War Graves
The cemetery contains 459 Commonwealth service war graves from World War I, over 200 of whom form three denominational war graves plots marked by Screen Walls bearing names of those buried within the plots and elsewhere in the cemetery whose graves could not be marked by headstones.
There are 224 Commonwealth war graves from World War II, the greatest concentration (31 graves) in a small war graves plot in Sections 55 and 56, the rest are scattered individually in the rest of the cemetery. The names of 12 service personnel of that war whose graves could not be marked by CWGC headstones were added to the Screen Wall at the World War I plots.
Read more about this topic: Witton Cemetery
Famous quotes containing the words war graves, war and/or graves:
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.
“There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier’s sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb.”
—Philip Caputo (b. 1941)
“Her image was my ensign: snows melted,
Hedges sprouted, the moon tenderly shone,
The owls trilled with tongues of nightingale.”
—Robert Graves (1895–1985)