On the second picture is the gravestone of a soldier from the South Staffordshire Regiment. You can see rope with a crown on top of it. That rope is a Staffordshire knot – the symbol used for the county of Staffordshire in central England. Legend has it, the knot was used to enable 3 people to be hanged at the same time.
Where in Central Germany is this?
And how did the British soldiers end up there? There was not fighting in Central Germany in WW1
Yes, we need more background info here.
>The cemetery was begun by the Germans in 1915 for the burial of prisoners of war who died at the local camp. During the war almost 3,000 Allied soldiers and civilians, including French, Russian and Commonwealth, were buried there.
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>In 1922-23 it was decided that the graves of Commonwealth servicemen who had died all over Germany should be brought together into four permanent cemeteries. Niederzwehren was one of those chosen and in the following four years, more than 1,500 graves were brought into the cemetery from 190 burial grounds in Baden, Bavaria, Hanover, Hesse and Saxony.
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>There are now 1,796 First World War servicemen buried or commemorated in the Commonwealth plot at Niederzwehren. This total includes special memorials to 13 casualties buried in other cemeteries in Germany whose graves could not be found.
3rd of october 1918. So close to the end of the war.
There was a recent piece in a newspaper on WW1 war graves which highlighted that these memorial sites are very artificial and a lot of effort was done to construct them by ‘nationality’ (French, Commonwealth, German,…). These people fought side by side and died within meters of eachother however years later when creating the memorials they were separated and ‘stored’.
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On the second picture is the gravestone of a soldier from the South Staffordshire Regiment. You can see rope with a crown on top of it. That rope is a Staffordshire knot – the symbol used for the county of Staffordshire in central England. Legend has it, the knot was used to enable 3 people to be hanged at the same time.
Where in Central Germany is this?
And how did the British soldiers end up there? There was not fighting in Central Germany in WW1
Yes, we need more background info here.
>The cemetery was begun by the Germans in 1915 for the burial of prisoners of war who died at the local camp. During the war almost 3,000 Allied soldiers and civilians, including French, Russian and Commonwealth, were buried there.
>
>In 1922-23 it was decided that the graves of Commonwealth servicemen who had died all over Germany should be brought together into four permanent cemeteries. Niederzwehren was one of those chosen and in the following four years, more than 1,500 graves were brought into the cemetery from 190 burial grounds in Baden, Bavaria, Hanover, Hesse and Saxony.
>
>There are now 1,796 First World War servicemen buried or commemorated in the Commonwealth plot at Niederzwehren. This total includes special memorials to 13 casualties buried in other cemeteries in Germany whose graves could not be found.
[https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/91502/niederzwehren-cemetery-kassel/](https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/91502/niederzwehren-cemetery-kassel/)
3rd of october 1918. So close to the end of the war.
There was a recent piece in a newspaper on WW1 war graves which highlighted that these memorial sites are very artificial and a lot of effort was done to construct them by ‘nationality’ (French, Commonwealth, German,…). These people fought side by side and died within meters of eachother however years later when creating the memorials they were separated and ‘stored’.
Just something that made me think.