest battalions in France, of machine-gun companies, pioneers, ammuntion column, signal company. Army Medical Corps—even one Australian of the Royal Flying Corps, buried amongst his countrymen. One hop.es that it will be possible to add to the inscriptions on their graves the part of the front, or in the case of those who died of sickness, tile camp, from which they came; and to raise a memorial worthy of them.