Old Front Line
WW1 Podcast with Paul Reed
WW1 at Home: War Graves Week
It’s War Graves Week! The Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintain all cemeteries and memorials from both World Wars worldwide. This week sees the first War Graves Week and the focus is on the graves we see at home, in the cemeteries close to where we live. In this special episode, we talk to Megan Maltby and James King from CWGC, and Battlefield Guide Martin Garnett in Barnsley Cemetery.
PODCAST EXTRAS: BARNSLEY
6 Comments on “WW1 at Home: War Graves Week”
Leave a reply to Stephen Hunt Cancel reply
Old Front Line 
I admit to fast forwarding through some of this. Over the last few years I have done my best to raise awareness locally of the hundreds of graves maintained by the CWGC in my London borough, while at the same time pointing out that they were not all brave men who died of wounds. Suicide, death in prison, death in an asylum far enough from home that no one would know, madness caused by what we used to call VD are all on the list. I’ve stopped using the term “lies at rest” and reverential tones tend to grate on me. What everyone needs to know is that grave maintenance is expensive and the CWGC needs a lot of money every year to do it. Volunteers are useful up to a point. I feel quite strongly that the mounding over of graves so that the grave an be sold is something everyone should be aware of, along with the practice of removing remains and reburying them further down in the plot for the same reason. We are still locating war dead in UK cemeteries and I can’t believe we are so detached and uninterested as to allow this to happen.
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Very interesting podcast. Especially nice to hear Martin talk so enthusiastically about his interest in WW1. Reminded me of my younger self! Although in my case that was in the early 1960s!
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Thanks Stephen.
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Will Martin be leading any Leger Tours when things return to normal?
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Yes indeed, he guided for us in 2018 and I hope he’ll be doing some tours again in 2022.
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That’s good then, I look forward to joining one his tours. He sounds like he will be an asset to the Leger Battlefield Team.
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