The Commonwealth War Graves

The CWGC Casualty archive consists of over 300,000 documents which record the details and commemoration location of each casualty the Commission is responsible for commemorating, some 1.7 million individuals in total from both world wars. The Commission was set up to provide perpetual commemoration to those who had died while serving in the British and Imperial forces during the First World War. To realise this task, it first had to collect the necessary details regarding those individuals, including the location of their graves, if known.

This information was provided by various Labour Companies and Graves Concentration Units who were set up under the control of the military authorities. They were tasked with searching for the graves and remains of the war dead and conducting the battlefield exhumation and reburials which resulted. The Commissions task was later extended to cover British and Commonwealth casualties from the Second World War. The records include grave registration documents and headstone schedules. In many cases, these represent the earliest recorded information that the Commission was able to gather about those who came under its care.

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