Bayeux Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery
The Bayeux War Cemetery is the largest Second World War cemetery of Commonwealth soldiers in France, located in Bayeux, Normandy. The cemetery contains 4,648 burials, mostly of the Invasion of Normandy. Opposite this cemetery stands the Bayeux Memorial which commemorates more than 1,800 casualties of the Commonwealth forces who died in Normandy and have no known grave.
The cemetery grounds were assigned to the United Kingdom in perpetuity by France in recognition of the sacrifices made by the British Empire in the defense and liberation of France during the war. In addition to the Commonwealth burials, there are 466 graves of German soldiers.
The cemetery contains the Cross of Sacrifice or War Cross, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).
Queen Elizabeth II and President of France Jacques Chirac attended ceremonies at the cemetery on June 6, 2004, marking the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.
Read more about Bayeux Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery: History, Notable Graves, The Bayeux Memorial, Location, In Culture, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words commonwealth, war, graves, commission and/or cemetery:
“This little world, this little state, this little commonwealth of our own....”
—Woodrow Wilson (18561924)
“War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.”
—William Blake (17571827)
“It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”
—Thomas Paine (17371809)
“I am a cemetery abhorred by the moon.”
—Charles Baudelaire (18211867)