In Flanders Fields Museum and the School of History and Gateways Partnership, University of Kent, in partnership with the Western Front Association and the St. George’s Memorial Church, present a new series of open seminars on the history of the First World War, free and open to all.
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Photographing the Fallen
Ivan Bawtree and War Graves Photography on the Western Front, 1915-1919
Jeremy Gordon-Smith (photographer and descendant of Ivan Bawtree)
Ivan Bawtree has left behind a vast array of archives that tell the story of his work as a photographer with the Graves Registration Units on the Western Front from 1915 to 1919. He travelled to numerous parts of Northern France and Flanders most notably the Ypres Salient to photograph and record graves of fallen soldiers on behalf of grieving relatives. He was one of only three professional photographers assigned to this task, hired by the newly formed Graves Registration Commission in 1915.Through his pencil and lens we gain detailed insight not just into the work he did and the men he worked with, but also aspects of the military zones, the perils of proximity to the Front Line, the devastation of war, and the birth and early work of the Imperial War Graves Commission. Today, the war cemeteries that Ivan saw spring up across battle-scarred landscapes and provide the most widespread and enduring reminder of the scale of loss and sacrifice of the Great War.
No Panic um welcome everybody um we’re using a mic now for the first time because last time um there was someone complaining that he couldn’t hear everything and I see he went off um anyway um it’s good for the recording as well because uh every talk has has
Been recorded and will be uh put on in F museum uh YouTube channel um I have the great honor to present tonight Jeremy Gordon Smith have already guest that this is Jerry um who’s a therapeutic counselor based in Southwest law yeah however he is also a photographer
And a family historian and his research into his large family archive has resulted in two books and I’ll start with the second book because then we’ll come to what it’s about tonight his second book beauty of the Shadows Chronicles the life of his great great a viola btry
To both world wars uh providing a vivid picture of life on the home front however today he will talk to us about his first book Is that one um he will talk about his first book photographing the Fallen yeah Museum copy but wel comes to show the cies of course which is the
Biography of his great great uncle um Ivan B um um which is the biography of his great great Uncle Ivan btry who was a war Grace photographer on the Western Front during the first world war um not without importance is that Jeremy borrowed in Florence hes Museum um what
Was the camera of his great great uncles and some documents of Ian btry for the forever more exhibition so actually we squeezed two things in one uh opportunity we gave we returned the loan Jeremy and at the same time it’s a great opportunity for having him talk on
His uh great Uncle Jeremy the floor is yours thank you and it’s wonderful to be here in EP uh to do a talk I’ve done a number of times um but only in England and E was such an important place to myig great great Uncle Ivan it was a
Place he visited on numerous occasions and was uh bed or stationed in at times as well um so to be able to talk from the cloth hallall about his photographs is it’s amazing yeah because I mean his the clothall features quite a lot in in his photographs in a somewhat different
Condition to what we see now um yeah so here you can see a photo of a a a cemetery which is not far from here Maple cops you can see kind of the state of it as it was then and we’ll kind of have a look at quite a lot of uh Ivan’s
Photography that shows how things were during the during the first world war and afterwards so how did I get into the get into all of this well back in 1991 the early ’90s I was studying World War I at school uh at the same time my grandmother passed
Away and my dad came into some memorabilia and some Diaries were discovered inside an old desk uh there’s the 1918 diary which I happen to have here as well because that was also on loan to the museum uh and I was instantly fascinated by these Diaries um
I tried to understand what the place names were uh didn’t have the use of Google Maps back then so it was hard to know what was what um I mean you can read abille just there quite clearly but there were lots of other names that were
A lot harder to lots of names because he went to so many places so there constantly he’s listing places that he would travel to um and then a large part of Ivan’s photos there’s about 600 glass PL negatives that were discovered in the mid ’70s uh
And these were donated by Ivan to the Imperial Mo Museum um I have one of the glass plates here so this is a this is actually of you can’t probably see actually what it is um without me shining a light through it but I will
Have a slide of it later but it’s the glass plate looks like this this is a listen hook uh military cemetery which is just down the road from here so there were 600 of those in Ivan’s Cellar um and my dad’s cousin David kind of suggested to Ivan who was considering
What to do with them one of his options was just to you know throw them out uh suggested oh why not give them to the iwm so that’s where they went and then I got to see them in the 1990s my dad took me to see The Collection which
Were in a load of prints in these thick albums in the museum um and they only kind of 6×4 inch prints quite small each captions and I tried to photocopy some of them uh using a very poor quality photocopier there and we tried to take photographs of them although we suddenly
Told not to uh but yes it’s kind of seeing the different range of photos of uh of ruins ruined buildings of wargraves of Tanks of all sorts of things um and I was able to put on a little Exhibition at my School using these Diaries and other bits that I found
Um then in 2012 a whole load more material came my way from my uh this relative David David borry uh who has a habit of kind of he drip feeds me stuff um he’ll often tell me I found something of Interest then he’ll tell me I can’t remember what it is and I’m
Not sure where I put it um eventually it comes my way he did this to me with the camera told me he found some cameras and then when I went around to see him he said I I’m not sure where it is can’t remember where I put it um some months
Later yeah I managed to get it from him he was looking for a book and there it was on a shelf somewhere Um so yeah a lot of a lot of material uh came my way I became the person that was kind of the family histor and the one to give this kind of stuff to um and Ivan’s archive is the the archive that keeps giving I keep finding more
Stuff I’ve got stuff I wish I had before I published my book maybe I’ll do a second edition I don’t know but Ivan’s from a place called Sutton in Su it was Sur back then it’s a London bough now and I found another box box load of his stuff in there more photographs
Postcards letters uh and more yeah more Memoirs and other bits so who knows what else off in fact in my parents of I found an ice cream box with World War I era postcards that were also Ivans um not as interesting as a lot of the
Other stuff but I just don’t know what I’m going to find next it’s there was a lot of it um now here’s a photo of Ivan here in uniform when working for the graves registration commission attached to the British Red Cross in 1915 um
I as I said Ivan it was from some from Sutton in South South London uh where he lived all his life uh he’s from a fairly well-to-do family um active in the Congregational Church uh and Ian’s very active in the boy Brigade and he had a passion for
Photography and he started working for Kodak in 1913 now let’s talk about how he ended up on the Western Front well the mammoth task of of registration ation of graves registration was started by Fabian we um Fabian we had been unable to enlist in the Army in 1914 as
He was just too old uh but he did manage to gain control of a mobile ambulance unit provided by the British Red Cross society and he started off by helping to get wounded soldiers to Red Cross posts and hospitals he soon realized that as the casualties were mounting up there was no
Official procedure for registering and marking the graves of those who had been killed and so he decided to start recording details of the graves so that the NEX of kin could be informed uh and this saw the graves registration commission brought into being in March 1915 on the Western Front and it started
As a Red Cross operation supplied by the Army but soon the commission was inundated with requests for information photographs and details of the location of the graves and therefore a photography section was initiated in May 1915 uh and since Ivan was working for Kodak at the time he was clearly an
Obvious choice to recruit for this mobile unit as experienced photographers were were required one of his colleagues rer had also been recruited so this new uh photography unit they they basically recruited three professional photographers who were to kind of go around the cemeteries to take photographs of requests as they came
In and this is the kind of area that uh Ivan was this is the kind of shows the front line as it was in in 1915 um so Ian goes out there in June 1915 literally within a week of being approached and interviewed um so it’s the front line roughly as it
Was yeah just following the Second Battle of EP um the E area here and he moved to into a place called which I don’t know if I’ve got marked on there oh oh it’s down here there’s l so in France um and most of the area he would
Go to is kind of this area kind of behind the lines in EP and this kind of paral Nord area he would go down as far as Bethune and he during the lose offensive in 1915 he was down in Vermon around here but on the whole he didn’t go any
Further south than than this area at least during the war he was mostly this kind of area um and he says that in France at first we traveled in an office’s car to various cemeteries Bayer betun Eep camel Etc but as more and more work came in we
Went for several weeks and stayed at a Graves registration section there we had a number of these by uh poer ringer EST Amon Aras Dunkirk dick aush from those sections we got a lift in a car when possible but otherwise carried our equipment on our backs and rode a push
Bike the more formal cemeteries were reached first by car and then on foot through communication trenches Etc quite an adventure and a certain amount of shelling as we work close by some of our batteries it was not always funny he likes to understate things he’ll say it’s not always funny it was
Uh now this is a photo of Ivan’s colleagues at their makeshift dark room uh and living space they called it Kodak house um this is rer here on the end and that’s a guy called Bert Haden and I forget this guy uh Sergeant Comfort I think his name
Is uh yes and they just found some ground sheets and made this uh dark room in the uh in the grounds of of the chadow in L um and as we’ll see they had to do quite a lot of improvisation in their work um and Ivan says in the early days
Before plots and rows of cemeteries were were recorded some time had to be spent in finding the names when found the name number regiment Etc were carefully compared with the typewritten request to make sure that no mistake should be made there was a great volume of work to do
By working seven or eight hours in a cemetery as many as 100 or 120 photographs could be taken in a day but this was only in such well-preserved cemeteries as had a plan of plots and rows in advanced cemeteries where searching had to be done 30 30 photographs would represent a good day’s
Work as we’ll see the the the various different types of cemeteries and differing States some were further behind the lines of course were in much better condition much better ordered the close to the front line then the more chaos you’re going to encounter and difficult conditions
Um so here’s a photo of uh yeah from gr’s registration unit Personnel at EP in the car um interesting there is a grave here which I wasn’t sure what they were doing with it um it’s got the name of an Australian Soldier on it who if you look
Them up you’ll find them the name on the men in Gate this photo was probably taken in 1919 after the war because as I’ll explain Ivan couldn’t take any photo he liked during the during the uh the actual conflict so was it a grave that they removed because it was
Wrongly wrongly named I don’t know um so here’s a typical Cemetery that Ivan might have gone to uh well he did go to poing a old military cemetery not far from here many of you may have been there uh this has got what I call Standard Gru
Crosses they’re kind of tarred in this black dark color which helps them weather a bit better they’ve got these kind of zinc metal strips and they have they should have kind of Gru also tagged on the top uh and if they got that kind across that means they’ve been properly registered
And it’s fairly standard but as we’ll see a lot of the cemeteries well many cemeteries had crosses in all shapes and sizes um here’s a grave marker of major Montgomery uh of the Grenadier guards this is verell British cemetry he was killed in action on the 21st of
October 1915 and here’s the grave in situ uh this is in verel you can see some shellf fired shell damaged buildings in the background uh now some of these crosses you’ll find hanging up in churches and this is the same cross here um in a church in
Norfolk uh so I I saw that and I thought wow okay see I have a photo of it taken by Ivan uh it’s a ceremony at B Earth cemetery on All Saints Day again you can see these are kind of typical crosses here but then you’ve got ones like this which is much
Bigger um this cross again is not the cross of this casualty whose name I can’t quite read it on there Um but he has a cross that looks more like a standard Gru cross like one of these um meaning this one has got lost I probably destroyed by shellfire and then had to be replaced with yet another cross now you’ll see I like to do a bit of
Then and now this is the same photo but I’ve melded it with what the cemetery looks like today um that’s the same same casualty there uh so you can see the Portland Limestone against the Wooden Crosses now onto photography so Ivan was given a folding pocket Kodak number 3A um
Which is this this is one of his cameras um he would have probably got through more than one or two so I know he lost one there were times when he had to leave cemeteries quite quickly because of shelling but this is this is the camera I have that
Survives it’s in very good condition um I would take it apart but I need three or four hands to do that because I’m holding a microphone um but yeah it holds uh one two2 film which takes 10 exposures um shutter still works I can click that
Um and he’d used that with a wooden tripod which you can see in the picture there which I also have um which folds um and then you got the VPK the vest pocket codak um he had a couple of those as well which those are very small
They’re no no bigger than a smartphone really but um I don’t know if he used those very much but his main camera for uh for the work he did was one of these and you could attach a glass plate adapter to that um but he would only have done that when
He was doing photography for himself uh when out in the field that would be impractical so the use of roll roll film was very necessary to be able to get as many photos as possible as say he said he took as many as 120 photos and I
Think the most he did in the day was 150 that’s 15 roll films I mean there’s no way you could do that with glass plates well youd need like a a van load of them uh and Ivan he states that all the films were supplied in tropical
Packing i e in sealed tins he says this was a very wise prec ction as the films were often lying about for some time before development and they were safe from The Damp on one occasion I complete with bicycle camera and films fell into a large shell hole full of water but
Crawled out safely with all the apparatus intact and thanks to the tins all the films undamaged and then there was the need for improvisation um particularly in relation to the water supply those glass plate negative that I showed that I’ve got there that’s what it looks like of listen hook listen hook military
Cemetery so here’s here’s some pictures of improvisation um so find you know the water supply was a big issue having to wash the films and finding running water was often difficult sometimes they had to use a stream uh or river that was going past sometimes that was when there was snow
And ice and things were freezing over um Ian said work in Advanced cemeteries was often very difficult especially in the winter the photographer stuck in the mud and got his tripod covered with it he had to Wade through pools of water and the graves were often in a very rough
Condition and had to be tended to in order to make them at all presentable for a photograph on more than one occasion I pulled up lumps of turf and spread them over unsightly pools or holes which would spoil the picture Graves and Crosses were often badly damaged by shellfire and rendered unfit to
Photograph on one occasion visiting a small Advanced Cemetery at minees nothing remained of the grave but a large shell hole an hour’s journey through communication trenches for nothing uh and he goes on well I’ll just talk about the photos here so this is that’s Ivan there and Haden stood up
Here trying to wash films in the kind of icy cold uh at a place called ark uh yeah in the snow and then that was probably that’s around 1915 that photo was taken winter 1915 196 this one’s after the war uh after the arms because you wouldn’t want to be
Doing that uh pre yeah before the Armistice this is on the moat in EP um must been a fair few shells Landing in this moat anyway uh lack of adequate dark room facilities would often Force Ivan and his colleagues to use improvised means to carry out their photographic work then this picture a
Homemade raft is being used to tow films and prints on a wooden frame in order to wash them so I had to go to a lot of kind of interesting measures and improvisation to uh get the work done and you get the sense from Ivan
There was a lot of dedication to try and get the work done to the best quality possible under difficult circumstances and he says operating itself when wearing a tin helmet and gas mask in the alert position was far from Easy the gas mask had a nasty habit of pushing into the
Camera at the moment of exposure another great difficulty in operating was the position of the sun photographs had to be taken of graves which faced many different directions and not infrequently the lens had to face the Sun and be shielded in some way with notebook from the direct glare combine
These conditions already described and add a slippery water logged Cemetery with a bit of hostile shelling going going on in the neighborhood and it will be seen that the photographer’s lot was not always a happy one in spite of these difficulties however the percentage of failures was
Very small not more than one or two% at the most now there were restrictions on photography um this was heavily monitored by 1915 unauthorized photography could potentially be punished by Court Marshal um this was particularly precipitated by the Christmas Truce of 1914 a lot of photographs ended up in uh the British
Press of Tommy and Fritz fraternizing and the uh the top brass did not like this um so there’s a big clamp down on photography and obviously there was the fear of uh of spies falling into German spies hands they get hold of photographs or even worse the British press might
Get hold of the photographs um this is an example of a Authority pass so I needed Authority passes to to go to certain places if they they were in sensitive areas or in in what you might call a military area he couldn’t just go there um without pass and in fact to not
Have the pass was risky he says uh things got more and more lively as time went on about the quietest sector was armantier and here a man called Sergeant callow took me to some of the very Advanced cemeteries close to the front line and on one occasion I went with an
Officer called Captain Fraser to a cemetery reached by communication trench and we were arrested because I was carrying a camera we were marched back under escort by armed men in the HQ where after exhibiting our credentials we were at Liberty again now the cemeteries let’s talk a bit more about
The cemeteries the state of the battlefields and cemeteries came quite a shock to Sir Edwin Lans uh he was one of the distinguished architects who designed many of the cemeteries after the war and when he visited the Western Front in 1917 he got to see the challenge that lay ahead with his own
Eyes and he describes them thus he says the cemeteries the dotted graves are pathetic especially when one thinks how things are run and problems treated at home what Humanity can endure suffer is beyond belief the battlefields the obliteration of all all human endeavor achievement and the human achievement of
Destruction is bettered by poppies and wild flowers that are as friendly to an unexploded shell as they are to the leg of a garden seat in Su the graveyards haphazard from the needs of much to do and little time for thought and then a ribbon of isolated
Graves like a Milky Way across miles of country where men were tucked in where they fell ribbons of little crosses each touching each across a cemetery set in a Wilderness of annuals and where one sort of flower has grown the effect is charming easy and alsoo pathetic that
One thinks no other Monument is needed for Miles these Graves occur from single Graves to close packed areas of thousands on every sort of site and in every sort of position the bodies laid to face the enemy in some places so close one wonders how to arrange their names in decent
Order now there are various different types of cemeteries so some were what you might call Medical cemeteries these were based near hospitals or casualty clearing stations this is a kind of then and now blend of VMO communal Cemetery um more accurately it would be I suppose
This is an extension this is fits into the bracket of it an extension of a communal Cemetery which is attached to a hospital or where you can see the graves are for the most part marked just by numbers um yeah and so a lot of cemeteries were uh
They used spaces in communal cemeteries uh this is EST communal Cemetery an extension so when there wasn’t enough room in the communal Cemetery they might have to build an extension part uh and the most high ranking grave I could find that Ivan took a photograph is of Brigadier General John goth VC at
Estere um this is the grave here so it’s kind of surrounded by this kind of fence but as you’ll see it’s not necessarily the most ostentatious grave I mean there’s this one that’s enormous and so different Graves come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes according
To whoever was a loved one of that person and decided what kind of cross they wanted to give them and that didn’t necessarily have much to do with the rank of the soldier necessarily sometimes it would a much l officer might be more likely to get a a more
Fancy cross but not necessarily but you can see yeah lots of different shapes of of crosses um and then moving a bit closer into the front line you’ve got uh listen hook military cemetry which is again down the road near poer ringer this again is a blended image using the photo from that
Uh glass plate negative mixed with my photograph there um and this was attached to a casualty clearing station uh called Remy siding and then moving further in you get to what are more likely known as uh Battlefield or Advanced cemeteries so this is a kind of Ving and now you can
See kind of there visible damage shellfire is really uh destroying buildings around there um and places like this may have had I think blaming I think in this building there was an advanced dressing station at one point um these cemeteries would often have ads yeah or regimental Aid
Posts now there were isolated Graves so Ivan would discover graves in random places um Graves could be just anywhere cuz soldiers were buried in a hurry often where they fell um so not in a set Cemetery this is these are isolated Graves near mine uh you can make out the grave of
Rifleman Arthur Eggbert Gerard the king’s Royal rifle Corp and the other type of cemetery were concentration cemeteries which I’ll mention a bit later and they were kind of after the war um after the war had finished um so how dangerous was the work that Ivan had to
Do so these are more examples of kind of advanced cemeteries here we’ve got Bedford House cemetery and Railway dugouts which are not very far away from here they’re kind of Southeast side of EP uh and you can see shell holes you can see damaged crosses in fact this is a Australian
Soldier Gunner Francis Pro you can see that the original cross actually is this one here that also that also says provice on it if you look in you might not be able to see it from where you are but zooming in that says provice on it so this is a
Man who was killed by shellfire and then his grave was blown up by shellfire but and left a huge shell hole which you can see there um so sometimes part of the job of the gru was to replace crosses and here they put a brand new one um which looks nice but of
Course it’s got this Lake behind it created by a shell I think that’s an Australian Imperial Force cat badge attached to the top of it this one is Canadian field artillery and yeah you can see a shell hole behind it and a cross fallen over um this one is
An example also you can see the there’s a code here it says D1 12008 now Ivan would put a number on all the f photos he had the D indicates his number so the each photographer had their own number A B C D Etc so he was D
And this is his photograph number 12,8 by the end of the war he reached I think somewhere around I think he said about it’s about 28,000 that’s where he got to um and this is the grave marker of Frederick go from the Hampshire reg regiment he was killed in action on the
1st of November 1914 so very early in the war this is kind of First Battle of EA um in hi Park Corner Cemetery opposite the plug Street Memorial but if you look up this this casualty on the Commonwealth wargraves uh website you will find his name on the
Memorial to the missing the plug Ste Memorial which is opposite in other words this grave was blown to bits of course it’s had four years of hostilities for that to happen Ivan probably took this photo in 1915 could be 1916 but at some point it’s it’s been
Lost now while Ivan was not fighting in the front line it is clear that he was often in close proximity to it he makes numerous references in his Diaries and letters to to the din of the guns and frequent hazards of enemy shellfire often he had to dodge shrapnel and
Change roots and on one occasion his camera stand got hit and he he writes naturally the photographers is met with various Adventures on one occasion on a bright clear day my tripod and Camera must have been observed by an airplane or balloon Fritz opened out with some whizbangs and
Fairly pasted the neighborhood of this Cemetery fortunately without hitting either the graves or the photographer and again later in the the same day objection was taken to the view of the photographer’s apparatus and I together with the officer and orderly were chased out of the wood and followed
Some distance up the road with shellfire the officer was bowled over once um was bowled over once but got up again with only with only a slight scratch on his neck the photographer was not popular in cemeteries near batter positions for this reason that he was liable to draw fire on clear
Days he says on on one day in a cemetery at Vila I was taking a picture just in front of a naval 6-in gun um I was so busy I did not realize they were going to fire and as they fired I and the camera bounced in the
Air uh if shelling got too heavy the officer would withdraw us then he says another time at dikush I and the officer stood talking at his Dugout entrance he said quite casually I think it would be a good idea to move from here as Jerry has his
Balloons up and may think we would be a suitable Target we just started to move off when we heard the thud of one of his long range guns and The Whiz of a shell approaching we threw ourselves down and got a shower of Earth and things all
Over us but nobody was hurt where we had been standing at the Dugout entrance was a big shell hole it made us think that did K he likes to understate things um some of the cemeteries around e were pretty Lively such as Railway dugouts and spoil Bank near Hill 60 and Essex
Farm in boinger this is Essex Farm military cemetery here with the Canal bank going along there you can see the state of the trees and there’s quite a lot of Deb and all sorts uh along here um and Ivan says well I had a special photo request for that Cemetery one day
And the officer I was with said it was too Lively for photography however not wishing to fail I went by myself and took the photo I rather think that this incident and others like it resulted in me being mentioned in dispatches and I’ll give you some examples from his 1917 diary
Um of kind of went kind of going through EP in fact so this is this is March the 11th today is what March the 8th isn’t it 7th so yeah this is 1917 go to EP prison and then walk through Cathedral and mening gates to uh PO is that pronounced correctly
Po po see air fight and two British machines brought down Aviator fall separate work in large Cemetery kitchen garden and Shadow lawn those will refer to other cemeteries and part parts of the cemeteries uh then walk back and take odra in fields to left of road I an
Isolated grave that he just happened to come across plenty of shrapnel all the way back a bit glances off Corporal rise back work in prison and return to Bayer go to service at YMCA an evening few days later he says go to EP prison and walk to
Labri dodge liite which is an explosive at The Rim at the ramp parts from labri walk to St Johan White House take 80 exposures plenty of German shelling near prison make a detour to get back safely and return via sa Port make a dash out of prison during interval Corporal Riz
Returns with file clerical work in afternoon chess Etc in the evening go to Essex farm and work this is another on a few days later go to Essex farm and work on Bard Cottage Morango and Essex cemeter take 64 return with Corporal pool to the to car plenty
Of big shells on battery to left of Road all morning bit catches camera stand and dents on way back so that shows that you know his equipment was getting hit by shrapnel um yeah F uh 24th it goes fine day go in box car to cite bonon via Lavon and Flur
Bay Road sheld try alternative and that also shells go by Third route okay take 130 in City bonon so he has to keep keep uh changing his route on the 30th he goes to Bedford house and he says everything torn up by bombardment take 15 photos and return
With men and kits and I like this but he says I have to go via shrapnel corner on account of severe shelling so things are pretty bad if you have to go via shrapnel Corner uh to get away from from severe shelling um but then the afternoon was in the
Office and he went the pictures in the evening um yeah in August he goes to a place in vesil called Shelly farm and I don’t know if it’s called Shelly Farm because it gets shelled a lot but the next next phrase he wrotes is get shelled out Walk To Dam stasa and pheasantwood
And explore ravinewood get shelled out and Mr day got slightly wounded make off of vmaa leave camera stand behind so he had to leave his his tripod basically where it was it just there was too much going on um car to e straon work in Men in
Road South Cemetery but soon have to come away on account of shrapnel take odd grave in vinger go to mingham in afternoon see airplane brought down at night oh and I should me on June the 7th which was the great mine Battle of uh 1917 he says 310 a.m. get shaken all
Over the place by the mines exploding then terrific bombardment for an hour see SOS signals and very lights wounded passing down street all the morning rud a lil sheld in afternoon go back to HQ via merville and betun here is the prison Cemetery or that was later renamed EP Reservoir
Cemetery um you can see great here he’s taking the photograph from within the the prison grounds um through the the wall which has been rebuilt and you can see it’s still a prison today um if you go to E Reservoir and kind of you can see this wall
Obviously can no longer get a photo like this um but yeah it’s an amazing photo you got the reservoir is actually here I think they renamed it because who wants to visit their loved one at a place called prison Cemetery it has too many connotations of where they shot at
Dawn or something like that um in September Ivan writes yeah Carter Cru strata and walk to Lil gate too Lively to reach men in road walk across to railway dugouts have to come away in a hurry return via shrapnel corner and vinger Ford car gets bombed in afternoon sleep in cellar
Oh there’s the prison kind of then and now um now Ivan was in there in 1918 when uh the Germans were advancing and he says in 1918 the last year of the war this became very noisy as the Germans tried to advance in many places our leave was stopped our work was extra
Difficult and sometimes very dangerous while living in a Hut in listen hook Cemetery poar ringer uh the Germans began to advance on the Eep seure sector and captured chemel and Bayer in one day what had been a casualty clearing station with nurses and operating theater x-ray department Etc became an advanced dressing station
With walking wounded pouring in we could see the guns firing on the hills around locer I was commanded to dig a grave for 20 men then I moved on to poppinger and lived in a Cellar for 2 days while it was being shelled then I moved up to Eep
Prison where the dressing station was being shelled by armor piercing shells all too busy to be comfortable then all Personnel like us were withdrawn further away from the line and I then lived on the farm at escal and moved to as many cemeteries as I could reach on the push
Bike now why was this job important um now never before had so much attention been given to the needs of bereaved relatives of of wad um it’s not known exactly who originated this idea says Ivan but it was a thought which much consolation and comfort to many
Thousands of bed relatives it was one of those little things which made such a difference to many who had lost all that mattered in their world that’s how Ivan sums it up um and kind of my thoughts this you know Ivan’s job was to facilitate a way for
Families to grieve their loved ones who had lost their lives in the line of duty the first world war saw unprecedented casualties from an army that had been massive ly increased by volunteers from the civilian population and by conscripts from January 1916 onwards in previous Wars it was normal
To bury dead soldiers in Mass Graves and only soldiers of higher rank could expect to have their own personal grave of Memorial so in the first world war it was decided that each Soldier regardless of rank should be given an individual burial with a personal headstone at least for the British and
Commonwealth soldier that is um being able to visit the grave of the deceased as well as holding a funeral or normal parts of how we grieve the loss of someone close uh during the war this just wasn’t possible for relatives back home as the dead were buried close to where they
Fell some cemeteries under British control found themselves under German control as the front line shifted and unfortunately many men were reported missing in action were never found and could only have their names added to the long lists which we can now see on memorials such as Val and of
Course which is on the p and then the men in Gates just a few yards from here um so Ivan’s work was to provide something tangible Um to the family of the Dead Soldier of what remained of their loved one a window they could not otherwise have had at least not until well after the war finished and he would end up photographing Graves of people he knew so this is Sergeant Harry Daniels of the
Royal Engineers buried in the London rifle Brigade cemetery near plug Street as the British would call it uh who was killed by a machine gun that opened up on a night’s work party and he was a leftenant in the Sutton congregational boys Brigade so Ivan would have known him pretty
Well um this is Major H Murray forced of the king own Scottish borderers so he’s got a standard cross there but then this thing made out of stone has been added um he died of wounds on the 26th of September 1915 the Battle of L he lived in Sutton
So I don’t know if Ivan knew him but perhaps knew of his family um and then we have cousin Jack um he was probably the closest person to Ivan that died uh now Jack was killed on the Northern most part of the Som sector uh in a place near G
Court um and this this is an example of what was sent home to the relatives so if you are if you ask for a photo of a wargrave uh it would be put together into this uh card direct to General of graves registration inquiries give the name rank regiment and the position of
The grave and the railway station of where to go um so that’s a good example of what was what was given to the relatives um now I said at first Ivan when he was going to the cemeteries he would be looking for the uh specific requests that had
Come in but more and more requests came in and it just wasn’t practical to go hunting around I mean it can be hard enough for any of us going to a cemetery today I mean we you can go to you can look look it up in the cemetery register
And if it’s a large Cemetery it could still take a bit of wandering around but imagine you’ve got to do that with dozens of people in a cemetery that’s big it’s going to take a long time so actually what they started to do was photograph everything it photographed
All the graves so that if a request came up they could then uh go to their their register their file and see if they had a copy already taken so take a photograph usually of like four Graves at once so that they you could then print it out and
Then cut cut the photograph up to get the picture of the wargrave itself um so here’s Captain Edmund Lily that known as Jack um St arman’s British Cemetery Southwest of Aras actually have his dog tag it fell out of one of the Diaries I have um
It was on display in the exhibition here but for uh second Lieutenant left tenant sorry in the in the bedf regiment although he became an acting Captain I think it says captain on his yes it does Captain on his uh on his grave now his cousin via so via borry was uh Ivan’s
Sister there she is this is this is via my great great aunt in 1917 with her dog um she was distraught when she heard of Jack’s death she was very close had a strong affection for Jack um to put it mly and she writes on August the 4th the
Anniversary of the war on a day of intercession I returned from the Downs with Lor the dog before breakfast I had picked some hair bells father came out to the back door and called me and wonderingly I answered him he said nervously vior there’s very
Bad news from Jack as he paused I said yes thinking if the news came from Jack he was just wounded or ill father continued as you might have expected he’s been killed leading a trench mortar battery in an indifferent sort of voice as if listening to uninteresting news I
Said oh and father did the remark that Aunt Millie that’s Jack’s mother was upstairs in hysterics and then he went back to the dining room mechanically I put the hair bells in water fetched my breakfast in pushed it down somehow in sort of in sort in a sort of feverish haste to get
Away and then went on with my normal duties all through the morning I carried on with work in the same stunned sort of way not allowing myself to think and perfectly dryed as I was peeling potatoes on a Polly came up to me and whimpering whimpering said something
About isn’t it awful about poor Jack and some other words about me always being good to him I answered in the same indifferent tone I forget if she kissed me Sylvia and father went to church I went and picked all the viers a job I’d
Been meaning to do for some days and as I carried a bowl full into the breakfast room mother came down and followed me in and kiss me without saying a word that was better and made my eyes just moisten she also went to church later Aunt Millie came out into the kitchen with
Her cup and salsa her face swollen with crying I was grinding salt for the salt seller she cried sobbingly to me oh VI what are we going to do I quickly left the salt put my arm around her neck and kissed her again and again but said no
Word she went away weeping and just for a moment my own tears fell I’ve often read that out at Remembrance Day services and usually when I do it kind of has quite an impact on me um it gives a real a real sense of how it would have felt in so many homes
Across well I was going to say the UK but it’ be true in France It Be True in Germany It Be True in Turkey Russia lots of places where so many men so many people lost their lives Now by 1916 Ivan was drafted into the Royal Engineers um and shortly after the graves
Registration commission had become a fully-fledged part of the army uh and it was renamed the director of graves registration and inquiries because before that it was basically run and financed by the uh Red Cross but now it had a bit more of a a stronger footing being part of the army
And that that was why I Ivan then got put into a the Royal Engineers um which I think was the being a photographer I was trying to work out why they’re Royal Engineers but they do that is part of what they do um so here you can see in his R uniform
This this portrait probably taken in 1916 um um yeah the offices of the the the gra registration commission had held honorary ranks but now they were given commissions and in many cases promoted so Fabian we was promoted from major to leftenant Colonel and then to Brigadier General in August
1916 um and Ivan as said there is in the Royal engineer with the r rank of sapper in May 1917 the Imperial Warg Graves commission was established by Royal Charter with the Prince of Wales as president and Fabian wear at the helm now this is the only photo I have of
Fabian wear taken by Ivan but he was asked to take this photo at a place called shatow de lur um some of the most important figures who helped Forge the Imperial Warg Graves commission uh where has stood there in the middle and then you’ve got s George
Pearly from Canada Admiral s edman Poe I think is that chap who’s not looking at the camera um so Thomas McKenzie from New Zealand chat laor was a key uh after the war was where the commission had a a major um HQ um as the war progressed Ivan’s job got
A lot busier with more and more requests coming in uh he got yeah phot requests of individual Graves from cemeteries all around the pical and West Flanders regions he would get involved in the assisting the upkeep of cemeteries he’d be involved in making wooden crosses sometimes digging Graves even
Um a lot of clerical work like registering Graves of Fallen Soldiers of course and as mentioned in 1918 he even assisted in a casualty clearing station uh helping with the X-ray machine um and this report of the the dgre from June 1918 says that from that date which refers to May
1915 uh until May 1918 85,000 requests for photographs have been noted in the department and 51,3 negatives have been received from France um those 50,000 negatives that could constitute 200,000 Graves if he was taking four per negative um it may safely be stated that no portion
Of the work of the directorate has given greater comfort and satisfaction to the general public than the provision of these photographs and although the photographs have been supplied by the Army the whole cost of the camera’s films paper chemicals and printing and developing apparatus together with part
Of the expenses of Transport has been defrayed by The Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and so now I’ll just the last part of this talks just kind of what happened after the Armistice kind of as I said Ivan’s work got busier as the war
Progressed and when the when the armist happened he still had plenty of work to do there were still plenty of requests going on and of course he had more accessibility to go where he ever he wanted to go places he couldn’t get to he now could um although as this photo
Shows that there were difficulties accessing certain places um Ivan says when the armis came the photographic work was still further increased as cemeteries became more accessible and many graves hitherto in bad condition were put to rights and made fit for photography um so this photo this is driver
Griffith’s Ivan got given this bike in December 1918 at first he was annoyed that he came with a chauffeur he said he’ll get in the way I think he was quite glad of him when he went out on this trip uh which is a place called uh wi
Yeah heading east out into the into the E Salient with very muddy water now this is extremely muddy water someone I posted this on social media and people were saying why are there no ripples there should be ripples of are they questioning my photo it’s not AI what’s going on
Here well there aren’t ripples because the water is so thick it’s basically mud it’s super thick if it was just if it was just a big puddle you probably see some ripples um yes a sign sign there for passionale I think and here’s there’s a photo of Ivan
At the ruins of Mor sler which is close to passionale so yeah and at this point he could take photographs of whatever he liked um because before he just couldn’t so as soon as as soon as he got the opportunity uh he went and got as many films as
Possible and went around EP and other places just photographing did exactly what I would have done took as many photos could of all sorts of things um quite a few selfies as well kind of in front of ruined buildings and wrecked tanks um that is passionale as usual
Uh the biggest part of rubble is probably the church which is there but there’s nothing left of it um shatow wood in uh Huga or h TR again H or huge British we call it we like to say huge crater Cemetery don’t we uh qu
Um yeah shatow wood you can see kind of duck boards there and the wood there and then is that where the fair ground is B not quite the other side is it other side okay but yeah this photo just shows the kind of level of Destruction um ruins of chemel church to
The south of e this is actually under snow there’s the chelberg there um yeah that’s that’s the best preserved building in keml pretty much in that area um just obliterated uh now here’s the tank selfie um wrecked British markv tank d32 known as the do doctor this was
Knocked out of action on the 9th of October uh 1917 on the pole Capel Road near Eep um this photo was been taken in 1920 you can see Ivan actually in civvy cloes when he went and I’ll explain why he was there in 1920 um yeah Rec record of a British plane
Sanctuary wood near e the graves of the pilot and Navigator are visible behind the plane to the right you can see them there uh apparently they had to be buried at night because this whole area would have been under Fire in the day time this is just a shell hold Wasteland
Around Hill 60 looking towards Eep you can see the zbec lake here um now before the war this would have been just flat right kind of it was a hill there was a yeah okay they flatten the hill it’s just yeah it’s rather more undulating I think just Um and then he’s a m crater on Hill 60 probably I think this is the caterpillar crater um I couldn’t be sure but that was the one I thought was made most sense uh in this description it’s just it just says m m crater on Hill 60 is Ivan’s caption
Um and then you got the androck Molen crater which is created uh by an explosive charge of 91,000 pound of amol that’s the largest of the uh mine crators from the Battle of mine in uh that was set off on the 7th of June 1917 now known as the pool of Peace yeah
This again is under snow you can make out I think there’s someone just there on the other side uh here’s a then now photo of Ivan uh outside the cloth Hall merged with my photo taken in n in 2013 now this photo was only supposed to be of these refugees
Here so these guys here with their dog carts these are guys returning to EP um and Ivan was hoping to get he writes to his sister saying he sent a copy of this photo to to Via and said I was hoping just to get a photo of the refugees with the dog carts
But the tomies would get in the photo he’s been photobombed by one two three four five tomies they’re not supposed to be in this Photograph um but Ivan would attract attention walking around with his camera people wanted photographs and he would get uh people pay him so a lot of photos
In his collection are of smiling tommies some of them are like next to an unexploded shell kind of look at me might hopefully got one of those in this here’s the cathedral and cloth Hall in Ruins um I don’t need to tell you that um yeah remarkable that we are here
Um where was Ivan stood when he took this photo sorry what’s here St George yes yes I like to ask a question why can’t I take a photo like this now because there a church in the way yeah blocking the view yeah um there’s kind of then and now of St Martin’s
Cathedral now here’s President woodro Wilson so who appeared in in EP in June 1919 he’d been of course in Paris for the Paris peace conference um as soon as he comes into into e Ivans right there with his camera of course the tomies are all noticing
The camera and smiling as well you can see them there but there’s woodro Wilson chatting away with the uh the mayor of EP and King Albert King Albert over which one’s King Albert left left left no no left no no back that’s the oh he’s over there no no
To the left oh him that’s king that’s King Albert and the second the second one from the left with the beard yeah you do it yeah this person that’s J comans who was the town architect responsible for the Reconstruction of e really okay amazing right see Ian Ivan didn’t
Caption that probably didn’t know add to your knowledge yeah so here’s some Graves registration unit Personnel in EP um so yeah he took a lot of photos like this of uh and then people are looking more relaxed because this is after the war uh and then yeah few years back when I
Came to E I did a did another blend here looking along the rudil the Ral Strat looking up towards the post office what was the post office which was probably arguably the best preserved building still standing in 1919 um and then here’s Ivan that’s Ivan in the side car there and Driver Griffith’s
There at the little Gates signed today for Rampart Cemetery which is over here um and then we’ve got the mening gate which was just a gap in the ramp parts then um and then I’ve put superimposed the mening gate today as it look there and I’ve put the cyclists in
Color but everything else is in cpia there’s a few signs in color there as well but yeah that’s you can you can still see the trench Railway here um yeah there’s a bit bit closer in and then yeah Ivan got to photograph kind of new EP here’s some Belgian Ingenuity turning a
Load of elephant iron and other kind of bits of dugouts into an estamina where you can go and get a p of stout fantastic um and then all the prefab housing that appeared on the uh what was called the pl Mo or the the Min plan Min minl y
Um and Ian finally got to relax a bit uh here he is in bin with Haden yeah having a drink in in bin Ivan says the photographic section came to an end in 1920 and Arrangements were made for relatives to deal with local French photographers if they required a gray photograph
Um he says the work throughout was carried on with the idea of providing the best possible photograph and no pains were spared to keep the work going however difficult the conditions might be um and he was asked to go back in 1920 uh and this is a note from Fabian
Wear which says it is hoped that all officers of the dgr and E and all connected with the RWC iwgc will give every assistance to Mr borry who has only been lent for a short time to the war office and commissioned to carry out this work the provision of photographs
Illustrating all sides of the work taken by someone who has real experience of it is at the moment is at the moment of the most importance but has to be completed in the shortest time possible so in 1920 they were trying to get the cemeteries uh into good order get the Portland
Limestone to replace the Wooden Crosses uh there was a lot of pressure to do this not everyone was happy with how the war dead were being treated many people wanted their loved ones returned home they wanted to repatriate them bury them the way they wanted to how dare the army
Take my son in line and then keep him in death as well um so there was an urgency to try and quell the anxiety of the public to show what was being done and Ivan was part of that he went to document what was going on on the Western Front uh
And yeah around so he went to the E area he also went down to Aras and the Som where he took photographs of kind of to show what’s what was going on um he got driven around in this fancy car voxal car with it’s got the iwgc crest on the
Side of it there he is there don’t know where this is but um and one of the things he documented was clearing the cemeteries um and these photos are quite uh unique so this is April 1920 and he goes to the passion kind of passion passionale battlefields and Rec records
A labor company combing the battlefield so this guy here is spotted a there’s a helmet there so he’s found some remains um then they dig them up nasty nasty job this awful digging up bits the bodies are coming apart when you’re pulling them bits out with your hands must have been pretty smelly
Um they’re recording where and they’re finding all sorts of things that they could find to identify the casualties um I put this tin here because this belongs to a friend of mine that was helped to identify his great grandfather uh who was killed in passionale area um and he was considered
Missing for a number of years until uh a body was found I think around 192021 and he was identified by this cigarette case which has his initials on it which are efcc yeah you may not be to make that out on there but yeah you can see this
Is damaged by shell fire there are bits of his uniform stuck imprinted onto this like burned onto the onto the case so that kind of thing would help identify but you only had like I think it was a 20% chance of identifying um a soldier here if we zoom
In on this one these are kind of some of the artifacts found with a a soldier that was being exed zoom in a bit you can make out Australia written here and here on these shoulder tags and there’s that looks like an aif cap badge so you
At least know this is an Australian Soldier but you might not know any more than that and then these are removed to the concentration cemeteries so the last kind of syet that came into being after the armis was the concentration Cemetery uh and the most famous of those is time
Cot um some of these cemeteries would have started off small but then they were massively expanded from smaller cemeteries isolated Graves that were moved and removed to these bigger cemeteries um It’s At Last burial service this is passendale new concentration Cemetery and yeah where’s that
Then T cot yeah you can see they put the cross sacrifice on top of this uh what was a what is a German bunker um so Ivan’s photo you can see the German bunker and I’ve added in yeah kind of the bits of what it looks like now
Um and then yeah clearing up shells from places like H create a cemetery um there was much to do uh after the war and Ivan was there to document these things and here’s this is len cor cemetery on the S this is what they were aiming for to make the
Cemeteries this is one of the first completed cemeteries there were kind of three cemeteries experimental cemeteries completed in 1920 um yeah and Ivan even shows some of the finishing and shaping of headstones engraving a headstone for a Canadian so Soldier um and here is Ivan in the
1950s um with some of his photographic gear that he used during the war so this is this is the wooden uh tripod that I have and one of his cameras Al that camera there doesn’t actually look like the one I’ve got so I don’t know what happened to that one but
Uh and that’s him this is an advert he made of him and his seller uh developing photos so he was offering a service so this was probably in his retirement he continued working for Kodak until he retired in 1954 but he you know he he he kept he would offer photographic Services just
To remind you that I am still at your service for anything photographic um work sent by return of post moderate charges yeah and finally uh that’s me with Ivan uh and my toy Al and my mother uh in May 1978 so my life overlapped with Ivans only by a couple
Of years he died the next year but uh yeah and that all led me to produce this book and that’s that okay for Q&A yeah um well before we start questions I just as a as a local historian as an e historian I would like to pay homage to
Him because there are many photographs that I saw past that I never realized that he took I mean he was probably the only professional photographer apart from the local anony but he was there earlier in 1919 so he has recorded some views that otherwise we would never have had yeah I mean like
The photograph where you saw reservoirs taken from reserv cemeter where you see the temporary Huts King Albert F houses and ruins on the background it’s such a telling photograph and I’ve been using it for 25 years without actually realizing that was yeah one of Ian B’s photographs just like the photographs
Taken from UD Wilson visiting yeah eepa I didn’t know that they were Islands so it’s really um he doesn’t always get credited properly no no no no not at all he should have given it to the impi museum yeah well better that better that than the tip I guess
Yeah um the bin man might have pulled it out but what happened with with because the were um what what the family had was just a tip of the iceberg of all the photographs that were taken so what happened to all the other photographs yeah so we’ve got
What 600 glass plates I found loads of other prints as well so in terms of terms of total number of photos that if I was to get all the photos that I have that I could possibly find that he’s taken we might have something in the reach of 7 maybe 800
Photos um but he took I think it was 28,600 of Warg Graves that doesn’t include the ones he took running around EP taking so he probably took let’s say he took 30,000 photos probably in the course of five years 1915 to 1920 yeah uh so where did they go well you might
Well ask I always get asked this question where are all these photos those um surely the Commonwealth Warg Graves commission has them um you ask them and they give me a Blank Stare they don’t really know um now Ivan actually I’ve got a letter written by Fabian wear
To Ivan from 1941 thanking him for coming in to help make order to their stores the photographic stores uh I obviously gone in to help kind of help with a bit of admin work to kind of um but I don’t know what’s happened to those stores um a lot of stuff was was
Lost during the second World War I don’t think I don’t think we can blame the Luft Waffa for that um sometimes we can but I don’t think in this case uh the guy at the imper at the Warg Groves commission said well there’s a lot of paperwork that was just poles or
They needed to recycle paper what have you but we don’t really know obviously a lot of people who received wargrave photos there might be indiv individual families have you know the cards that I showed you of cousin Jack I’ve plenty of people have shown me that
They you know they have have those or sometimes people find them on eBay or in a even in an antique shop or something um but yeah the bulk of these photos finished who knows yeah lady from a excuse me from a a commission perspective because when taking the photographs of course he’s
Taking photographs of the wooden crosses and once those Wooden Crosses have been replaced with the permanent Stones maybe from the commission’s perspective then they’re not relevant anymore to me just P not saying that’s correct but that’s maybe what they think that their rational is I think you’re very right I
Think that’s almost certainly they probably didn’t attach the import they didn’t attach the importance to them then that we might you know 100 years later of course it’s we’re thankful I mean even Ivan himself wasn’t sure if these photographs were worth keeping he was you know at the end of
His life 1975 he was 81 years old he was is anyone going to be interested in these photos um it’s for and thankfully a relative said well someone will be yeah let’s get them to the Imperial War Museum questions um how many official photographers May there have been around
Here um so doing the work that Ivan did initially there were three that was him with a guy called Bert Haden and um what was his name Albert rer Frederick I think it’s called Frederick roer uh and initially they would go out with another chat called I think Donald
Um but there were three main photographers But as time went by of course there were so many more um requests coming in they couldn’t cover it all so increasingly more people were drafted in to help do the photography work um from within the grapes registration commission or the DG re at
The time so I think Ivan talks about other people coming on board and I looked when I looked at the the Warg Graves records in 1917 I could see that a note from Fabian we adding more people in so they had another nine or 10 I about 10 people
Probably doing it by by 1917 yeah thank you the um the photographs that people could write for must a great comfort that that showed the grave and gave some information about where it was they had to pay to get that do you know if they did or how much it was I
Do uh they didn’t have to pay anything so it was this was really uh a really thoughtful Enterprise knowing that uh yeah they didn’t want anyone to go without so so a lot of people might not have been able to afford to pay for a photo I mean you had
To pay to have an epit put on the on the stone afterwards word something like that yeah but for the photographs no it was all covered by um the Red Cross defrayed by the Yeah The Joint Committee for the yeah the Red Cross they covered it
So that yeah that was for free if you wanted to get the cross back so you could so what happens to all the Wooden Crosses so some of them you’ll find in in churches and places like that in the UK now most again the percentage of cross Wooden Crosses that are survive is
Tiny compared to how many there would have been um and yeah I mean you could you if you wanted to get the cross back you had to pay for that and most people didn’t so a lot of those were got burnt firewood question new Mark well all right then
Yes I will CH the question in um Joey is there also um a letter archive was it mainly the Diaries you were any of his relatives keeping letters home and and did he come home with a collection of souven shell cases so was he sending stuff home during the
War there were lots of postcards of all sorts of things um sometimes you get an interesting postcard as one of a in a German Cemetery where the Kaiser was was there and he sent that he got I think he got got it off a German prisoner or
Something gave it to him and he then sent that home um when I went to Southern archives I did find a it was a a cross as in a Christian cross carved from like a bullet casing um now I don’t know if that was from Ivan or I think it might have been
His brother Athlon who was in The Royal Army Medical core um but yeah there were a lot of lot of uh letters he sent home and when I wrote the book yeah I did draw on letters sent to his mother sent to his sisters particularly via um I mean he sent
Letters to his other sisters but I don’t really have maybe one or two but mostly to Viola because V also lived into the 1970s and I have her archive is even bigger than Ivans in some respects terms of she was a prolific writer and kept hold of a lot of a lot of
Stuff um yeah but yeah lots of postcards of all sorts of places yeah y did you also come to the eans in the late 20s early 30s and would he have taken any pictures then not as I know of um yeah I don’t have any record of him coming back um Beyond 1920
I do have a record of him attending a what would you call it a reunion of people that work with the gru the grav registration units dating from 1926 which was been hosted by Fabian we it was like a poh dinner I think that was in the UK though
Um that was amongst some of the stuff that I found at the Imperial War Museum signed and it had it was signed there was like a a menu there and it was signed by everyone that was there um and it had an order of service of
What was there and Fabian we gave the address I think uh I think that was 1926 but in terms of coming back not what I know Of um it’s one I actually think about and would love to know the answer so if a family uh received a photograph so let’s say it’s a mother and father they receive a photograph of the grave of their son let’s say it’s uh 1916 yep but between 1916 and 1918 their son’s grave
Is completely destroyed and the body has been blown to pieces are they then informed again but I’m sorry your son is now missing do you know that that’s a really good question um because that something I really often think I’m a bit weird like well I gave at least a couple of examples
Of in this talk of of graves where Ivan had taken a photo the one of of a chat called Gosling with a Hampshire regiment right buried in High Park Corner in plug plug street now just because Ivan took a photo of it doesn’t mean that photo ever went to the
Relatives um I don’t I mean you think that it probably did but not necessarily um and I think with that photo there’s an argument that you could have I mean part of me wonders if I should be contacting the war Graves commission to say shouldn’t you put a gravestone in
Hid Park Corner Cemetery with a like in Maple cops and and Railway dugouts as well it says known to be buried in this Cemetery believed to or believed or known yeah believed to be buried or known to be buried inscribed on the top of the Grave so there’s a record that
The person is buried there they just don’t know where cu the original grave was destroyed and obviously with Maple cops which was the first image in my uh it was just a a complete Wasteland of of Destruction but enough of the graves have been well recorded that they
Knew they were there before they were blown up so they were able to put them back if you if you go there you’ll notice that they’re arranged in alphabetical order which is doesn’t wouldn’t otherwise happen um but yeah no what yes I suppose that
Would be a bit odd if you were if you had a picture of the grave and then and then you discovered that they were on the memorials the missing you see in the inquiry files um often people at the end of the war are writing because they want you know
Directions and and such like to where is the cemetery I’d like to come out now and then you see a letter coming back in the occasion saying I’m really sorry you know it’s gone now and you can also work out that people must have been working this out by default because they were
Talking to friends and neighbors who were receiving next of kin verification cards you know that they they’re flooding out from the Commission in 1919 where you’re having to check off all of the information is it correct and clearly some people were saying well hang on you know like Bert down the road
Has got one about his son but nothing’s come to us and they’re writing and they’re finding out that way so it’s a it’s a kind of slight default mechanism as well there yeah I did find um in the Su archive I did find some letters one or two written
To Ivan from people that were looking for a grave that they couldn’t find and did Ivan have could he shed any light on it um and I know Ivan being from what I have learned of him he was would have been done all he could to have tried to help but
Yeah with the enormity of it all the complexity of it all and it yeah it was often very difficult no more questions no um okay well before we wrap up and thank Jeremy again um just announcing the next talk which is in a fortnite in canbury and where robain
Who’s a volunteer at in flers fields Museum but who’s also um the former responsible well he was the only one so he was responsible for the maintenance of the Belgian Warg Graves so he will talk at University of Kent on the Belgian wargraves um but for those who are around tomorrow
Morning um Mark here Mar Cony is uh going to do a guided tour in St George’s Memorial Church at 10:30 free to all indeed free to all free to all um uh which is also kind of a gesture to thank the friends of St George’s Memorial Church for co-sponsoring uh our series
Of talks just like west from the association so I think that now all my duties have been informed apart from thanking Jeremy again for the wonderful talk thank you thank you for having me