The London Times reports on a new British memorial to those who have been killed following the Second World War. The article notes that there is no monument like it on British soil, because the Commonwealth War Graves Commission stopped burying soldiers after the end of the Second World War.

The new memorial reminds me of the fact that the process of commemoration in Britain is still an ongoing one. Although my dissertation research focuses on the war memorials of the First World War period, the tradition of memorialization that they inaugurated remains.

Another interesting part of the report is the fact that this new memorial includes space for another 16,000 or so names in anticipation of future needs. Compared with the 1920s when architects and engineers struggled to find room on the Menin Gate for all of the names it had to contain, building a memorial in part to anticipate future needs is something relatively new.

Since the end of the Second World War 16,000 British servicemen and their auxiliary forces have lost their lives in a variety of circumstances. Yesterday the Queen opened a national memorial to them, where relatives and friends of the lost can reflect before a carved list of their names.

There is nothing quite like it, and there has long been a call for a memorial to take over from where the Commonwealth War Graves Commission closes its books at 1948. There are memorials around the world to particular regiments, campaigns and even individuals, but no national shrine on home soil.

Public subscription, National Lottery funding, and a modest £1.5 million government contribution from the sale of a Trafalgar commemorative coin, have enabled completion of the £7 million National Armed Forces Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire, near the geographical centre of England. Trustees still need to raise a further £1 million to ensure that the memorial is properly maintained.

The names carved in the Portland stone walls span age, class and ethnicity. They include Earl Mountbatten of Burma, killed by an IRA bomb in the Irish Republic in 1979, and Jabron Hashmi of the Intelligence Corps, killed in Afghanistan last year, the first Muslim in the British Armed Forces of recent times to lose his life.

The complete article from The London Times: “A monument at last for the fallen of modern times”