Sherwood Foresters Collection
THE COMMONWEALTH WAR GRAVES COMMISSION
COMMEMORATION IN PERPETUITY
If, when you visit a Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery or memorial, you listen carefully enough as you wander amidst the sea of white stone, you will hear a challenge echoing from the very structure and soil, put so eloquently in the poem Flanders Fields by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep though poppies grow in Flanders fields.
Since 1917 the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has kept faith with the young men and women who are buried or commemorated at cemeteries and memorials world wide. It has done so by carving their names in stone, by building and maintaining cemeteries, graves and memorials at some 23,000 locations and 150 countries, by the creation and upkeep of gardens of remembrance, through the creation of records and registers to the 1.7 million members of the Commonwealth forces who died during the two world wars, through the creation of a Roll of Honour for the 66,000 civilians who died as a result of enemy action during the Second World War and by making these registers and names available to the public.
In 1995 the Commission completed the computerisation of its records into a database called the Debt of Honour Register. This has greatly enhanced the services on offer to the public who can make searches on family name, regiment or hometown. Not only has this greatly enhanced public access to, and interest in, the records, it is a significant step in upholding the promise to defeat the oblivion of time. Names, once kept alive only on stone or in paper are now carried on the ether of the Internet to be kept alive in the hearts and minds of the people of the Commonwealth, encouraging them to take up the Torch of Remembrance and to ensure that Their Name Liveth For Evermore.