Commonwealth War Graves Commission documents online

 

It's great to see that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has now published original documents from its extensive archive. Above is a single printed sheet listing my Great Uncle, John Frederick Nixon, and others who appear on "Stone No. 67C" of the Vis-en-Artois memorial. Jack has no known grave and so the information about him is scant, however for those soldiers who were buried, there is often a good deal more information.

 

Below are four documents relating to the burial and commemoration of Private Joseph Viles who, according to discussion on The Great War Forum, was knocked off his bicycle and killed a hundred years ago today (although the CWGC register notes that he died of sickness). There are two graves registration documents and two headstone schedules. Interestingly Joseph's sister is given as his next of kin and her address is also recorded; information missing from the additional information section published online. These additions will be extremely useful for researchers.

 

 

 

 



New look CWGC website

Somewhat belatedly (because I've only just noticed) I see that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has revamped its website, including the search functionality.

Not before time, visitors can now search by rank, service number, regiment, secondary regiment and honours and awards.  Furthermore, it is now possible to search solely on a term without having to key in other information. So for instance, one can see that there are 377 casualties who hold the Victoria Cross, 3658 holders of the Distinguished Conduct Medal (3346 of these holders dying during the First World War), and 2057 men with the rank of lieutenant colonel (which I must say, surprised me that there were quite so many).  Incredibly, there's also one casualty, Major General Charles Edward Dutton Budworth CB, CMG, MVO who was ten times Mentioned in Dispatches.  He is commemorated on the Kirkee War Memorial at Pune in India.

When results are returned it is possible, as it was before, to organise each column in ascending or descending order and now also possible to export data as a CSV file (although exports do not include the additional information field).  The ability to search by keyword, and thus pick up information in the Additional Information section would have been the icing on the cake, but I see that work is under way to include this. Even so, the new-look CWGC site is a vast improvement on the older site and can only assist family and military historians alike.

The War Graves Photographic Project - Latest News

I've just received the latest newsletter from The War Graves Project (TWGPP) and as one article mentions publicising the work of TWGPP, I thought I'd give it a mention here.

When I was living in India I did volunteer for the project and ended up taking quite a few shots of the memorial and graves in the Kirkee cemetery in Pune. However, my lack of travel opportunities whilst I was in India meant that I never did succeed in getting around very much, my forays pretty much limited to a few cemeteries in Bangalore.

But I heartily endorse the work of TWGPP and the excellent War Graves Photographic Project website which I refer to quite a lot. The project has already recorded over 1.6 million names and apart from anything else, is always a good bet for a name search when the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Roll of Honour website is playing up due to a technical hitch. Unlike the CWGC site as well, you can key in a person's first name, not just the initials.

The War Graves Photographic Project website, like the CWGC site, is free to use although if you want to obtain a copy of a photo you'll need to pay £3.50 for an e-mailed version or £5.50 for a hard copy in the post. Run these sites alongside pay-per-view or subscription databases such as Soldiers Died in The Great War or the Army Roll of Honour 1939-1945 and you can build up an extraordinary amount of detail with just a few clicks.

Photo shows Ranchi cemetery, courtesy of James Day and TWGPP.

CWGC update

From the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission:

"Following extensive consultation with users of the popular CWGC website, we have made several changes to the “Search Our Records” section , which will make it easier for people to search our database of 1.7m Commonwealth casualties. However, a technical problem has affected these changes, which has required the temporary reinstatement of the previous search tool.

"It is our intention to adopt the improved system, once the technical problem has been resolved. As well as providing a more intuitive system, the changes to the records search facility allow for greater security of our database but regular users may wish to note that one of the likely results of the security upgrade is that external websites will be unable to take advantage of the links to individual casualty details which are currently available.

"We are confident that these changes to the search facility represent a significant improvement on the previous system and that users will find the changes useful."

It's a shame that external sites will not be able to link to individual casualty details but presumably CWGC has its reasons for including this restriction.

A makeover for cwgc.org

It's a pity that the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has missed an opportunity to make its on-line Debt of Honour Register more user friendly.

The new-look Register appears today but its only so much old wine in new bottles and could have offered a lot more. I've always found the search function frustrating. The CWGC holds a lot of information about the men and women it commemorates but only allows the visitor to search on basic terms. The old look-look site allowed visitors to search on surname and initial and then war, year of death, service (ie army, navy etc) and force (ie British, Australian, Canadian etc). The new-look site allows visitors exactly the same options albeit you now have to make one extra click to bring up the "advanced" [sic] search options of war, year of death, service, and force if you discover that typing in "Smith" and "J" is simply going to present you with too many possibilities.

They've changed the font and the point size and also laid out the information in a different order but the search engine still falls woefully short. Why for instance can we not search on the person's full name, or actual date of death, or army number, or regiment, or battalion? Why can we not search on keywords contained in the additional information? The CWGC contains all of that data and it therefore surely can't be such an onerous or difficult task to include these as search options.

In its favour, there are more search options once the results have been returned. I see that there are 1001 results for J Smith (that's the equivalent of a WW1 battalion of men named J Smith) and once the results are returned it is then possible to sort the information by surname, rank, service number, date of death, age, regiment/service, force, memorial/grave ref, and cemetery/memorial name. All of this is an improvement and proves that it is possible to manipulate all of the data fields. So why then can we not search on all of these?

The CWGC has also missed an opportunity to link in with The War Graves Photographic Project and include details of individuals for whom a war grave or memorial photo exists. This is both surprising and disappointing, particularly as TWGPP works as a joint venture with CWGC.

If I was a teacher, marking this latest piece of 'homework' from CWGC I'd be writing "could do better" in the margin. Let's hope that the next upgrade, whenever it comes, makes the site even more user friendly.