Keep
the home fires burning…
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| Singing this optimistic
song could not change the fact that many, many
of ‘the boys’ (and the girls) never
did come home.
Nothing can bring back to life those 1.7 million
from the Commonwealth who died in the two world
wars. A great deal can be done to ensure that
they are not forgotten and that their friends
and families have something tangible to remind
them, whether it’s a headstone in a beautifully
maintained cemetery or a name carved on a memorial.
This is the mission of the CWGC. |
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Can you take these
statistics in?
- The CWGC is responsible for 1,694,829 commemorations
to members of the Commonwealth forces who
died in the two world wars.
- There are Commonwealth graves and memorials
in 148 countries across the world.
to see where they
are located
It’s always hard to imagine numbers on
this scale and these are only the people
who died. Still more difficult to imagine are
the numbers of parents, brothers and sisters,
sons and daughters, aunts and uncles, the
girlfriends, the boyfriends and the neighbours left
behind to pick up the pieces of their own lives
after suffering the loss of someone they
loved.
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Home, sweet home?
Those who did survive the war without physical
wounds were sometimes mentally scarred by their
experiences and many found it hard to reintegrate
into civilian life once more.
Young men had known no other adulthood apart
from fighting for their country: older men
found their pre-war jobs had been taken and they
had to fight once more – this time
to earn a living. The families, the wives and
the children, to whom the men returned, had to
adjust too, having learned to carry on with their
everyday lives with no man about the house. |
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The
statistics of loss
In France after the First World War there were
an estimated 600,000 widows and 700,000 orphans.
In addition to the human losses the advent of
modern methods of warfare used on a large scale
meant that there was also massive material damage.
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Needed clearing
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Destroyed
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Needed repairing
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nearly 10,000 square miles of
farmland |
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233, 000 miles of barbed wire
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2,300 square miles of building
land
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11,000 public buildings |
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350,000 houses |
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38,500 miles of roads |
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1,154 miles of canals |
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Over 3,000 miles of railway track |
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Look at this:
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| Statistics
don’t, by any stretch of the imagination,
convey the impact on individuals and their communities
when loved ones have been killed. However they
are a starting point to demonstrate the enormity
of the cost for some people. Presenting statistics
graphically can help to illustrate the facts clearly.
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World
Wars: local tragedies 
Look at the following case studies from around
the Commonwealth. Each of these tells the story
of a family or community greatly affected by loss
during either the First or Second World War.
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Bringing
the war home: what did it mean to your locality?
- You’ve looked at a number of communities
across the Commonwealth.
- You’ve gained some insight into the
enormity of the local impact of a world war
- You’ve learned to use statistics to
present information
Now you are going to look at your local war memorial,
cemetery or churchyard and see what you can find
out about the impact of war on your own community.
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All in the past?
Perhaps you were thinking all this happened a
long time ago and asking yourself why anyone bothers?
The First World War ended nearly ninety years
ago and the Second World War sixty years ago.
It is a very long time but the families and friends
of those who died do not forget. Read through
the following recollections which may help us
to see why remembering is as important today as
it ever was.
Click on the portraits
to find out what their relatives remember.
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By
maintaining the cemeteries, headstones and
memorials to those who died in the two world
wars, the CWGC provide a fitting focus for
the families and friends left behind with
only their memories and their sadness. Equally,
the CWGC honours those people who have no
one left to remember them. |
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