ABSTRACT
The present-day Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s (CWGC) public profile relies on a constant reiteration of the controversial fundamental principles that were established by its founder, Sir Fabian Ware, in 1920. ‘The Commission’s Principles’, as they appear on the ‘Our Organisation’ page of their current website (April 2012), are listed as follows:
Each of the dead should be commemorated by name on the grave or memorial. Headstones and memorials should be permanent. Headstones should be uniform. There should be no distinction made on account of military or civil rank, race or creed.
(www.cwgc.org.uk) The Imperial War Graves Commission’s (IWGC) early decisions not to allow the repatriation of bodies to the United Kingdom, not to differentiate soldiers by military rank or social class, and not to allow cruciform headstones on graves, all generated enormous debate and highly emotional discussion (and see Dendooven this volume). Nevertheless, it can now be seen that the Commission’s founding egalitarian resolve has resulted in cemeteries, on the Western Front and elsewhere, that are widely regarded by their many visitors as appropriate, eloquent and dignified. They have permanence, they have consistency and they have equal treatment in terms of rank and class. The Commission has, by contrast, made many distinctions on the basis of ‘race or creed’. An important distinction was made, early on, between policy in Europe, and elsewhere in the world. This can easily be seen by comparing two of the memorials of the men of the Indian Army (as it then was). The one at Neuve Chapelle in France identifies approximately 5,000 soldiers of all ranks, by individual name. In Basra, where the bulk of the 35,000 Indians who died in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) figure, a different policy applied: Lord Arthur Browne, Principal Assistant Secretary of the Imperial War Graves Commission wrote in a 1924 letter that ‘outside Europe’ the memorials would contain the names of the British and Indian officers, but only the total numbers of native non-commissioned officers and men, under the name of their regiment. The same policy applied, for the Basra memorial, to some men from the Nigeria Regiment and the West African Frontier Force. Their names, we are told, ‘like those of the Indians, will appear only in the Register’, and not on the memorial itself (Barrett 2007: 455). The Basra memorial, unveiled in the late 1920s, itself triggers the question that Judith Butler has more recently put: ‘what makes for a grievable life?’ (Butler 2004: 20).