The Bristolian who honoured the dead by Michael Pascoe.
Holidaymakers speeding to the south of France cannot fail to notice the thousands of gravestones of those who lost their lives in the two world wars. Yet, without the efforts of one Bristolian, these immaculately-tended military cemeteries might well not have existed.
The cemeteries owe their being to Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware who was born in 1869 in Glendower House, opposite Christ Church, Clifton. After private education, Ware studied at both London and Paris universities and became a teacher in the north of England. There, he wrote occasional articles for the Morning Post, a respected national newspaper.
In 1901, after the Anglo-Boer War, Ware went to South Africa where he filled senior educational posts. He returned to England in 1905 and became editor of the Morning Post and later joined the Rio Tinto Zinc company.
When war broke out in 1914 Ware was already 45 years old and not required to take an active part. However, he volunteered to lead a mobile Red Cross unit attached to the French Army. A month into the war, he realised that there was no system for recording the graves of the dead or informing their relatives. It took some time to convince the War Office but by the following year he had persuaded them that this was necessary both for the morale of the troops and their families. He was appointed as Director of Graves Registration and Enquiries with the rank of major. In 1917 he was appointed vice-chairman of the Imperial (later the Commonwealth) War Graves Commission which was established by Royal Charter. By the end of the war in 1918 he was Major-General Ware and had twice been mentioned in despatches as well as receiving decorations from several allied nations. He was knighted in 1920.
From the beginning, Ware determined that everyone who had died in the conflict should be remembered by name on a headstone or monument, that all headstones should be the same and, unusually for the time, that there should be no distinction of rank, race or creed. All the gravestones were to be laid out in straight rows with the national emblem, service or regimental badge as well as the name, rank, unit, date of death, age and religious emblem on the headstone. Families were allowed to add a short personal inscription.
At the height of the war, in 1916, he contacted Kew Gardens for planting advice. (Wherever climatic conditions allow, national plants from native stock are grown in cemeteries to symbolise the links to the gardens of home countries.) Ware’s attention to detail extended to ensuring that low-growing plants were placed in front of the headstones so that inscriptions could be read but that they were high enough to prevent soil splashing the headstones when it rained.
With the help of major architects such as Lutyens, Holden and Bloomfield and calligrapherMacDonald Gill, as well as thousands of masons and gardeners, cemetries and monuments to those with no known grave were laid out. By 1930 the name of almost all those who died in France and Belgium had been recorded.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, although past retirement age, Ware was again appointed Director and was also responsible for recording the names of civilian casualities – over 67,000.
Sir Fabian retired to Amberley, Gloucester in 1948 and died the following year. He is commemorated in Westminster Abbey and Gloucester Cathedral and in 2004 the Clifton and Hotwells Improvement Society erected a plaque on his birthplace.
Today, the Commission looks after graves and monuments in 23,000 locations in 150 countries, as well as war graves in civilian cemeteries. These cemeteries vary in size from 47 graves to over 12,000. The Thiepval Monument in France contains more than 72,000 names of those with no known grave.
All this results from one Bristolian’s determination that the war dead should be decently recorded and honoured.
