The War Graves Photographic Project
Encyclopedia
Working as a joint venture with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves, and places of commemoration, of Commonwealth of Nations military service members who died in the two World Wars...
, and assisting The Office of Australian War Graves
Office of Australian War Graves
The Office of Australian War Graves is a branch within the Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs and was formed on January 1, 1975. The OAWG acts as Australian agent for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission ....
,and the Office of Australian War Graves, Canadian Veterans Affairs and the New Zealand Ministry of Heritage and Culture this enables families, scholars and researchers to obtain, via the CWGChttp://www.cwgc.org or TWGPPhttp://www.twgpp.org websites, a copies of the photograph of a grave or memorial entry, which for many older people it is impossible to visit due to the location and ability to travel. This service has only been made possible through the efforts of a dedicated group of volunteers, from all walks of life, who feel the need to remember those that made the ultimate sacrifice and who realise the importance for families to see where their loved ones are laid to rest or commemorated. This emulates the CWGC ethos to ‘Remember in Perpetuity’.
The project has a website with a searchable database. Copies of archived photographs (currently around 1,716,090 as of 5th November 2011) can be obtained on request to the project.
The site has become very popular so it is now including war and other service graves from conflicts earlier than 1914 and World War I. Submissions of images from anywhere in the world where military personnel were based or conflicts like the Anglo-South African War are now being welcomed.
The Project has been mentioned by a British Parliamentary Early Day Motion and is linked to the parliamentary website.
Regular visits are organised where at weekends volunteers as a group visit a war cemetery to carryout a photographic and cataloging exercise. A group visit to the Netherlands in May 2008 achieved a further 18000 images and a trip to Gallipoli in September 2008 completed all those required (35,000) on the Turkish peninsula.
During March 2011 The Royal Naval Patrol Service Association have submitted a new set of images for Lowestoft Naval Memorial as part of a plan to upgrade image quality of the archives using later camera technology wherever necessary.