In both world wars, the dead were usually buried near where they fell. But many died in the UK, too.
If your local parish graveyard or cemetery was around at the time it will very likely contain at least a couple of the distinctive light grey (usually Portland stone) Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) headstones from the First or Second World Wars.
Larger Bristol cemeteries, such as Arnos Vale, Canford and Greenbank, have several; as they contain more than 40 burials, each also has a CWGC ‘Cross of Sacrifice’, a white stone cross inset with a downturned sword.
Anyone who died in the services was entitled to a CWGC grave, regardless of the cause of death. In the First World War, some of those buried in the UK here died as a result of wounds sustained in the fighting overseas, though many died of other causes, usually infections, such as the 1918-19 Spanish Influenza pandemic. Others, especially earlier on in the war, died in training camps of meningitis.
The Second World War saw the broadening of eligibility for CWGC burials to the Home Guard, the Merchant Navy, some of the civil defence services and to civilians themselves.
The Bristol cemetery with the most resonance from the Second World War is Greenbank, where you will find several civilians who died from enemy bombing – including at least one entire family, along with a memorial arch to civilian victims of the Blitz. These graves were provided by the Imperial War Graves Commission (as the CWGC was called then), but are not maintained by them.
In a small plot alongside Greenbank Road there are British, Polish and Commonwealth servicemen and women who lost their lives during WW2, including members of the Home Guard, and 13 of the 15 ARP personnel who were killed at their post in Dean Street, St Pauls, on the night of December 2 1940 when it was hit by a large bomb.
Lying with them are German and Italian dead as well. Two of these are the crew of a German aircraft shot down over Bristol, while the rest are German and Italian prisoners of war who died in the Bristol region in accidents or of illness during, or shortly after, the war ended.
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