All language subtitles for Dan.Cruickshanks.Monuments.of.Remembrance.2018.1080p.WEBRip.x264-CBFM

Amongst the most haunting
architecture created by Britain

in the 20th century
are the cemeteries and memorials

to the missing and dead
of the First World War.

They're solemn without being gloomy,
emotive without being maudlin,

and they can contain mini
masterpieces of classical
architecture.

These memorials and the cemeteries
can be found in more than 150

countries around the world.

And they can be seen to embody
a piece of Britain embedded

in a foreign land,
places that give a sense of order

to the bloody chaos
they memorialise.

Towards the end of
the First World War,

Britain was a traumatised society.

The Government was faced
with the challenge of making

a lasting tribute to those who'd
died in unprecedented numbers.

Over a million lives lost
across the British Empire,

soldiers of different rank,
race and religion,

some who could be identified,
many who could not.

What followed was an extraordinary
and often controversial building

project, the sheer scale
of which the writer Rudyard Kipling

described as, "Work greater
than that of the pharaohs".

So how was that achieved?

Who designed these remarkable
monuments, cemeteries and gardens?

And what do they tell us
about how we use architecture

to honour and remember
those who lost their lives

on the battlefield?

This is the story behind
the extraordinary idea that art

and architecture could create
a legacy that would endure

for millennia, to ensure
that the sacrifice of the dead

is not forgotten, and that their
names will live for ever more.

In July 1917, two of Britain's
leading architects,

Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker,
came here,

which was then a few miles
behind what became known

as the Western Front.

After three years of bitter warfare
with fighting still raging

in the trenches and the mud,
what were these two men of art

and culture doing here?

Lutyens and Baker both worked
for the British Government

in New Delhi and for powerful
institutions like churches

and banks, and of course Lutyens
became the favourite designer

of country houses.

They'd been invited to France,
along with horticulture and art

experts, by a newly
created organisation -

the Imperial War Graves Commission.

From his chateau where
Lutyens was lodged,

he wrote to his wife Emily.

Here is a copy of one
of the letters he sent her,

dated July 12th 1917.

"Each day we have long motor drives,

"being billeted some way back
from the front.

"The cemeteries, the dotted graves,
are the most pathetic things.

"What humanity can endure
and suffer is beyond belief.

"The battlefields,
the obliteration of all human

"endeavour and achievement,
is all a sense of wonderment -

"how can such scenes be?"

This was his job as an architect,
he and his colleagues had to make

some sense, some order,
give some dignity to this chaos,

this hell of, as he says,
"Obliteration and of death."

In the hellish conditions
of the Western Front,

and with no end to the war in sight,
the architects faced a daunting

challenge - how were they to honour
and commemorate the dead in a proper

and fitting manner?

To attempt to create a sense
of beauty in a world of madness,

in a landscape of industrialised
mass killing,

was perhaps itself an act
of madness.

Although I suppose the idea was to
give this ghastly barbarism some

connection to the familiar world,
some connection to civilisation.

The man who had invited Lutyens
and Baker to France was the unlikely

figure of Fabian Ware.

Neither a soldier nor a politician,
he was a former newspaper editor

and a fierce patriot.

When the war started,
he was too old to fight,

but still he found a way
of getting to the front -

an experience that led
to the creation of the

Imperial War Graves Commission.

Fabian Ware was a brilliant man,
he was a battler as well as

a dreamer, but above all,
if you're going to understand him,

he was an imperialist.

As a child, he was brought up in one
of the most extreme of Victorian

dissenting sects and when,
as an adult, he lapsed

from that faith, he needed,
as so many of his generation did,

an alternative faith.

Some found it in literature,
in philanthropy, and Ware found

it in the Empire.

So how did Fabian Ware become
involved with the cemeteries?

He managed to wangle himself
the command of a curious thing

called a mobile ambulance unit,
under the aegis of St John's

Ambulance and the Red Cross.

And the role of his mobile unit
was to follow the line

of the British retreat,
looking for survivors,

looking for the wounded,
and helping in any way it could.

They were coming across graves
that had been hastily dug

and forgotten, either
without any identity,

or without an identification
on a piece of wood or a cross

that was clearly going to disappear.

And a natural sense of piety,
a natural sense of reverence,

made Ware and his men look
to these graves and make sure

that they recorded in as
efficient a way as possible.

So out of this sort
of hellish nightmare,

he wanted to create
some sense of order.

Oh, yes. Gradually, the nature
of the work and the value

of the work was recognised.

The funding came from London
for him to continue.

And he began to set up
a register of the dead.

By the end of 1914,
Britain could not cope with it.

We had no idea of the casualties.

I think the extraordinary thing
about him was how very early

in the war he actually envisaged
how things would appear,

that at the end of this there
must be a way of memorialising

a sacrifice on a scale that no-one
had ever seen before.

Here is Fabian Ware's standard issue
field message book -

an amazing thing.

This is the book Ware carried
to fulfil that admirable purpose.

It's an amazing thing to hold -
page after page, really,

I say, sending soldiers not
to fight, not to kill,

but to care for their
fallen comrades.

From the simple act of recording
locations of the dead,

and where possible
identifying the missing,

the idea took shape
in Fabian Ware's mind of building

memorials and cemeteries.

Central to this idea was the clear
decision that the bodies

should not be repatriated.

They were to be buried
in the Commission's own cemeteries,

built on or near the battlefields.

This was highly controversial

and bitterly contested by many
bereaved relatives who wanted

to bring their dead back
home for burial.

But Fabian Ware and
the Commission prevailed.

And it made sound psychological
sense that they did.

Imagine the national gloom
that would have resulted

in thousands of corpses
being returned to Britain

and Ireland week after week,
month after month.

The Western Front stretched
for more than 400 miles

from the Swiss border in the south
up to the North Sea.

The front was formed with trenches,

blockhouses and barbed-wire
entanglements.

By the end of the war,
there were over 565,000 British

and Commonwealth burials.

That meant that more than 1,200
cemeteries were needed,

each demanding
architectural treatment.

The sheer scale of the task
that Fabian Ware faced was enormous.

Hundreds of thousands
of bodies had to be located,

exhumed, and identified.

Remarkably, a century later,
bodies from the First World War

are still being found,
and they are assessed

here at the Commission's
recovery centre at Beaurains

in northern France.

This is incredible, of course.

Did this all belong to one
individual, one human being?

Yeah, it does.

The body is elsewhere
in this building, and the point

of kind of all of this, in a way,
is to continue the great project

going back a hundred years,
is to use these objects

to identify this person.

Is there an example
here on the table?

Well, there's...

There is an example,
a small coin here,...

So this is another individual?

This is all that was
recovered on one individual,

other than his body,
was a bullet and the silver coin.

That has his name, he had the face

taken off and had
his name imprinted on it.

Good Lord! So there it is, I can
see, a coin of the realm, is it?

That's George V, is it?

Oh, yes, OK, it's a silver coin

with the King's profile on one side.

But, you see, on the other side,
it's milled down and put his name

on it, so clearly this chap
was fearing the worst,

he made his own identification
so his family would know.

Yeah, there's only one reason
to do this, and that was it.

Yeah, yeah.

The soldier on the coin
is Second Lieutenant Eric Henderson,

8th Battalion London Regiment,
Post Office Rifles.

He was killed in action in June 1917
and finally buried in May 2018

alongside his comrades
at Oak Dump Cemetery in Belgium.

The land for the Commission's
cemeteries was leased in perpetuity

from the French and
Belgian governments.

But what form would these memorials
and cemeteries take?

How would they reflect or embody
all the different nationalities

and faiths of the soldiers
of the Empire?

And how were they to deal
with issues of class and rank?

It was to confront these challenges
that Fabian Ware gathered together

a diverse group of artists,
architects and poets.

Joining Lutyens and Baker
as the Commission's principle

architects was
Sir Reginald Blomfield.

To keep any disagreements in check,
Sir Frederic Kenyon,

director of the British Museum,

was appointed to chair
the advisory committee.

Kenyon believed, as did Ware,
that two guiding principles

should determine the treatment
of the dead and the design

of the cemeteries.

The dead should be treated equally,
no matter their rank in life

or in the forces.

And the cemeteries
should possess a sense

of simple, soldierly uniformity.

BIG BEN CHIMES

At 11am on the 11th of November
1918, the Armistice came into effect

and hostilities ceased.

That month, Kenyon published his
report on the aims and ambitions

of the Imperial War
Graves Commission.

Here it is, the key document.

War Graves - How The Cemeteries
Abroad Will Be Designed.

A compact document,
but not slight in its meaning.

Let's have a look.

So, ah, well, equality
of treatment is obviously

the great central issue.

"The Commission felt
that where a sacrifice

"had been common, the memorial
should be common also."

Key, key, key.

"And it desired that the cemeteries
should be a symbol of a great army

"and a united empire.

"It was therefore ordained
that what was done for one

"should be done for all and that
all, whatever their military rank

"or position in civil life,
should have equal treatment

"in their graves."

This was a big idea
beautifully expressed,

that the common nature
of the sacrifice must be recognised

regardless of one's status, rank,
religion or ethnic origin.

This ideal would be put to the test
in the first cemeteries

in northern France.

This small cemetery at Forceville
shows the application of Kenyon's

key principles, the most obvious,
of course, being uniformity

and this calm, military order.

This was a demonstration project,
one of the first of the three

cemeteries undertaken
by the Commission after the war.

The cemetery was designed by
Reginald Blomfield and by Charles
Holden.

Holden designed a wonderful abstract
elemental lodge over there,

a lovely piece of work.

That is a typical bit of Holden
design, a wonderful thing.

Arthur Hill, the assistant
director of Kew Gardens,

gave advice on the planting.

And Kenyon himself came here,
and he liked what he saw.

He described it as having
the pleasant effect

of an English country churchyard.

That's what he wanted, that's what
he thought he'd got here,

and I suppose he had.

Reporting from Forceville,
a correspondent from The Times later

described it as, "The most perfect,
the noblest, the most classically

"beautiful memorial that any loving
heart or any proud nation

"could desire to their heroes
fallen in a foreign land."

Horticulture was to play a key
role in the success,

evoking the native qualities of home
that the dead would recognise,

and with which visiting relatives
could identify.

The emerging cemeteries
were to be living places

of memorial and pilgrimage.

We describe ourselves as one
of these great gardening

organisations,
but it doesn't happen by magic,

it's quite formulaic,
and the plants are carefully managed

in the borders. The layout of the
planting schemes -

it's very structured.

So here you've got a little
Deronicum coming into flower,

and behind you've got some
you've got some white Arabis,

so yellow and white together.

That is a really strong,
spring sort of layout,

but also looking up the avenue here,
the placing of the heathers

at the end of the headstone rows,
very strong architectural in terms

of leading your eye right up to the
cross at the back of the cemetery.

These cemeteries are strange
places, aren't they?

I should say pleasantly strange,
I mean they are places,

of course, of the dead,
but because of the gardens,

because of the planting,
they feel so alive.

And also, of course,
there's a sense of them

being enduring, forever young,
forever young.

Yeah, I think on different levels,
if you're coming and you're visiting

the headstone of a relative,
of course it's very personal

and it's very sombre.

But actually the layout
of the bigger site is something

that's usually beautiful,
and here we are in spring,

in the middle of northern France,
there's some birdsong,

you know, the bees buzzing
behind us, and the planting

is vigorous and alive,
and I think it's very beautiful.

And I think, for me,
these are really beautiful gardens.

You know, can you imagine being
buried in a really beautiful garden?

I think, if you've got
to be buried anywhere,

this is as good a place as any.

Next, there was the question
of a powerful symbol to stand

in each cemetery.

Blomfield designed
the Cross of Sacrifice,

incorporating an upended sword
to emphasise the military

and religious affiliation
of the majority of the dead.

But Lutyens envisaged
something very different,

something far more abstract -
"A great stone block,

"most subtly proportioned and broad,
that will be an enduring symbol

"of the sacrifice made
by a generation of young men."

In his letters to Fabian Ware
in July 1917, Lutyens suggests

different names for the stone,
and in so doing reveals the evolving

thought process behind its meaning.

He calls it the Battle Stone,
the Stone Of Peace,

and the Memory Stone, until
it is decided that it

should be called
the Stone Of Remembrance.

With this massive stone,
Lutyens sought to create a symbol

that would endure in the landscape
for centuries to come.

But a symbol of what exactly?

Well, the form, rather
like an altar, a sarcophagus.

And the simple abstraction of
the design reveals certain things.

It is to do, obviously,
with sacrifice.

It is to do with death.

And it's a symbol that is not to do
with any single religion.

It's for people of all
faiths or no faith,

those were important parts
of this great object.

But there's more. It's not a stone
that is mute, of course, because it

has words upon it. It is a speaking
stone, it says here,

"Their name liveth for evermore."

A memorial to those
that made the sacrifice.

But there's more still.

The stone is huge, but
it's by no means unsubtle.

It is perhaps Lutyens' use of
a system of proportion rooted

in nature that gives this stone,
standing in the landscape,

in the setting of nature,

such an extraordinary
and sublime beauty.

Another key concept
of the Commission's cemeteries

was a uniform headstone.

This would not only gives cemeteries
a broad uniformity of design,

but would also be fundamental
to the quest for equality

of treatment of the dead.

The single most familiar object
from the Commission's cemeteries is,

I suppose, the headstone.

Here it is, it seems
so obvious now, so simple.

It is a simple slab of stone,
on it basic information -

the name of the dead,
Lance Corporal WJ Kane,

so his name and his rank,
his military number,

and the regiment,
Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers,

and the date of his death,
2nd May 1916.

And a cross, that's an option.
If you were Jewish,

you could have a star of David,

or there could be nothing
if you were pagan.

And down below, a sentiment
chosen by the family.

"He died that we might live."

On the advice of MacDonald Gill,
the graphic designer,

all the headstones were
to be inscribed in sober

Roman lettering.

As literary adviser,
the writer Rudyard Kipling took

responsibility for providing
inscriptions.

It was a task with deep
personal significance.

Kipling was still grieving
for his only son Jack,

who went missing while serving
with the Irish Guards at

the Battle of Loos in 1915.

Drawing on his own sorrow
and biblical inspiration,

Kipling suggested "Their name liveth
for evermore" for memorials.

For the graves of bodies
that could not be identified,

he suggested "A soldier
of the Great War known unto God."

At the time, the headstone design
was considered controversial

for its simplicity and because
it was not overtly Christian.

And one of its most insistent
opponents was Lady Florence Cecil,

who tragically had lost
three sons in the war.

Lady Florence was a woman
with connections.

She was the wife of the Bishop
of Exeter and daughter-in-law

to former Prime Minister Lord
Salisbury, and she wanted her boys

to lie beneath crosses.

There it is, wow.

The petition, thank you.

In the spring of 1919,
Lady Florence appealed directly

to the Prince of Wales,

the president of the War Graves
Commission,

with a petition of 8,000 signatures.

It says here, "In the name
of thousands of heartbroken parents,

"wives, brothers and sisters,
of those who have fallen in the war,

"we have been deeply wounded
by the decision of the Commission

"that no crosses other
than those engraved

"on the headstones, which time
and the weather will soon

"defect, are to be erected
over the individual graves

"of those who gave their lives
to preserve the lives

"and liberty of others."

The first signatures
are Florence Cecil herself,

lost three sons - her daughters,
Eve and Mary, lost,

of course, three brothers each.

It starts with the main
supporters of her campaign,

and then page after page
after page of people.

This was taken around the country,
and people sent in documents,

they were pasted in.

It's heart-rending.

A hundred years ago,
but it...breaks one's heart to read

it, the personal nature
of the losses.

For example, here...

..Mrs Elizabeth H Russell Davies,

living in Buckingham Place,
Brighton.

"My only son, aged 34,
killed in his dugout

"during a tremendous
bombardment by the enemy

"nine miles from Albert."

"My husband died of grief
six weeks later."

I mean, it's so ghastly.

And all they want, apparently,
is a cross above the dead,

not a uniform headstone.

Friend, friend, pal, cousin,
son, uncle,

friends, brothers, brothers,

brothers, two brothers here,

pal, pal, pal, friends,
friends, brothers,

brothers and so on and so on,
page after page, cousin...

People's families and lives
obliterated by this war.

Hmm.

What began as a petition from
heartbroken relatives developed

into an angry press campaign and
then escalated into a vociferous

Parliamentary debate.

The Commission had to contend
with an emotive argument

and a powerful,
well-connected family.

However, despite the political
storm, Fabian Ware's resolute

principles held firm,
and the opposition was persuaded

to withdraw its objections.

If you could not bring the bodies
of your dead home and you could not

erect a cross or a memorial of
your choosing over their grave,

then if you had the money and
influence, you could do this.

This is a stained-glass
window commemorating

Lady Florence's three sons.

It's a stunning piece of work,
it shows the three boys

in angelic form.

On the left, the angel holds
a crown of thorns,

representing trial and sacrifice.

On the right, the angel holds
a babe, Christian duty.

In the centre, the angel holds
a torch aloft against a rising sun,

so resurrection and new life.

Below, there is a text.

And this reveals some of the anguish
behind this story,

some of the anguish behind
the creation of this memorial,

because one was killed in July 1915,

and the third one killed
in August 1918.

Can you imagine,
this drip feed of death,

the horror, one son,
then another and then the third?

Heartbreaking, appalling.

This is a very individual memorial,
and, of course, very Christian.

That is what the family wanted.

If the dead of the Great War
would remain in cemeteries built

on the battlefields,
then a monument was needed at home

that was to act as the focus
for mourning and memorial.

Every year, on the Sunday nearest
to the 11th of November,

here at the Cenotaph,
poppy wreaths are laid

on Remembrance Day in memory
of those who died,

here termed "The Glorious Dead".

The extraordinary story
of the Cenotaph is one of accident,

as well as design.

In 1919, the Government commissioned
Lutyens to design a temporary

monument at Whitehall
for the Peace Day celebrations.

But as some drawings in the archives
of the Imperial War Museum suggest,

Lutyens' work on this London
landmark

began in very informal
circumstances.

Oh, the drawings, wonderful.

Now, here we are.

Ah, yes.

Terrific.

This little drawing here,
dated July 1919,

"Done at dinner".

And you see the design
of the Cenotaph, much as built,

and it's annotated -
we see the flags, very important,

the wreaths, more flags, um...

soldiers standing guard
at the four corners.

What's fascinating, of course,
about this drawing is that it shows

that this strange and abstract
structure, the Cenotaph,

sprung fully formed almost
from Lutyens' mind over,

I've no doubt, a glass
of port and some cheese.

You can imagine the scene,
suddenly he has inspiration,

and one of the great works
of commemoration of the 20th century

leaps onto the page.

Amazing, there it is!

Lutyens rooted his creation
in the classical past

and the ancient architecture
of death - proportions and forms,

such as the subtle curve
to seemingly vertical and horizontal

edges, were taken from
the Parthenon in Athens.

Or the solemn funerary architecture
of Egyptian mortuary temples

was another inspiration.

The Cenotaph, meaning an empty
tomb, was the result.

Looks simple, but it's not,
it's complex.

And the effect it had was
anything but simple.

After the official
ceremonies were over,

something extraordinary happened.

Tens of thousands of people
flocked to the Cenotaph.

It became the catalyst
for an outpouring of grief.

Although it was a symbolic
grave without a body,

Lutyens' Cenotaph became
the symbolic grave for all

who had no grave at which to mourn.

A mountain of flowers
and wreaths grew up around it,

a million people made their sad
and silent pilgrimages to this spot,

as they would do in
the decades to come.

A flimsy plaster and wood structure
had demonstrated the immense power

of architecture, when abstract,
and as raw as the emotions

of the grieving mourners,
to articulate the agony of loss.

The human sentiment of millions,
as Lutyens described the public

reaction to his Cenotaph,
provoked the Government to replace

the temporary structure
with a permanent national war

memorial made out of Portland
stone - the Cenotaph that stands

here today, solemn, brooding.

BIG BEN CHIMES

In May 1922, as the commission's
huge building project continued,

King George V made his own
pilgrimage to France and Belgium.

The King, who'd lost members
of his own family in the war,

was anxious to see the result
of Fabian Ware's vision.

For Ware, here photographed
with the King, royal approval

would mean the vindication
of everything he and his colleagues

had striven to achieve.

The King declared,
"For the past few days,

"I've been on solemn pilgrimage."

"Never before in history
have a people thus dedicated

"and maintained individual
memorials to their fallen."

"Many of the cemeteries I've visited
have been made into beautiful

"gardens which have been lovingly
cared for by comrades of the war."

Yet the killing fields of France
and Belgium were to be transformed

into little corners
of Britain and Ireland,

and a new and very different
army was required.

And by the spring of 1921,
more than 1,300 gardeners

had been recruited to start the job.

In fact, many former
British soldiers returned

to the battlefields to work
on the emerging cemeteries -

mostly as gardeners,
some as masons.

One such gardener
was Walter Sutherland,

a former front-line
soldier from Scotland.

After the war, he married a Belgian
woman and so began a remarkable

British dynasty at
Lijssenthoek Cemetery.

I used to go and give him a hand,
you know? Yeah, yeah.

And looking after the graves, you
know? Yes. Many people from England

came over to see the graves of
their sons or...their relatives,

and it was heartbreaking to see
some of the families come here...

Yes. ..as a young boy. They laid
by the grave and they'd cry,

and I cried with them...

Yes. Being a young boy, you know?
Yes, of course.

And, of course, you remember
your grandfather.

Grandfather, as well,
I was sitting on the back

of his bicycle when I was
about six years old,

coming to the cemetery
to maintain and, you know,

I used to help him clean out
the bowls and stuff like that.

And even at that age I knew
I wanted to join the War Graves,

I think, mainly, I think
it was our duty to look

after all these people that died
here, and I'm pretty sure Dad

was the same and Grandad.

He felt a duty to do the job,
because all his colleagues

who were also in the Army,
some of them are buried here,

and my father thought,
"It's my duty to do that."

But I notice there
are these big trees,

they're pretty mature -

were they here when your grandfather
was here, do you think?

The cedars have been there
since 1921,

and a couple of years ago,

one of the main ones
in the middle here was damaged,

badly damaged, and it
had to be removed,

and the Sutherland family
were actually asked to plant

this new tree just behind you here.

And there it is, there it is.
This is also a Cedrus atlantica.

So there we go. Generations.

Three generations and proud of it.

Yeah, yeah. Wonderful, wonderful.

Nowhere in Belgium was
a transformation of the landscape

starker than at Tyne Cot.

Created by architect Herbert Baker,
this vast cemetery made the deepest

impression on returning soldiers,
as a lasting reminder of the pitiful

cost of the war.

Those are the bloody
slopes of Passchendaele.

And it was up those slopes
that British and Commonwealth forces

advanced in August 1917
towards the German trenches,

which were roughly here.

This cemetery of Tyne Cot
shows the grim harvest...

Part, only, of the grim
harvest of that advance.

Look at the scale.

It's the scale that
appals, doesn't it?

It is truly shocking.

This is the largest commissioned
cemetery in the world.

Here we see the graves
of nearly 12,000 soldiers.

And of those, 8,300
are unidentified,

known only unto God.

And in addition,
on the wall at the back

are the names of another 35,000
soldiers who are missing,

their bodies never found.

Here, you see, we have the remains
of a German blockhouse,

or pillbox.
This was the German front-line.

This strange, rugged and raw piece
of reinforced concrete structure.

There's a machine-gun
embrasure there.

The German trenches were here.

It has a strange
authenticity sitting here,

as if almost untouched by time.

The architecture, of course,
in contrast to this,

is very considered.

Herbert Baker tends to have, I will,
of course, have to say,

sanitised the horror of this battle
by creating, in his own words,

"A semblance of an English country
churchyard."

Does it work?

Maybe, maybe not.

Is it reasonable even to
attempt such a thing?

At the end of the day,
you have the headstones and nothing

can deny the horror
of the headstones.

I mean, every one...

Every one is a dead soldier.

It is, it remains,
absolutely shocking.

In commemorating the dead,
Fabian Ware and his architects faced

a global task.

Two thirds of the graves
were in France and Belgium,

with the remainder scattered
across cemeteries

in 107 different countries.

They were located in such cities
as Damascus and Jerusalem,

and here on the remote and barren
landscape

of the Gallipoli Peninsula in
Turkey.

The Gallipoli campaign of 1915
was an attempt by the Allied powers

to control the sea route to Russia.

Their ambitious campaign began
with the failed naval attack

on the Dardanelles Strait,
and continued with the disastrous

land invasion by British
and Irish soldiers,

along with the Australian
and New Zealand Army Corps,

or Anzacs.

The lack of intelligence
and knowledge of the terrain,

along with the fierce
Turkish resistance,

led to heavy casualties
and an ignominious withdrawal.

After the war, Fabian Ware appointed
Sir John Burnett as the principal

architect for Gallipoli.

On these rugged and windswept
cliff edges, Burnett was to design

the cemeteries and memorials
to the men of the Empire

who perished far from home.

The cemeteries at Anzac Cove,
right next to the beach,

as you see,

where the landings took place
on the 25th of April 1915.

It was a battlefield cemetery.

This is where people were buried
from day one as fighting took place.

It's called Ari Burnu.

Here we see...

They're quite different to those in
France

which are headstones,
they're almost horizontal.

The idea was that the headstone
was attached to a concrete pile,

here you see, driven
into the earth to keep it stable.

The worry was that the land,
the terrain, was unstable,

that the occasional thunderstorm,
rainstorms, would wash

down here and that ordinary
headstones would topple.

And so these are more robust
and not quite as noble,

perhaps, as the ranks
of headstones in France.

There were two guiding principles
underpinning Burnett's work here.

To avoid confrontation
with the local population,

as tensions between

Britain and Turkey still simmered
in the 1920s.

And to ensure, because
of their remote location,

that the cemeteries and monuments
could be easily maintained.

Shrapnel Valley was an essential
route from the beach up to the
Anzac

front and took its name
from the heavy Turkish shelling

that rained down upon it
on the 26th of April 1915.

The cemetery was created mainly
during the fighting,

but some isolated graves brought it
into the valley after the war.

There are now 683 servicemen buried
or commemorated in this cemetery.

The standard elements used
by the commission in the cemeteries

in France and Belgium had, to a
degree, be rethought for Gallipoli.

But, I'm happy to say,
the great Stone of Remembrance done

by Lutyens is here,
used in the larger cemeteries

in Gallipoli.

But it's made out of many
pieces of local stone,

not just one slab of Portland stone.

It's lovely to see it here.

But the main difference
is Blomfield's Cross of Sacrifice

has been abandoned.

Now, the architect,
the principal architect

for Gallipoli, Sir John Burnett,
wanted something different,

something more suited to the
particularities of the location.

He wanted a Christian cross
to dominate, he said, the cemetery.

And here we see Burnett's solution.

There it is set against
this slab of stone.

But because the cemetery
is in the land of people

of another faith,
he didn't want the cross to break

above the skyline,
to perhaps offer insult to locals

or indeed become
a target for sacrilege.

Actually, it's a subtle
and rather successful

design, isn't it?

The planting in the
cemetery is robust.

Local plants are used,
as you would imagine,

I see rosemary and thyme,
a wonderful smell.

And, of course, there
are these cypress trees -

very much to the point.

In the ancient world,
the cypress tree was a symbol

of the underworld, but also,
for Christians and for Muslims,

a symbol of mourning.

And these, with the planting here,
are set in this little valley

with a backdrop of trees
and low hills all around.

A magical place.

The inexperience of the Anzacs,
and their commanders in particular,

was brutally exposed

in the opening hours
and days of the disastrous

battle that followed.

Combat experience, in this instance,
came at a fearful cost.

This is Anzac Cove on Anzac Day,
the 25th of April.

It was here at dawn,
that very day in 1915,

that Australian and New Zealand
troops landed on this beach.

This is the annual dawn service,

organised by the Australian
and New Zealand governments

to commemorate that day,
to remember the men that landed,

the men that died.

This is not just to do
with remembrance of sacrifice,

but also of celebration.

Because through that sacrifice,
these nations

of Australia and New Zealand
were forged.

The bravery and determination shown
by the soldiers here gave

those nations the right to see
themselves proudly,

as independent nations
in the larger world.

Another nation was also forged
through the bloody conflict

on this peninsula,
the Republic of Turkey.

But what do the local people think
of the memorials and graveyards

that are maintained by the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission

on Turkish soil?

After the war, of course,
and during the war,

they didn't feel they were
100% enemies on each side.

Soldiers that lost their lives
here and now laying their bodies

in our land, we consider
them as our children,

our sons.

So, we are not considering
them as enemies.

When you visit the cemeteries
and memorials here,

what do you feel?

It is extremely emotional.

Each time I visit,
I cannot stop myself crying.

It's a very high
emotional atmosphere.

And who visited has the similar
feeling of what I have felt.

The cemeteries are emotional
places of pilgrimage.

But what happens when there
are no bodies to bury...

..when a memorial is needed
for those whose remains lie lost,

or scattered,
across the battlefield?

This is Cape Helles,
situated at the end

of the Gallipoli Peninsula,
and at the end of Europe.

And at the highest point of the Cape
is the Helles memorial.

The monument takes the form
of a stunted obelisk,

the universal image of death,
of the passage of the soul,

used by many religions,
not specifically Christian.

Also, the height is very important.

It rises 100 feet,
that's because this memorial

was designed to be seen
from the sea, largely from the sea.

Also, it was designed
for low maintenance,

which explains many
details about the obelisk -

for example, its rough,
textured face.

I suppose that's so it doesn't
water stain and there aren't

lead flashings and so on.

So, again, it is fascinating -
powerful,

but a low-maintenance monument.

On the stone panels of its walls
are the names of more than 20,000

British, Irish and Empire soldiers
who died in the Gallipoli campaign -

men with no known grave.

The ancient Egyptians believed
that a person's name was intrinsic

to their identity.

And as long as the names
of the dead lived in memory,

emblazoned on monuments or tombs,
they had a chance of rebirth.

Perhaps they were right.

While the Allied soldiers
were to be forever remembered

in a foreign land,
in France and Belgium,

those from another continent
would not be forgotten either.

Located near the village
of Neuve-Chapelle in France

is a memorial commemorating
the thousands of Indian soldiers

and labourers who lost their lives
on the Western front.

Herbert Baker was called upon
to design the memorial.

Having previously worked
in New Delhi, the capital

of British imperial India,
it was assumed he was attuned

to Indian sensibilities.

What do you feel
about this memorial,

this attempt to evoke a sense

of India in this part
of northern France?

Well, it's actually really moving,
because it's like a little bit

of India in, you know,
this desolate, flat country here.

All these names have come
thousands of miles

and died over here.

I do like the architecture.

I like the fact that there is
an Ashoka pillar there,

because Ashoka was this Emperor
who stood for non-violence.

He saw the ravages caused by war
and he converted to Buddhism

and chose the non-violent path.

And he had these edicts
put up all over the country.

For me, it represents peace
and the carnage of war,

which...

It goes together.

I wonder if Baker fully realised
the meaning of the column.

In a sense, he's created
in here a sort of anti-war memorial.

And he's also got the chakra there,
which is the wheel.

The wheel of fate.
The wheel of fate.

He's got the elephant.
That's the soul.

That's this symbol.

Of course, the complexity of Indian
religion and society,

with Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus,
and the caste system

within the Hindu society,

it must have made
the treatments of the bodies

of the different
people so complicated.

It was a major problem.
In the first few years of the war,

they just buried them.

Whereas Hindus and Sikhs
need to be cremated,

their religion, you know,
that's what they require.

I think they just accepted the fact
that there was no way

they would be cremated,
they were all buried.

There's some little notes that some
of them made requests,

"OK, you can bury me as long
as they don't put my shoes

"in the grave."

Shoes being unclean.
Shoes being unclean.

You take off your shoes
when you enter the temple

or to enter the other world.
You don't go in your shoes.

So I found those notes
really touching.

Also, some of them
wanted headstones.

They said, "If it means that
my ashes can't have a headstone,

"then I'm happy to be buried
if I get a headstone."

So the name will live.
The name will be there.

Well, memorials such
as this have many functions,

but the prime one is a place of
pilgrimage for the families.

But of course, the families
can't get here, can they?

This is sad.

It is. The first time I visited,
there was nobody here.

And it was really lonely
standing here, as an Indian,

to stand here surrounded by Indian

names and know that none
of those families would ever

be able to visit.

They are poor, peasant families
still living in the hills.

I know a few Sikh families
come from the UK, they make

annual trips here.
But how many come from India?

It's really, really sad.

The Neuve-Chapelle memorial
was unveiled in October 1927.

Today, such segregated memorials
may seem strange to us.

But at the time, it was considered
an expression of respect

for the traditions
of different people,

that it was fitting
for those that shared cultural

connections in life to lie
together in death.

If there's one landscape of death
seared into the psyche

of a generation, it is the Somme.

Along a 15 mile front
in northern France

on the 1st of July 1916,
100,000 British troops advanced

on German trenches.

The battle lasted until
the 16th of November 1916.

And the official number of British
dead, missing or wounded

during those five
months is more than 400,000.

The site of the cemetery
is so strategically important.

It stands at the very epicentre
of the Somme battlefield.

Here were the German trenches,
the trench system.

The Schwaben Redoubt
just over there.

The British attacked
from that direction,

spearheaded by the 36 Ulster
Division coming through here.

And here we see the dead
around me, here.

Nearly 1,500 here.

There is the Ulster Tower built
to commemorate the Ulstermen

who died fighting here
in July 1916.

So this is a particularly
powerful cemetery to visit.

A very historic cemetery.

The very heart of the fighting
and the suffering at

the Battle of the Somme.

Lutyens faced the ultimate challenge
of creating the memorial

for the missing of the Somme.

And the weight of
responsibility was great.

Yet here on a ridge overlooking
the River Ancre at Thiepval,

he created his great masterpiece.

The power of Lutyen's work comes not
just from the names,

of which there are more than 72,000,
but from the monument itself.

Power comes from the elemental
abstract forms.

The arches pirouette,
they crest to north and south,

to east and west,

symbolising a loss
of direction, of uncertainty.

This is a great squatting
beast of a building.

A pyramidal spider in the landscape.

It is a strange creation indeed.

It is, most of the year,
a place of silence,

not a place for mock heroics
or a place for theatrical pageantry.

This is a place where,
in a sense, the fewer words

that are said, the better.

Lutyen's worked instinctively
as if his ideas for the monument

were plucked from a dream,
from vision.

In the archives of the Royal
Institute of British Architects,

there's a series of rapid sketches
he made,

showing the light and shade
form an atmosphere of the building.

This is, I suppose,
the best of the drawings.

Here we see it. Again, it's
the memorial for the missing

of the Somme, on his
office notepaper.

Lutyens, 17 Queen Anne's Gate.

Goes into his office,
gets a bit of writing paper,

sits down and makes
this beautiful thing,

which, in a rapid, emotional way,
encapsulates entirely the character,

the quality that is to be realised
in bricks and stones and mortar.

Direct, emotive, wonderful.

Again, a terrific insight
into how this incredible piece

of architecture was created.

The monument has a brooding
and deeply melancholic presence

that leaves one in little doubt

that this is
a most peculiar memorial indeed.

Although Thiepval received
the public support of Fabian Ware

and the Prince of Wales,

it evoked a different response
from the other monuments.

For some, the arch was too forlorn,

perhaps too grim a reminder
of the horrors of the war.

All of this might explain
the strange silence surrounding

its unveiling in 1932.

There's one day of the year
that this monument to the dead,

to the missing of the Somme,
always comes to life.

It's today, the 11th of November.

People are gathering
here to remember the dead.

And also his reminder of what the
words on the Stone of Remembrance

really mean.
Their name liveth for evermore.

Not just a pretty phrase.

As long as we gather,
as long as we remember,

as long as we, the living,
pay our debt to the dead,

to the sacrifice they made,
then in a sense they live on.

They will endure in our memory.

Endure certainly as long as
this splendid memorial survives.

Completion of the Thiepval memorial
marked the end of the commission's

great building projects.

Fabian Ware's vision
had created order out of chaos,

beauty out of ugliness,
and would change forever the way

we remember our war dead.

Ware worked tirelessly
for more than 30 years

as the head of the
organisation he founded.

When he died in 1949,
the commission, following

the battles
of the Second World War,

had a presence in more than
150 countries.

The cemeteries and memorials,
which had been Ware's life's work,

made it possible for Britain
to begin to come to terms

with the enormity
of the sacrifice made by the dead,

and to acknowledge
as far as it's humanly possible,

the debt they were owed
by the living.

This is the debt that the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission

still pays today, the promise
it fulfils to the maintenance

to the highest standards
of the graves, memorials and gardens

in its care.

Anything less than solemn,
continuing and grateful vigil

to those who, as Kipling put it,
to save our heritage,

cast their own away,
would be an insult to the dead.