The principal record of soldiers and servicewomen who lost their lives in the Great War is the “Debt of Honour” database and archive maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The information was compiled from original cemetery and memorial registers, copies of which can be found at most of the cemeteries and in some libraries (for example, Birmingham Central Library has a set).
How to find these records
All of the records described below can be located at www.cwgc.org
The website is free to use and all types of documents shown can be downloaded without charge.
Watch my video on how to find a record on the CWGC website (Youtube)
When you have located the man or woman you are searching for, pan down the page and you will see this selection of tabs and buttons. In the dark panel are details of the cemetery or memorial. Below the light green panel are a number of tabs. They contain the documents that you can download about the individual casualty.
Cemetery registers (in the Grave Registration tab)
The men buried at each cemetery are listed in a register. The registers were compiled during the post-war period of battlefield clearance and permanent construction of the cemeteries. The same is true of the men listed at the memorials to those men who have no known grave, such as those at Ypres (Menin Gate), Thiepval and Le Touret.
For illustration of these records, we will examine one man: Private John George Haywood of the King’s (Liverpool Regiment). His entry in the register of Hooge Crater Cemetery is typical: it gives his name, rank, number, unit, date of death and some personal details such as his age and next of kin. The register also provides details of the location of his grave: plot X, row D, grave 5. A plan or layout of each cemetery is included on the CWGC website to assist with finding the grave.
Note the difference in detail between Rifleman Heaney’s entry in the register and the two above him. No personal details are included. This is because his next of kin did not fill in or return the “Final Verification Form” that they were sent. The IWGC was conscious that the army records were not always accurate (for example many men’s ages were falsified) and there was a desire to make the permanent record accurate by requesting that the next of kin confirm them. Part of the verification was also to confirm the man’s religion to ensure the appropriate symbol was included on his headstone.
Exhumation and reburial records (in the Concentration tab)
In some cases, where the man is now buried was not his original grave. A large proportion of those men buried in Hooge Crater Cemetery were brought in from elsewhere. The CWGC record also includes (in most of such cases) details of their reburial. The information can be rather harrowing but goes some way to explaining how the man was identified.
John George Haywood’s original burial was located when a clearance party found a wooden cross on the battlefield. It named him with four other men of the same battalion who had been killed on the same date. The reburial form gives the precise grid map reference of where the grave was found. The remains of the five men were brought into Hooge Crater Cemetery. This form gives no further details about when that took place, but many do and some provide the name of the army unit which carried out the exhumation and reburial.
Note that five other men are listed on the same form. Four of them, all of the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, were identified from the identity discs that they were wearing when originally buried. The discs were taken from them before reburial and sent on to the base. These four men were all in the same location but no cross was on the grave: it is not clear whether they had been properly buried or were simply lost in the shattered battlefield.
The last man remained unidentified. The form notes that he had been buried by the Germans (the “Boche”) and his brass numerals said he was of the Devonshire Regiment, but there was nothing else from which he could be identified. His will be reburied as an unknown British soldier (his headstone may say Devonshire Regiment – someone go and take a look!).
Headstone records (in the Headstone tab)
When the headstones were being produced to replace the temporary wooden crosses erected in the cemeteries, the next of kin were given the opportunity to add a personal inscription. This was the only form of personalisation of a war grave that was permitted. It was to be limited to 66 letters and had to be approved by the (then) Imperial War Graves Commission. The inscription would be added “at the cost of the applicant” who was assured that each letter would cost now more than 3.5 pence.
The charge of three shillings and sixpence per letter was not insubstantial for many working people, widows and other dependents of the dead. A pension for a widow with three children would typically be little more than 20 shillings per week. Newspaper articles began to report that “consideration would be given to those unable to pay”.
One curious aspect of this is that the Commission did not at first propose to include the soldier’s age in the details that would be paid for at public expense. There was a considerable outcry about this but it was only in November 1921 that the Commission relented and placed the age in the upper part of the stone. Next of kin would be invited to expressly say whether they wished the age to be included, as part of the verification process.
Commission Archive
The CWGC maintains an archive of its own records, which include much rich material about the construction and maintenance of the cemeteries and memorials, and much more. Some if it is obtainable in digitised form but a great deal of it is not: it would need to be viewed at the CWGC office in Maidenhead. The website includes a useful search engine. Below is an example of one of the items that refers to Hooge Crater Cemetery.
Links
Records of deaths, burials and commemorations