Casualties Buried in the Local Area:
When we think of Commemorating and Remembering the casualties of War and conflict, our thoughts invariably go to Rupert Brooke’s poem “The Soldier“, and in particular the lines: “That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England“.
Books, TV programmes, films and social media concentrate on the Memorials and cemeteries that are cared for by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) all over the World, such as the mighty Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, pictured right.
However, according to the CWGC there are over 306,000 commemorations to the men and women of the British and Commonwealth forces in the United Kingdom and Ireland at over 13,000 locations. Around 170,000 of these are burials. Municipal Cemeteries and Parish Churchyard throughout the land contain the familiar white headstone of the Commission.
Buxton and its surrounding area is no exception, with nearly 70 burials of UK and Commonwealth men and women who succumbed to wounds or sickness, many after being repatriated from the battlefields, almost all of whom are buried in Buxton Cemetery, but fall into distinct categories:
1: Local soldiers, sailors and airmen who died in Britain and were brought home for burial. These are commemorated on the town’s memorials and their details can be accessed via the alphabetical lists on the Menu Bar;
2: Local soldiers, sailors and airmen who died in Britain, but are NOT commemorated on the town’s memorials – usually because they died after the cut off date for CWGC recognition (i.e. 31st August 1921). These are included in this site and can be accessed via the alphabetical lists on the Menu Bar;
3: U.K. soldiers, sailors and airmen who died in Buxton, but whose homes were elsewhere in the U.K.;
4: Commonwealth soldiers, sailors and airmen who died in Buxton having been invalided to one of the Canadian Hospitals in the town, PLUS Canadian and New Zealand aircrew, killed in World War 2 in crashes in the surrounding area, and
5: Details of the Military Hospitals established in the town during the Great War.
[N.B. The links above will take you to a separate page, from where you can access more information about each person’s war service.]
