The RAF & the Army in the Care for the British Military Dead
It tends to be assumed that the the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede (often simply known as Runnymede) commemorates only missing aircrew, those who flew on operations and never returned, their fate being unknown. However, it does in fact memorialise…
Prompted by an email enquiring about a death in an RAF plane crash in December 1949, I have set up a new page which gives details of exactly which people were included in the burial and commemorative programme run by…
The Peter Chapman page has been amended to give a fuller history of this quiet hero who worked with the Italian Resistance against the German occupiers and their Fascist helpers. For almost eighteen months he worked with the Resistance until…
When looking into details of the loss, in Italy on 25 April 1945, of Pilot Officer Beard and Flight Sergeant Maddock (Buried in Italy, Mosquito Crew, 256 Squadron) we came across the Graves Concentration Report for the crew which also…
At very end of the war, on 25 April 1945, a Mosquito crew of 256 Squadron, Fighter Command, was lost in Italy. The two men are buried at Padua. They were Pilot Officer Roy James George Beard (pilot) and Flight Sergeant…
Read More Mosquito Crew, Buried in Italy – Request for Information
This beautiful display marks the spot in Brummen, not far from Arnhem, where British PoWs who were being transported to Germany were shot by SS soldiers on 23 September 1944 after the battle for Arnhem was over. A memorial tablet…
Read More SS Shooting of PoWs after Arnhem, 23 September 1944
If Allied aircrew, soldiers or sailors had belonged to the British forces when they were killed, their graves and memorials were attended to by the British authorities and the Imperial War Graves Commission, who followed a policy of non-repatriation. However, if…
Following on yesterday’s post on the war graves at Bergen is the page O Valiant Hearts which I have just added to my own site, PER ARDUA: The Air War and Beyond. A quotation from this romantic and poignant hymn…
Here is another war graves photograph, slightly similar to that of David O’Connell in that the two graves in this photograph are also buried under a mountain of flowers. The graves are those of two young men of only twenty-two…
When researching the grave of David O’Connell, I looked up his record on the CWGC site for information about his burial site. There was something very eye-catching on the Graves Registration Form, above David’s name – four members of the Royal…
Read More Four Members of Royal Veterinary Corps, Killed January 1945
What led me to David O’Connell was acquiring the beautiful battered old photograph of his grave, taken soon after his burial in January 1945. Despite the deep snow and the immense disruption caused by war, people had found a huge…
These graves for a 35 Squadron Pathfinder crew at Kuinre in Holland are amongst the most beautiful I have ever seen. This is a particularly lovely setting and at the moment the only one I can think of which rivals…
A further installment in Geoffrey Cotterell’s letters about the search for his missing brother, Anthony. The picture on this post is of the memorial plaque affixed to the former Post Office at Brummen, outside which, on 23 September 1944, the…
Two of the posts/pages from my PER ARDUA site last year, while working on the 75th Anniversary commemorations for Black Thursday, 16-17 December 1943. The Mass Funerals at Cambridge, 22 December 1943 RAF Funerals
Anthony Cotterell’s disappearance after the battle of Arnhem, when he was shot and seriously injured by the SS whilst an unarmed prisoner of war, became the focus of extensive war crime investigations. Researching what happened to Anthony was my first…
There is, therefore, a complete official service designed to secure for you and to tell you all discoverable news about your relative. This official service is also a very human service, which well understands the anxiety of relatives and will…
The aim of the British Graves Service was as far as possible to treat enemy combatants equally. However, this did not mean that they were buried with the Allied dead. German plots were created, which used the same style of…
Norman McIntyre kept a small photograph album and in it there appears a picture of him with three of his RAAF friends. Vince and Jeff died whilst training in Canada, in July 1942. Norm only survived them by 18 months,…
Ownership of remains were always problematical when other countries were involved; it was particularly so when there were intermingled British and American remains, because the two national programmes had clashing objectives where repatriation was concerned. The case of Orde Wingate,…
What is often not realised about the evacuation of the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) from France in June 1940 is that not everyone left from Dunkirk. Several thousand men came out from St Nazaire on the edge of western France,…
The Dutch tradition of laying flowers on all the individual graves in a cemetery began very soon after the war. The photograph here, taken at the Arnhem-Oosterbeek cemetery, was probably taken in 1946 or 1947. In 1947, The Times recorded…
Further to yesterday’s post about Colonel Stott and possible photographs of him at work, the second photograph, also in the Gelders Archief, shows Stott in the very early days of the ARNHEM-OOSTERBEEK CEMETERY. He is deep in conference with Captain J…
Colonel Stott, the Commanding Officer of the Army Graves Service in Western Europe was in many ways the most influential figure of all in how the Second World War British military dead were identified, buried and honoured. Besides the work…
New article on the liberated countries’ contribution to the finding and naming of British soldiers, sailors, and airmen after WWII.
New article on the identification of the military dead, and the difference in the rates between the US and the UK
Robert Whitley was an Air gunner from Canada, flying with a Wellington crew of 419 Squadron. He and his crew were lost when their aircraft crashed at Argenteuil in France on 30 May 1942. They were buried as ‘unknowns’. When the…
When the John Conybeare Landon & the Aspin Crew page was published yesterday, I had a lapse of concentration and wrote that Hotton Cemetery was in Germany. Someone kindly pointed out the mistake, which I at once corrected. However, it…
The Aspin crew are buried at Hotton in Belgium (their graves having been relocated from Germany after the war). All crew losses are tragic, but in the case of John Conybeare Landon his death was one of three wartime tragedies which…
Oxford Street is so associated nowadays with shopping, eating out, and generally having fun that it is difficult to imagine that the Air Ministry Casualty Branch, dealing with many thousands of tragic losses, was once situated there at the Tottenham…
There were countless official documents regulating and recording the work which was done on behalf of the missing and dead. This page contains a small selection, to which more will be added in time. The four included are: an official…
The cross featured is to the memory of William Alexander McVie, a Hampden pilot, who died on 16 May 1941, near this spot, and who is now buried at Amsterdam New Eastern Cemetery. As part of our Memorials series, a…
All officers serving in the MRES were volunteers. Importantly, they were also surviving ex-aircrew who felt a strong degree of involvement in the task. Amongst their number was Harold Wilson, who had flown with 97 Squadron of the PATH FINDER…
Accurate post-war confirmation of the graves of British servicemen could be an extremely complicated and difficult task. Cemetery records were not always correct, and sometimes only an exhumation could solve difficult cases. Even then, an answer was not necessarily forthcoming.…
After an RAF grave had been identified and registered by an Army Graves Registration unit, a temporary wooden (or sometimes steel) cross was erected. If the grave was a communal one (because the inhabitants of it had not yet been…
RAF losses in North-West Europe began on only the second day of the war. The funeral above, conducted with full military honours, took place in October 1939. It is thought to be that of Percy Edmund Boyce Sproston, from 144…
Major Anthony Cotterell disappeared after a war crime was committed against British prisoners of war after the battle of Arnhem in September 1944. Despite intensive post-war investigations, his fate was never determined. The tombstone for his supposed grave at Enschede,…
The above picture was carried in his wallet by Anthony’s devoted brother Geoffrey throughout his long post-war search for the truth of what had happened to Anthony. Anthony had disappeared in Holland after being wounded during a war crime committed by…
War Graves & Remembrance 