Cross of Sacrifice
The Cross of Sacrifice is a Commonwealth war memorial designed in 1918 by Sir Reginald Blomfield for the Imperial War Graves Commission. It is present in Commonwealth war cemeteries containing 40 or more graves. Its shape is an elongated Latin cross with proportions more typical of the Celtic cross, with the shaft and crossarm octagonal in section. It ranges in height from. A bronze longsword, blade down, is affixed to the front of the cross. It is usually mounted on an octagonal base. It may be freestanding or incorporated into other cemetery features. The Cross of Sacrifice is widely praised, widely imitated, and the archetypal British war memorial. It is the most imitated of Commonwealth war memorials, and duplicates and imitations have been used around the world.
Development and design of the cross
The Imperial War Graves Commission
The First World War introduced killing on such a mass scale that few nations were prepared to cope with it. Millions of bodies were never recovered, or were recovered long after any identification could be made. Hundreds of thousands of bodies were buried on the battlefield where they lay. It was often impossible to dig trenches without unearthing remains, and artillery barrages often uncovered bodies and flung the disintegrating corpses into the air. Many bodies were buried in French municipal cemeteries, but these rapidly filled to capacity. Due to the costs and sheer number of remains involved, Australia, Canada, India, Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom barred repatriation of remains.Fabian Ware, a director of the Rio Tinto mining company, toured some battlefields in as part of a British Red Cross mission in the fall of 1914. Ware was greatly disturbed by status of British war graves, many of which were marked by deteriorating wooden crosses, haphazardly placed and with names and other identifying information written nearly illegibly in pencil. Ware petitioned the British government to establish an official agency to oversee the locating, recording, and marking of British war dead, and to acquire land for cemeteries. The Imperial War Office agreed, and created the Graves Registration Commission in March 1915. In May, the Graves Registration Commission ceased to operate an ambulance service for the British Red Cross, and in September was made an official arm of the military after being attached to the Royal Army Service Corps.
During its short existence, the Graves Registration Commission consolidated many British war dead cemeteries. Ware negotiated a treaty with the French government whereby the French would purchase space for British war cemeteries, and the British government assumed the cost of platting, creating, and maintaining the sites. Over the next few months, the Graves Registration Commission closed British war dead cemeteries with fewer than 50 bodies, disinterred the bodies, and reinterred them at the new burying grounds. The Graves Registration Commission became the Directorate of Graves Registration and Enquiries in February 1916.
As the war continued, there was a growing awareness in the British Army that a more permanent body needed be organized to care for British war graves after the war. In January 1916, the prime minister H. H. Asquith appointed a National Committee for the Care of Soldiers' Graves to take over this task. Edward, Prince of Wales agreed to serve as the committee's president. The committee's membership reflected all members of the British Commonwealth. Over the next year, members of the National Committee for the Care of Soldiers' Graves began to feel that their organization was inadequate to the task, and that a more formal organization, with a broader mandate, should be created. The idea was broached at the first Imperial War Conference in March 1917, and on 21 May 1917 the Imperial War Graves Commission was chartered. Lord Derby was named its chair, and the Prince of Wales its president.
Development of the war cemetery ideal
Prior to the First World War, the British tradition was to bury officers who died on the battlefield in individual graves and common soldiers in mass graves. The Great War changed this sentiment, as it was a total war, one in which nations engaged in the complete mobilization of all available resources, modes of production, and population in order to fight. Subsequently, as the war continued, there was a growing expectation among the people of the United Kingdom that foot soldiers as well as officers should not only be buried singly but commemorated. Many British families had already tried to visit the graves of loved ones, and could not locate them. Numerous letters appeared in newspapers decrying the problem, and Ware realized the British war effort was heading towards a public relations disaster. Ware, too, felt that the experience of war in the trenches was reducing socio-economic and class barriers. He firmly believed that British policy should be to treat all war dead alike, regardless of class or ability to pay. Wealthy families should not be able to repatriate their dead, inter remains privately in France, nor erect ornate memorials over their loved ones.In July 1917, after consulting with architectural and artistic experts in London, Ware invited the architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker; Charles Aitken, director of the Tate Gallery; and the author Sir James Barrie to tour British battlefield cemeteries near the front in an attempt to formulate broad ideas for the post-war design of these burying grounds. The trip began on 9 July. The group met formally on 14 July after the trip ended. Ware, Lutyens, and Baker agreed that every cemetery ought to obey a general theme, that there should only be four variations on the theme, that grave markers should be uniform headstones, and that cemetery walls should be horizontal. Aitken insisted on cemeteries of simple design and low cost, feeling public money should be spent on practical items like schools and hospitals. Baker wanted a cross at each cemetery, but Lutyens wanted a more abstract symbol. Aitken supported Baker in thinking that a cross was more appropriate in the French countryside. At one point, Baker suggested a cross with a pentagonal shaft, and for Indian cemeteries a column topped by appropriate symbol.
Ware, Lutyens, and Baker met for a second time to discuss cemetery planning at the IWGC headquarters in London on 21 September 1917. They were joined by Arthur William Hill, then the assistant director of Kew Gardens. Both Baker and Lutyens presented draft designs for various types of cemeteries, but no agreement was reached on any design principles. After Ware informed him about the lack of unanimity among his advisors, the Prince of Wales advised Ware to keep news of any disagreements out of public view.
Frustrated by the lack of agreement among and hardening positions adopted by Lutyens, Baker, and Aitken, Ware turned to Sir Frederic G. Kenyon, director of the British Museum and a highly respected ancient languages scholar. Kenyon not only had expertise in art and architecture, but he was imperturbable, systematic in his work methods, businesslike, and practical. He was also a lieutenant colonel in the British Army and had served in France, and he and Ware agreed to emphasize his military rank as a way of keeping disputes in check. Kenyon's appointment was one of the first actions taken by the IWGC at its inaugural meeting on 20 November 1917. Aitken was released that same month. Ware asked Kenyon to help break the deadlock as quickly as possible. Over the next two months, Kenyon twice visited battlefield cemeteries in France and Belgium and consulted with a wide range of religious groups and artists. Kenyon agreed that Commonwealth military cemeteries should be uniform in order to emphasize their military character and the role the collective has over the individual in the armed forces. But he went a step further, and argued that the cemeteries should also be maintained in perpetuity by the British government, something never before attempted for large numbers of military graves. With Lutyens arguing for a "value free" and pantheistic Stone of Remembrance and Baker pushing for an elaborate and almost Neoclassical approach, Kenyon advocated a compromise solution. His rationale was that some of the decisions made about the cemeteries would prove to be highly controversial, and something had to be done to win over public opinion. To do so, Kenyon pushed for a cross to be added to each site. Although costly, Kenyon argued that most families were Christian and expected a cross, most families saw the cross as a sign of the sacrifice their loved ones made in death, and the addition of the cross would mollify the politically influential Church of England.
Lutyens argued for an obelisk rather than a cross. When he lost that argument, he argued that the cross should have a shortened cross-arm and a lengthened shaft, in order to emphasize its verticality amidst the trees of the French countryside. That argument was also unpersuasive.
Kenyon's report, War Graves: How the Cemeteries Abroad will be Designed, was submitted to Ware in February 1918. The IWGC accepted them at its meeting on 18 February. With Baker and Lutyens, although good friends, at odds about how to design the cemeteries despite agreement on general themes, Kenyon recommended that only young architects, who served in the war, be hired as cemetery designers. A team of senior architects—which would include Lutyens, Baker, and one other—would oversee the designs. With minor additions, Kenyon's report was published in November 1918.
Appointment of Blomfield
After receiving the Kenyon report in February 1918, the following month Ware appointed Reginald Blomfield to be one of the senior architects overseeing the design of British war cemeteries. Blomfield was chosen on the recommendation of Kenyon. Blomfield was an expert in both British and French architecture, and had written extensively on garden planning. Blomfield was greatly experienced in serving on committees, commissions, and government advisory bodies, and Ware hoped that Blomfield would use his age, experience, and dominance in the field of architecture to help rein in Baker and Lutyens. Ware also hoped that Blomfield's amiable nature and firm hand would keep the disagreements between Baker and Lutyens from getting out of hand. Furthermore, Blomfield was a widely acknowledged expert in generating highly accurate cost estimates and in crafting excellent contracts. Blomfield was paid £400 per year in 1918, which was raised to £600 per year in 1919.The same month he was appointed to the senior architects' committee, Blomfield accompanied Lutyens and Baker on a tour of French and Belgian battlefields.