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REME Association - The Fallen, Friend and Foe
The Fallen …
Friend and Foe
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Cannock Chase War Cemetery (Allied and Axis)
Scribe: Maurice Hope
It is very doubtful that many of the thousands of visitors that flocked to the Midlands for the very successful Commonwealth Games 2022, realised that on Cannock Chase, not a stone’s throw from the venue that held the mountain bike event, there are two mainly World War One War Cemeteries, which are very different from the ones we are all familiar with on the Somme Battlefields and others tended to by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
How did they come to be here on the 30.5 square miles of Cannock Chase, which in 1958 was declared by the government as an area of outstanding beauty?
At the onset of hostilities in the First World War, there were so many young men who volunteered to fight the “Hun”, that they overwhelmed the UK’s peacetime facilities, which meant that
The Fallen Warrior
training camps had to be hastily established around the country.
On land given from the Duke of Lichfield’s Cannock Chase estate, camps to hold 40,000 men were rapidly built, alongside a hospital, a training area that even had its own railway called the ‘Tackeroo Express’.
The military hospital was built in nearby Brindley Heath which had twelve wards with a bed capacity of 1,000, serving the local camps as well as acting as a convalescent home for soldiers returning from the Western Front.
The whole area subsequently became a training facility for Commonwealth units; as many as 500,000 troops were trained here over the course of the war.
It also became the base for the New Zealand Rifle Brigade, who because of their experience in successfully taking the Belgian village of Messines in 1917, were employed to teach recruits about trench warfare. The Cannock Chase (Anzac) War Cemetery was established in 1917 for the unfortunate men who died in the Hospital, and has 97 Commonwealth burials from WWl, and three from WW2, the majority being New Zealanders who had succumbed to the influenza pandemic, known as the “Spanish Flu”. Also on the same site are 280 German burials. In 1917, parts of Brocton Camp were turned into a Prisoner of War Camp and those that died there were buried in the same Cemetery. Nations included German, Polish, New Zealanders and British.
Urell “101758 Boy” grave, aged 16
Graves to look out for are a German Soldier named Frank Worock who died on the 11th of November 1918, also that of a “Boy Bugler” named Albert Edward Urell who died in the Hospital aged just 16.
One of the three Second World War casualties buried here is that of pilot Officer Robert Bowran aged 27, who was killed when his “Defiant” fighter crashed during a low-level practice attack.
Just a short walk along the lane from the Commonwealth War Cemetery is the huge German Military War Cemetery.
The size comes as a surprise to many to see how well laid out it is as it lies in a beautifully tranquil and peaceful setting.
In October 1959, an agreement was reached between the German and UK governments, concerning the future care of the graves of German nationals who died while in the UK during both World Wars, that were not already maintained in plots by the Commonwealth
The German War Cemetery Cross of Sacrifice
War Graves Commission.
Arrangements were made to transfer the graves of German servicemen and civilian internees of both wars from scattered burial grounds, to the new cemetery established on Cannock Chase.
Each stone relates to four casualties, containing two names on the front and also two on the other side.
The inauguration and dedication of this cemetery, which now contains almost 5,000 German and Austrian, and Ukrainian graves, took place on the 10th of June 1967.
In the centre of the entrance Hall of Honour, resting on a large block of stone, is a bronze sculpture of a fallen warrior, by the eminent German sculptor, Professor Hans Wimmer.
