Brookwood Military Cemetery is UK's largest war graves site
"I think it's really important that all of these graves are visited and that people know their stories."That's what Megan Maltby of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission told Radio Surrey about the largest war cemetery in Britain.Brookwood Military Cemetery, which covers a 37-acre site near Woking, is home to 1,601 burials for people who died in World War One and 3,476 for people who died in World War Two.The nationalities of people laid to rest at the Surrey site include Commonwealth countries, wartime allies, as well as Germans and Italians.
The land began as a civilian cemetery in the 19th Century but expanded into a military cemetery after WW1 broke out.One of the youngest people known to be buried at the site is South African soldier Thomas Knowles, who Ms Maltby said is believed to be "part of a musical band that was travelling with the South African army".The 15-year-old died of influenza "like so many others in 1918", she said.Brookwood Military Cemetery is also the resting place of 27 Indian soldiers, whose graves were moved from a different cemetery nearby in 1968 after vandalism incidents.
George Cross recipient memorialised
Among the names commemorated on the Brookwood 1939-1945 Memorial is Anglo-French spy Violette Szabo, who worked on behalf of the UK's Special Operations Executive in WW2.The Allies trained Szabo as a field agent and sent her to France during its occupation to feed back useful information.Ms Maltby said: "She was with some resistance fighters at the time they were stopped by a German patrol."She was captured by the Germans, she was interrogated, she was tortured, she was sadly put to death at a concentration camp."Szabo is one of only four women to be awarded the George Cross after she was posthumously given the gallantry medal.Virginia McKenna portrayed the spy, who married a member of the French Resistance, in 1958 film Carve Her Name with Pride.
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