Duke of Kent honours trio's efforts to make Commonwealth war graves more accessible
30 March 2012
CWGC president, The Duke of Kent, has honoured three men
for their work to make Commonwealth war graves more accessible.
Bruce Caldwell, Terry Denham and Mike Cole were presented with
commendations at St James' Palace for their efforts in tracking
down the GPS co-ordinates for about 20,000 of our sites.
Their work will now allow the graves to be found using satellite
navigation.
Work began in 2007 when Terry, together with John Hartley, set
up a project to research casualties from both world wars who had
been omitted from our list of war dead.
He then became involved in marking the coordinates of the
cemeteries about three years later by supplying information to
Bruce, who had already started plotting their locations.
Mike joined the efforts after touring the Somme area in a group led
by Mr Denham.
Terry explained that the project had been a big team effort.
"There are three of us finding the co-ordinates but we all check
each other's work.
"It's been a long process, because pinning the location on Google
Maps could be challenging."
The trio's work is not yet complete, with sites in Canada and South
Africa still to be plotted, but we are very grateful for all
they have done so far.
Our aim is to make our memorials and cemeteries as accessible
as possible to as many people as possible, so this is a fantastic
resource.
You may also be interested in following the link to Bruce Caldwell's website - where
you can download a file of cemetery locations to your TomTom or
Garmin satellite navigation system.