by David Crane
West, Benjamin 7
Western Front 9, 61, 84, 89, 130, 140, 168, 169, 186, 191, 194, 195, 211, 238, 249
Whitehead, Colonel 93
Wilkinson, Spenser 24, 25–6, 27, 53
Wilson, Field Marshal Sir Henry 252
Wilson, Woodrow 61
Wimereux Communal Cemetery 172, 223
Winter, Jay 225
Wolfe, General 7
Wolmer, Viscount 158–61
Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps 90
Worrall, Ernest 115
Wyatt, Brigadier L. J. 249
Ypres 30, 33, 39, 47, 69, 104, 114, 130, 133, 135, 185, 186, 191, 194, 200, 212, 249
Cemeteries 63n, 144, 216
First Ypres 130
Menin Gate 191, 194, 205–11
Third Ypres 93, 103, 122, 193
Zweig, Stefan 208
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There is an immense and growing literature on every aspect of the First World War and a very distinguished one on the subject of commemoration and remembrance addressed here. The first debt of anyone writing about the Imperial War Graves Commission will always be to its original historian Philip Longworth, but I hope that the most cursory glance at the bibliography and endnotes of this book will show how much it owes to the writers who have shaped the way we see our military cemeteries and memorials. Nobody, for instance, should visit Lutyens’s great memorial at Thiepval without taking along Gavin Stamp’s brilliant The Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.
I would like to thank all those friends and family who were prepared to talk about this book, read it in manuscript, provide photographs and visit the cemeteries with me, and in particular the Schröck family for their kindness and hospitality while I was looking at German war graves in Pforzheim. My thanks, too, to the Canadian volunteers at Vimy Ridge and the Newfoundland Memorial and Park at Beaumont-Hamel, who could not have been more helpful, and to Susanna Kerr for allowing me to quote from unpublished family material. I am grateful to everyone at William Collins who has worked on this book, but especially to Arabella Pike and Essie Cousins who suggested it in the first place, and to Kate Tolley. I have been greatly helped by the sympathetic and perceptive editing of Kate Johnson. My thanks, also, to Derek Johns.
Above all, this book would not have been possible without the kindness, patience and expertise of Roy Hemington at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission at Maidenhead. The Commission holds a vast archive covering the foundation and history of the Imperial War Graves Commission, and I could not even have begun to negotiate it without his help in answering my endless questions. I am very grateful to him and to the Commission for allowing me unstinted access to their archive, and to Peter Francis for his generous help in the latter stages of the book. I would also like to thank the Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford, for kind permission to quote from the papers of Viscount Milner. This book, as always, is for Honor.
Also by David Crane
Men of War: The Changing Face of Heroism in the 19th Century Navy
Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy in the Extreme South
The Kindness of Sisters: Annabella Milbanke and the Destruction of the Byrons
Lord Byron’s Jackal: A Life of Trelawny
Copyright
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2013
Copyright © David Crane 2013
Cover images: top image © IWM via Getty Images; bottom image, Vendresse British Cemetery courtesy of Honor Clerk; poppy © Travelpix Ltd.
David Crane asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007456659
Ebook Edition © ISBN: 9780007457243
Version: 2013-08-08
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com
