British War Memorial Project

www.britishwargraves.org.uk

by Mike Symmonds

The British War Memorial Project is a volunteer project set up in August 2003 by Richard Howman to document the graves and memorials of British Service personnel from 1914 to the present day, including those killed in recent conflicts and peace keeping operations.

You can search the site by surname to find a picture of a headstone, memorial or Commonwealth War Grave. The Project warmly welcomes new volunteers or anyone who wishes to submit information to the site.

Aim

This project exists to create a photo archive of the graves and memorials to British servicemen and servicewomen who have fallen in service since the beginning of World War One to the present day.

The Project moves forward through volunteers who photograph the headstones and memorials, and through relatives of the servicemen and servicewomen who contribute information to the site.

It seems that within a few years, memories and records of the lives of our Armed Forces slip into obscurity. In certain areas, cemeteries have fallen into such a state of decay that it is sometimes difficult even to enter them safely.

The Project's mission is to see their names are not forgotten. Without the help of dedicated volunteers the Project would not exist.

Volunteers

There are approximately 140 active volunteers throughout the UK and the rest of the world, but more are needed to complete this massive project, especially County Co-ordinators like WOWEA Steve Rogers stationed in Portsmouth Naval base. He is also the Project Co-ordinator for the UK and Belgium, and is presently photographing over 7,000 graves in Hampshire with a band of enthusiastic volunteers, many of whom are ex-servicemen.

The task

Of the 1.7 million men and women killed during the First and Second World Wars, 925,000 are in marked graves scattered around 2,500 cemeteries worldwide. There are already ongoing projects like the Maple Leaf Legacy photographing all of the Canadian War Graves and similar ones for the Australians and New Zealanders. The British War Memorial Project will cover all British graves. That said, we all help out each other, as it would be pointless photographing just a proportion of the Commonwealth graves in a cemetery knowing that another project was still missing some from that location.

Project so far

100,000 digital photographs have been taken so far and are now being processed to be accessible on the website. At any one time there are between 10 and 40 requests for photographs or information from family members. The site has had over 90,000 visits and is proving very popular amongst the servicemen's and servicewomen's relatives.

Requirements

Volunteers are still very much required throughout the UK and elsewhere, especially anyone based in Northern Europe where the large majority of the British Graves are to be found.

As the process of downloading pictures to the site is relatively time-consuming, digital photos are preferred, to save scanning time. As the Project is purely volunteer and non-profit, the cost of developing thousands of photographs would be a major constraint.

Materially any donations of digital cameras would be most welcome, as would a laptop to enable downloading in the field. Many larger cemeteries can have over a thousand graves, which fills the memory cards up quite quickly!

Quote from Richard Howman, Project Director

"Not a single day goes by that I do not find this project intensely moving. I hope that you find something similar here for yourself, and warmly encourage anyone to contribute to the site."

Richard Howman B.A. (Hons)
Project Director

For further information please look at the site on www.britishwargraves.org.uk
or contact Mike Symmonds, the France and Germany coordinator:
michael(AT)wargraves.org.uk

About the author

Mike Symmonds has been working with the Project since April 2004 and although he lives in Oxfordshire he coordinates Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire. He has just taken on the job of coordinating France and Germany, which is going to be a huge task.

His interest in the two World Wars started when he joined the Army in 1975. He has been researching his family history for the past 25 years and recently found out that two great-uncles died in 1915 on the Ypres Salient. It was while at the 1914-1918 forum on the internet that he found out about the project and has been helping ever since.

He says, "I have a few volunteers in France and a couple in Germany, so we do need volunteers to help with this worthwhile project. These men and women died for our freedom and they deserve to be remembered, and the best way these days is to have the images of their headstones on the internet, which is accessible to everyone around the world. Not only are we taking the images but in a future phase we will be researching as many as we can to get the information onto the site as well.

"If you can help, please contact me or visit the website and email the co-ordinator for your area for more details on how to get started."