A war grave is a burial place for members of the armed forces or civilians who died during military campaigns or operations. The term does not only apply to graves: ships sunk during wartime are often considered to be war graves, as are military aircraft that crash into water. Classification of a war grave is not limited to the occupier's death in combat, but includes soldiers who die while in active service: for example, during the Crimean War, more soldiers died of disease than as a result of enemy action.
A common difference between cemeteries of war graves and those of civilian peacetime graves is the uniformity of those interred. They generally died during a relatively short period, in a small geographic area and consist of service members from the few military units involved.
In the United Kingdom, 67 ship wrecks and all underwater military aircraft are protected as war graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 which imposes restrictions on their exploration and marine salvage.
Rupert Brooke's poem, The Soldier - "If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England", is a patriotic poem about the possibility of dying abroad during a war. Brooke is himself buried in a war grave on Skyros in the Aegean Sea, having died whilst en route to fight in the Gallipoli Campaign.
The War Graves Photographic Project, founded in 2008, aims to create an archive of names and photographs of all Commonwealth military graves and memorials from 1914 to the present day.
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or grave:
“In time of war you know much more what children feel than in time of peace, not that children feel more but you have to know more about what they feel. In time of peace what children feel concerns the lives of children as children but in time of war there is a mingling there is not children’s lives and grown up lives there is just lives and so quite naturally you have to know what children feel.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“While ... we cannot and must not hide our concern for grave world dangers, and while, at the same time, we cannot build walls around ourselves and hide our heads in the sand, we must go forward with all our strength to stress and to strive for international peace. In this effort America must and will protect herself.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)