At the going down of the sun and in the morning we shall remember them.

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In the post war years of 1918 until late 1920’s battlefield clearance had two objectives munitions along with discarded weapons and human remains.

Again post WW2 that would again take place in evert theatre of war, sadly in the depth of the jungles of the far east that has been minimal

Every year upon year human remains have been unearthed be that through natural erosion or farming, while the abundance of unexploded ordnance reduces by year, it is still a common danger.

Fortunate i am that in the 30 years battlefield walker i have been privilaged to be witness to five reburials following exhumation, four being ‘right place right time’ one by invitation for administrative work when identification of birth or residence of 405 British Soldiers following the Battle of Fromelles in 1916.

Here are some of many images gathered from those burials.

These final images conclude the page Lest we Forget 1914-1920.

St Marys ADS Cemetery ( Advanced Dressing Station)

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Prowse Point Cemetery, Flanders.

Pte H Wilkinson who was reburied following exhumation some years perviously all images from this attendence i have lost. Grave image taken whilst attending the above service.

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HAC Cemetery 2013 Burial of three unknown British Soldiers, unknown by rank, name, 1 from the East Surrey Regt, 1 from The South Staffordshire Regt. Insignia determined the regiments be that cap or shoulder titles

Same locationn in the afternoon, burial of four ( two identified) soldiers of

The HAC Honourable Artillery Company who began the cemetery in 1917 these men as with unknows are known to have fallen at Bullercourt, Battle of Arraa

Lt John H Pritchard 1st Bn HAC Kia 15th May 1917 ( Liverpool)

Pte Christopher D Elphick 1st Bn HAC Kia 15th May 1917. (London)

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New stone and the Congressional Medal

On 11th November 1921 the present black marble stone was unveiled at a special service. The stone (size 7 feet by 4 feet 3 inches, depth 6 inches) was supplied and lettered by Mr Tomes of Acton and the brass for the inscription supplied by Nash & Hull. Benjamin Colson carried out the brass work. The Padre’s Flag was also formerly dedicated at this service.

General Pershing USA, conferred the Congressional Medal of Honor on the Unknown Warrior on 17th October 1921 and this now hangs in a frame on a pillar near the grave. In October 2013 the Congressional Medal of Honor Society presented the Society’s official flag to the Unknown Warrior and this is framed below the medal.

When the Duke of York (later King George VI) married Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon in the Abbey in 1923 as she left her wedding bouquet on the grave as a mark of respect Maj Bowes Lyon BW. All royal brides married in the Abbey since have followed suit.

Padre’s Flag

A bronze plaque on a pillar outside St George’s chapel concerns the Padre’s Flag:

The Padre’s Flag (The Union) was used daily on flag pos or on improvised altar or as a covering for the fallen on the Western Front during the Great War 1914-1918. It covered the coffin of the Unknown Warrior at his funeral on November 11th 1920. After resting for a year on the grave it was presented to the Abbey Church of Westminster on Armistice Day 1921 by the chaplain who used it during the war and was dedicated on the High Altar

“To the glory of God and in perpetual memory of all who gave their lives fighting by land and sea and air for their King, for Great Britain and Ireland and for the Dominions beyond the seas.

The flag was hoisted onto the pillar above the grave at the dedication service. Company Sgt. Major Harry Evans, a soldier from the 17th London Bn climbed a tall ladder to fix the flag. It remained there for many years before being moved to hang in St George’s chapel in 1964. The flag had been cleaned of blood !

David Railton

David Railton was born on 13th November 1884 at Leytonstone in London. He received the Military Cross in 1916 for saving an officer and two men under heavy fire. After the war he became Vicar of St John’s church at Margate in Kent. He was killed in an accidental fall from a train in Scotland in June 1955.

H.M.S.Verdun bell

The bell of H.M.S. Verdun in which the Unknown Warrior was brought from Boulogne to Dover on the eve of Armistice Day 1920.

The Burial.

On the morning of 11th November the coffin was placed on a gun carriage drawn six black horses drawn through the crowd-lined streets, Whitehall where the Cenotaph was unveiled by King George

The King laid his wreath of red roses and bay leaves on the coffin. His card read “In proud memory of those Warriors who died unknown in the Great War. Unknown, and yet well-known; as dying, and behold they live. George R.I. November 11th 1920”.

Then the carriage, with pall bearers (Admirals) Lord Beatty, Sir Hedworth Meux, Sir Henry Jackson, Sir C.E. Madden,

(Field Marshals) Lord French, Lord Haig, Lord Methuen, Sir Henry Wilson, (Generals) Lord Horne, Lord Byng, Albert Farrar-Gatliff and Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, followed by the King, members of the Royal Family and ministers of State, made its way to the north door of Westminster Abbey.

While the Cenotaph unveiling contd, the Choir inside the Abbey sang, unaccompanied, “O Valiant Hearts” & “O God our help in ages past” after prayers there was the two minutes silence at 11am. The Contakion of the Faithful Departed was then sung and the choir processed to the north porch to meet the coffin,

Following a shortened of the Burial Service

The coffin borne to the west end of the nave through the congregation of around 1,000 mourners & guard of honour of 100 holders of the Victoria Cross all services command of Colonel Freyburg VC.

After the hymn “Lead kindly light”,

The King stepped forward & dropped a handful of French earth onto the coffin. The hymn “Abide with me” followed after prayers by Rudyard Kipling’s solemn Recessional “God of our fathers” Then Reveille was sounded (The Last Post at Cenotaph unveiling).

Other eminent members of the congregation were Queen Alexandra, the queens of Spain and Norway, the Duke of Connaught, politicians Lloyd George and Asquith, and Sir Douglas Dawson.

The grave was then covered by a silk funeral pall, which had been presented to the Abbey by the Actors’ Church Union in memory of their fallen comrades, with the Padre’s flag lying over this. Servicemen kept watch at each corner of the grave while thousands of mourners filed past. Wreaths brought on HMS Verdun were added to others around the grave. The Abyssinian cross, presented to the Abbey at the time of the 1902 coronation, stood at the west end.

The organ was played while the church remained open to the public.

After the Abbey had closed for the night some of the choristers went back into the nave and one later wrote “The Abbey was empty save for the guard of honour stiffly to attention, rifles reversed, heads bowed and quite still – the whole scene illuminated by just four candles”.

Special permission had been given to make a recording of the service but only the two hymns were of good enough quality to be included on the record, the first electrical recording ever to be sold to the public (with profits going to the Abbey’s restoration fund).

The grave was filled in, using 100 sandbags of earth from the battlefields, on 18th November and then covered by a temporary stone of Belgian Marble from Namur, with a gilded inscription on it:

A BRITISH WARRIOR WHO FELL IN THE GREAT WAR 1914-1918 FOR KING AND COUNTRY. GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS.

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Selecting the Unknown Warrior.

The idea had come to a chaplain at the Front, the Rev David Railton MC, when he noticed in 1916 in a back garden at Armentières, a cross pencilled the words “An Unknown British Soldier”.

In August 1920 he wrote the Dean of Westminster, Herbert Ryle, who effected the memorial. The body was chosen ex the Aisne, Somme, Arras, Ypres. Exc Loos, Flanders, Cambrai service origin unknown.

The remains to the chapel at St. Pol on the night of 7th November 1920. GOC Cmnd, Brigadier General L.J. Wyatt & Colonel Gell, went in alone, bodies on stretchers were covered by Union Flags.

The other bodies reburied. General Wyatt @ St Pol cemetery ( Maj Gen Sir Cecil Smith @ Albert-Baupaume road to be discovered later.

In the morning Chaplains of the churches CE RC NC, service then to Boulogne

The next day the coffin was placed inside another of oak, which had grown in Hampton Court Palace garden, lined with zinc. It was covered with the flag that David Railton had used as an altar cloth used at Ypres or Padre’s Flag, which now hangs in St George’s Chapel).

In the coffin was a 16th cent crusader’s sword ex Tower London

The inner coffin shell made by Walter Jackson of the firm of Ingall, Parsons & Clive Forward at Harrow, the outer coffin was supplied by the undertakers Nodes & Son.

The coffin plate bore the inscription:

A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 for King and Country.The ironwork and coffin plate were made by D.J. Williams of the Brunswick Ironworks at Caernarfon in Wales.

The coffin was piped aboard the The destroyer HMS Verdun with an Admirals Pipe… whose ship’s bell was presented to the Abbey and now hangs near the grave, it landed at King George Dock Dover an it was then taken by train to Victoria station in London where it rested.

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Between the 12th November 1918 to 31st December 1921 50,656 British Personel (Soldiers, Navy, RAF, Merchant Navy) succumbed to wounds or fell in action (Russia, Persia, North West Frontier)

The Armistice was signed, a fragile peace ensued, the war for many would never be over not even from 1922. Those who died post 1st January 1922 from war related issues never gained Imperial War Graves recognition, nor did many who died within the ‘cut off’ any sickness resulting in death, brought on by the original war related cause is met with barriers such as ‘unrelated to war’ despite service in a war theatre, with effects of war resulting in the ultimate cause of death.

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A man of Pre War Service injured st sea Jutland 1916, who returned to sea aboard same vessel, which was involved in VC action at Jutland having lost No1 Turret with two direct hits. he subsequently discharged unfit in 1917, recipient of the Silver Wound Badge, is a lesser candidate than anyone dying in uniform of Flu, or Secpticemia indavertantly casued when affixing his collar badge, he pricked his ear which invoked blood poisoning…. CWWG laud this case as ‘no man ignored’

The seaman is located on these pages Lathom & Burscough War Memorial.

Lest We Never Forget.

In 1940 Adolf Hitler brought the very same railway carriage ‘back into service’ to accept the formal surrender of France.

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Appeasement or NOT dancing to the tune of politicians.

1^st Sea Lord 1917 Admiral Weymes whos task it was to arrange the Armistice Signing

A 2.30 signing ordered by Lord George to coincide with parliament opening,

He Weymes chose 11.00 agreed by Germans & Foch.. Approved by George V following a communiqué betwixt the two, George he personally informed Lord George who was furious.

The £100 k grant was denied to the 1^st Sea Lord as given to all other ‘forces chiefs’ denied his earldom for a year.

Can always rely on politicians to exeet petulance.

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A Forest in Northern France:

‘A typical November day, cold and damp’. Two railway carriages stand 200 feet apart. At precisely 9am, as agreed, six men emerge from one and make their way along the temporary duckboard path that has been laid over the boggy ground. ‘I have never seen a more miserable lot of men,’ thinks one of those watching.

The group is led by Matthias Erzberger, the son of a postman from southern Germany. Our witness records that he is ‘fat and bloated-looking, double chin, scrubby moustache,. Beside him is Count Alfred Graf von Oberndorff from the German foreign ministry: ‘a very polished looking gentleman’. Just behind them is Admiral Ernst Vanselow, a naval officer who ‘does not look at all like a sailor, more like a butcher’.

Along with an aristocratic Prussian Officer General Detlof von Winterfeldtmhis bearing exudes what one expects of a Prussian

Waiting at the door of the second carriage is a French general, who bows stiffly, looking distinctly uneasy at having to be respectful to a delegation of the enemy who have occupied and ravaged his country for so long, he stands alongside myself as I make a mental record of events.

It is Friday 8 November, 1918 — the German delegation has arrived in the Forest of Compiègne, about 60 km north of Paris, to sign the Armistice that will end ‘the war to end all wars’.

The Allies asked the Germans for their credentials (to prove they were the legal representatives of the German government), but Marriott wryly notes that ‘it was lucky the Germans did not retaliate’, as they had not thought to bring any.

Furthermore the Great War was prolonged by a whole day because the German party had failed to bring a code with them by which they could send the Armistice terms back to headquarters by telegram. As a result the papers had to be sent back across the front line by motorcar, a process which took 36 hours.

Then, when Captain Marriott tried to phone Buckingham Palace to inform King George V about the Armistice, he was almost defeated by the primitive telephone technology: ‘The line was dreadful and I must have been cut off about 30 times.’

There are the human senses: the junior German representative taking the Armistice terms back to his government with ‘a bottle of beer in each pocket and crying his eyes out’.

It had been immediately clear to the Allied party that the German delegates, caught between absolute military collapse on the front and starvation and revolution at home, would accept almost any terms.

And so, after three days of cursory negotiations, at 5 o’clock in the morning, Marshal Foch, Admiral Wemyss and the four German delegates signed the document which declared an end to a war which had killed an estimated 17 million military combatants and civilians. The guns would fall silent exactly six hours later, at 11 o’clock on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.

Marriott and some of his colleagues took to the forest with bottle of port… soothing way to ease the tensions of the previous days

Peace, abdication, negotiation, American laxity whilst the desire for prominence in the New World order.

On 29 September 1918 the German Supreme Army Command informed Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Imperial Chancellor, Count Georg von Hertling at Imperial Army Headquarters in Spa of occupied Belgium, that the military situation facing Germany was hopeless. Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff, probably fearing a breakthrough, claimed that he could not guarantee that the front& demanded a request be given to allies for an immediate ceasefire.

In addition, he recommended the acceptance of the main demands of US president Woodrow Wilson (Fourteen Points) including putting the Imperial Government on a democratic footing, hoping for more favourable peace terms. This enabled him to save the face of the Imperial German Army and put the responsibility for the capitulation and its consequences squarely into the hands of the democratic parties and the parliament.

He expressed his view to officers of his staff on 1 October:

“They now must lie on the bed that they’ve made for us.”

On 3 October, the liberal Prince Maximilian of Baden ( but he lasted only 5 weeks) was appointed Chancellor of Germany (prime minister), replacing Georg von Hertling in order to negotiate an armistice.

After long conversations with the Kaiser and evaluations of the political and military situations in the Reich, by 5 October 1918, the German government sent a message to President Wilson to negotiate terms on the basis of a recent speech of his and the earlier declared “Fourteen Points”.

In the subsequent exchanges, Wilson’s “failed to convey the idea that the Kaiser’s abdication was an essential condition for peace

The leading statesmen of the Reich wre not yet ready to contemplate such a monstrous possibility. As a precondition for negotiations, Wilson demanded the retreat of Germany from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and the Kaiser’s abdication, writing on 23 October:.

Wilson “If the Government of the United States must deal with the military masters and the monarchical autocrats of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand not peace negotiations but surrender.

In late October, Ludendorff, in a sudden change of mind, declared the conditions of the Allies unacceptable. He now demanded to resume the war which he himself had declared lost only one month earlier. But German soldiers were pressing to get home. It was scarcely possible to arouse their readiness for battle anew, and desertions were on the increase. The Imperial Government stayed on course and Ludendorff was replaced by Wilhelm Groener. On 5 November, the Allies agreed to take up negotiations for a truce, now also demanding reparation payments.

The sailors’ revolt which took place during the night of 29 to 30 October 1918 in the naval port of Wilhelmshaven spread across the whole country within days and led to the proclamation of a republic on 9 November 1918 and to the announcement of the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

However in various areas soldiers challenged the authority of their officers and on occasion established Soldiers’ Councils. Thus for example the Brussels Soldiers’ Council was set up by revolutionary soldiers on 9 November 1918.

Berlin 6 November. the delegation led by Matthias Erzberger departed for France.

A much bigger obstacle, which contributed to the five-week delay in the signing of the Armistice and to the resulting social deterioration in Europe, was the fact that the French, British and Italian governments had no desire to accept the “Fourteen Points” and President Wilson’s subsequent promises. For example, they assumed that the de-militarization suggested by Wilson would be limited to the Central Powers. There were also contradictions with their post-War plans that did not include a consistent implementation of the ideal of national self-determination.

The Allied statesmen were faced with a problem: so far they had considered the “fourteen commandments” as a piece of clever and effective American propaganda, designed primarily to undermine the fighting spirit of the Central Powers, and to bolster the morale of the lesser Allies. Now, suddenly, the whole peace structure was supposed to be built up on that set of “vague principles”, most of which seemed to them thoroughly unrealistic, and some of which, if they were to be seriously applied, were simply unacceptable.

Also on 9 November, Max von Baden handed over the office of Chancellor to Friedrich Ebert, a Social Democrat. Ebert’s SPD and Erzberger’s Catholic Centre Party had enjoyed an uneasy relationship with the Imperial government since Bismarck‘s era in the 1870s and 1880s. They were well represented in the Imperial Reichstag, which had little power over the government, and had been calling for a negotiated peace since 1917. Their prominence in the peace negotiations would cause the new Weimar Republic to lack legitimacy in right-wing and militarist eyes.

The Armistice was prolonged three times before peace was finally ratified. During this period it was also developed.

First Armistice (11 November 1918 – 13 December 1918)
First prolongation of the armistice (13 December 1918 – 16 January 1919)
Second prolongation of the armistice (16 January 1919 – 16 February 1919)

Trèves Agreement, 17 January 1919^[13]

Third prolongation of the armistice (16 February 1919 – 10 January 1920)^[14]

Brussels Agreement, 14 March 1919.^]Versallies treaty 28^th June 1919.

The armistice was signed in a carriage of Foch’s private train, CIWL #2419 (Compiègne Wagon). It was later put back into regular service with the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits, but after a short period it was withdrawn to be attached to the French presidential train.

From April 1921 to April 1927, it was on exhibition in the Cour des Invalides in Paris.

In November 1927, it was ceremonially returned to the forest in the exact spot where the Armistice was signed. Marshal Foch, General Weygand and many others watched it being placed in a specially constructed building: the Clairière de l’Armistice.

There it remained, a monument to the defeat of the Kaiser’s Germany, until 22 June 1940, when swastika-bedecked German staff cars bearing Adolf Hitler, Hermann Göring, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachim von Ribbentrop and others swept into the Clairière and, in that same carriage, demanded and received the surrender armistice from France.

During the Occupation of France, the Clairière de l’Armistice was destroyed and the carriage taken to Berlin, where it was exhibited in the Lustgarten.

After the Allied advance into Germany in early 1945, the carriage was removed by the Germans for safe keeping to the town of Ohrdruf, but as an American armoured column entered the town, the detachment of the SS guarding it set it ablaze, and it was destroyed. Some pieces were however preserved by private persons; they are also exhibited at Compiègne.

After the war, the Compiègne site was restored, but not until Armistice Day 1950 was a replacement carriage, correct in every detail, re-dedicated: an identical Compagnie des Wagon-Lits carriage, no. 2439, built in 1913 in the same batch as the original and present in 1918, was renumbered no. 2419D.

Two relics of the original signing are exposed at the Musée de l’Armée in Paris: The pen used to sign the Armistice, saved by a French officer before the German advance forced his unit to leave the Clairière zone, and an ashtray which a person present at the signing in 1918 had pocketed as a souvenir.

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The German conundrum whilst exerting the case for peace.

Matthias Erzberger (1875-1921) was a moderate German Centre Right Catholic politician who served in the post-war cabinet as Minister of Finance, Monarchist and patriot to Germany

Coming out in full support of the government in August 1914 Erzberger was given the challenging task of organising overseas German propaganda in 1914-15 (a sometimes seemingly impossible task). Later that year Erzberger travelled to Italy as a member of the diplomatic mission intended to maintain Italy’s neutrality!! Which failed.

Over the course of the next year Erzberger’s publicly stated war aims underwent a transformation. In 1915 he was calling for significant territorial annexations as the price of German peace (largely in France Alsace / Lorrannie and Belgium Liege). During the course of 1916 1917 however he came to believe that a negotiated peace was not only desirable but necessary.

A firm opponent of unrestricted submarine warfare (along with many moderate Deputies in the Reichstag), Erzberger introduced the July 1917 Peace Resolution that led to the fall of Chancellor Bethman-Hollweg.

Erzberger’s publication & following address in the Reichstag of a secret memo authored by Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister Ottokar Czernin, which was decidedly gloomy in its view of the conduct of the war providing clear emphasis of the poor state of the Military Machine of Germany, merely earned Erzberger the ultimately fatal enmity of right-wing groups without altering the course of the war.

On 3 October 1918, Erzberger entered the government of Prince Maximilian von Baden as a Secretary of State without a portfolio On 6 November 1918, a reluctant Erzberger was sent to negotiate with the Allies in the Forest of Compiègne. Prince Maximilian supposed that Erzberger, as a Catholic civilian, would be more acceptable to the allies than a Prussian military officer; in addition, he believed that Erzberger’s reputation as a man of peace was unassailable

However Ferdinand Foch, the chief Allied negotiator, was unwilling to make any concessions, with the exception of a slight extension of the time allotted to the German army to withdrawal and the concession not break up more subs than they had!!

Erzberger was unsure whether he should hold out for further changes in Germany’s favour. On 10 November, Paul von Hindenburg telegraphed that the armistice should be signed!!,

Then the new Chancellor, the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert, telegraphed Erzberger to authorized him to do so.

Foch accepted the German cessation of hostilities in November from the German delegate, Matthias Erzberger, at 5:00 a.m. local time. However, he refused to accede to the German negotiators’ immediate request to declare a ceasefire or truce so that there would be no more useless waste of lives among the common soldiers. By not declaring a truce even between the signing of the documents for the Armistice and its entry into force, “at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”, about 11,000 additional men were wounded or killed – far more than usual, according to the military statistics.

As the head of the German delegation, he signed the armistice ending World War I on 11 November 1918 at Compiègne with French representative Ferdinand Foch. He made a short speech protesting the harshness of the terms ending with…

“a nation of seventy millions can suffer, but it cannot die.” Foch ignored Erzberger’s attempt to shake his hand and is said to have replied, “Très bien” (“very well”)

Remaining in the cabinet following the 1919 elections – as Minister of Finance – Erzberger worked hard to gain recognition of the widely reviled Treaty of Versailles. He was however obliged to resign in 1920 in the wake of financial allegations.

Erzberger was regarded as a traitor by the political right. Manfred von Killinger, a leading member of the Germanmenorden, masterminded his death recruiting two members of the ultra-nationalist death squad Organisation Consul: Heinrich Tillessen and Heinrich Schulz. Both were former Navy officers and members of the Marinebrigade Ehrhardt. The very same who had revolted at the prospect armistice

Erzberger’s assassins were later smuggled into Hungary and were prosecuted only after World War II.

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The Colonels Surrender.

St Quentin September 1914. The Warwicks & The Royal Dublin Fusiliiers.

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From the pictorial ‘Faces of War’

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Raw material a society mix late summer 1914.

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Lt. Harry Webber aged 67 Killed in Action 21st July 1916 at Bazentin, Somme.

Transport officer 7/ South Lancs.

‘Subordinate in rank to his sons’

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From an original photograph taken at Windsor 1913.

Great Uncles of the late Patrick Waite (Ormskirk).

The 1914 Stars shown are the original stars awarded to the brothers. The remaining medals whereabouts unknown. At Patricks request it was my privilage to dispose the frame to a collector which sits proud in his home office. Himself once serving in the Blues & Royals.

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As abruptly the Advertiser began the edits for The Great War in May 1915, subsequently the first photos of the serving and fallen soldiers in November 1915, it ended that portrayal, for after the edition post the armistice it ceased.

Very few if any were presented in the days of November 1918, whilst December the focus was upon the first Christmas Peace for five years.

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Lathom & Burscough men found under own page.

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Lord Derby St Georges Hall Liverpool 15,16,17th Bns Cheshire Regt (Bantams) Alfred Bigland MP Birkenhead credited with the raising of these three battalions.

In the North West only one other regiment raised Bantams The Lanacashire Fusiliers (Bury) 17th, 18th Bns.