OUR SOLDIERS' GRAVES. 



3 



While the war was in progress the horticultural work occupied 

 the attention of three officers, and at the present time six officers 

 are engaged in the work of planting and making beautiful our cemeteries 

 in France, and one officer is similarly engaged in Italy. 



In addition there is a staff of non-commissioned officers, foremen 

 gardeners, all of whom have an expert knowledge of gardening and 

 have held important horticultural posts at home before the outbreak 

 of the war ; and a large body of gardeners. There are also a certain 

 number of women, who have been doing good work on a few cemeteries 

 at the Base. 



So far my remarks have related to the French and Italian fronts, 

 but equal care is being or will be taken elsewhere ; in Egypt, for 

 example, the care of our soldiers' graves is being undertaken by the 

 Horticultural Department of the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture. 



Horticultural work in our cemeteries in France is attended with 

 several practical difficulties. In the first place, we are confronted with 

 the French law which permits of only three square metres of ground 

 being taken for each burial, and which also enacts that trees shall 

 not be planted nearer than two metres, or hedges nearer than half a 

 metre, to the boundary of a cemetery. Then the burials have often 

 had to be very close together, so that there is not much space left 

 for bold treatment ; the paths also are perforce rather narrow, and 

 only simple plans for horticultural treatment are possible. 



To the French authorities, however, our sincere thanks are due 

 for the spirit in which they have met us in our difficulties, and for the 

 way in which they have been ready to do all they could to fall in 

 with our requests for the adjustment of boundaries, so that it should 

 be possiole to prepare a more adequate and dignified design. 



In order that the conditions under which we have to work may be 

 better understood it is necessary to refer briefly to the two methods of 

 burial which have been followed in our cemeteries. In some, and this 

 is usually the case in the Base and also in many of the smaller frontal 

 cemeteries, the burials are in separate graves and each one is made 

 up into a large mound of earth, the cross or other symbol * being 

 placed at the head of the grave (figs. 4, 5, 6). In other cemeteries, more 

 especially those attached to Casualty Clearing Stations, near places 

 where heavy fighting has taken place, burials are in trenches because 

 there has not been sufficient time to allow of individual graves being 

 dug. In such trench cemeteries the actual resting-place of each 

 man is marked by the cross or other appropriate symbol, and the 

 surface of the trench, when finished, is made up into a long smooth 

 continuous mound or border (fig. 1). 



In large cemeteries several such trenches lie parallel to one another, 

 separated by narrow paths. 



Wherever possible the graves and trenches face the east., but in 



* For Jews each grave is marked by the double triangle on an upright stake — 

 the sign of David — and Indian graves are marked by a simple stake bearing the 

 inscription. 



