The emotional impact resulting from the battle of the Somme reached out into
almost every town across the United Kingdom. In many cases the sense of
bereavement was heightened by the uncertainty which came with the news that the
body had not been found.
The Thiepval Memorial is the largest of the Memorials to the Missing and the
last to be unveiled on the Western Front. Negotiations to purchase the site
began in late 1927, with the Memorial being unveiled by the then President of
the Imperial War Graves Commission, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII)
on Monday 1st August 1932. The Prince of Wales made a speech, part in English,
part in French and was carried on radio broadcasts throughout the world. He
called the Memorial " the crowning stone" of the Imperial War Graves Commission
and added, "our thoughts today should be with the relatives of those whose death
has purchased our current freedom". Expressing his wish that this was an opening
chapter in a "Book of Life" from which the horrors of war would be banished, the
Prince of Wales and the rest of the world were only 7 years away from another
World War.
The Memorial, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, and built between 1928 and 1932, is
a massive arched structure, with large laurel wreaths carved on top of the
pillars and towards the top of the memorial. At the time of the unveiling in
1932 there were 73,357 names were commemorated here; Over 90% of those
commemorated here died between July and November 1916. The slight decrease to
today's number (72,116) represents the identification of bodies since then
resulting in soldiers no longer being 'missing'. Some additional names have
however also been added (omissions in the original list of commemorations).
The Stone of Remembrance, also known as the War Stone, is a feature of most of
the British and Commonwealth military cemeteries and memorials.
The Stone of Remembrance is situated in the raised section at the heart of the
Thiepval Memorial and in the centre point of the arch. The words carved on every
Stone of Remembrance, "Their Name Liveth For Evermore" was suggested by Rudyard
Kipling, taken from Ecclesiasticus, Chapter 44, verse 14: "Their bodies are
buried in peace: but their name liveth evermore". Rudyard's own son, John, was
killed in action at the Battle of Loos in 1915.
A large inscription on the internal surface of the memorial reads:
Here are recorded the names of officers and men of the British Armies who fell
on the Somme battlefields between July 1915 and March 1918 but to whom the
fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given their comrades in
death
On the 64 panels of the arches are the names of those who have no known grave,
and are thus 'The Missing'. However, many of these may be buried in the Somme,
but in an unknown grave marked as 'Known Unto God'. The Memorial covers the
missing of Britain and South Africa. The Missing of other nations have their own
memorials; for example Canadians at Vimy
Ridge and the Newfoundlanders at
Beaumont Hamel. The panels on the memorial are arranged by Regiment, then
within each Regiment by Rank and within that alphabetically. On the
uppermost part of the Memorial, the British Union Jack flies on the northern
side to represent the British Army being in action on the northern area of the
1916 battlefield, north of the River Somme, whilst the French Tricolore flies on
the southern side, representing the French Army position in the battlefield on
the southern side of the River Somme.
Intended to symbolise the losses of both sides, at the foot of this huge
memorial lies a small cemetery containing 300 French and 300 commonwealth
graves.
Only 61 of the 300 British and Commonwealth soldiers buried here are identified,
as are only 47 of the French soldiers. Many of the Commonwealth graves are
those of bodies recovered from the 1916 battlefields on the Somme, but also
bodies were reburied here which had been recovered from as far away as Loos and
Le Quesnel. The fact that these bodies were recovered in late 1931 and early
1932, 13 or so years after the end of the war, demonstrates how many men still
lay then in the fields of the Western Front. Of course the Memorial itself
demonstrates how many more still lie there today, or else in one of the many
'Known Unto God' burials in the war cemeteries.
The
cemetery's Cross of Sacrifice bears an inscription that acknowledges the joint
British and French contributions:
That the world may remember the common
sacrifice of two and a half million dead, here have been laid side by side
Soldiers of France and of the British Empire in eternal comradeship
A long overdue and much needed visitor centre was opened in 2004 at the cost of over
£1.9m, the background to which can be view
here.