A war grave is a burial place for soldiers or civilians who died during military campaigns or operations. The term does not only apply to graves

Grave (burial)

A grave is a location where a dead body is buried. Graves are usually located in special areas set aside for the purpose of burial, such as graveyards or cemeteries....

: ships sunk during wartime are often considered to be war graves, as are military aircraft that crash into water. Classification of a war grave is not limited to the occupier's death in combat, but includes soldiers who die while in active service: for example, during the Crimean War

Crimean War

The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

, more soldiers died of disease than as a result of enemy action.

A common difference between cemeteries

Cemetery

A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...

 of war graves and those of civilian, peacetime graves is the uniformity of those interred. They generally died during a relatively short period, in a small geographic area and consist of young men often from the few military units involved.

In the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, 67 ship wrecks and all underwater military aircraft are protected as war graves under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986

Protection of Military Remains Act 1986

The Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom which provides protection for the wreckage of military aircraft and designated military vessels. The Act provides for two types of protection: protected places and controlled sites. Military aircraft are...

 which imposes restrictions on their exploration and marine salvage

Marine salvage

Marine salvage is the process of rescuing a ship, its cargo, or other property from peril. Salvage encompasses rescue towing, refloating a sunken or grounded vessel, or patching or repairing a ship...

.

Rupert Brooke

Rupert Brooke

Rupert Chawner Brooke was an English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written during the First World War, especially The Soldier...

's poem, The Soldier

The Soldier (poem)

"The Soldier" is a poem written by Rupert Brooke. The poem is the fifth of a series of poems entitled 1914.It is often contrasted with Wilfred Owen's 1917 antiwar poem Dulce Et Decorum EstThe manuscript is located at King's College, Cambridge....

- "If I should die, think only this of me: / That there's some corner of a foreign field / That is for ever England", is a patriotic poem about the possibility of dying abroad during a war. Brooke is himself buried in a war grave on Skyros

Skyros

Skyros is an island in Greece, the southernmost of the Sporades, an archipelago in the Aegean Sea. Around the 2nd millennium BC and slightly later, the island was known as The Island of the Magnetes where the Magnetes used to live and later Pelasgia and Dolopia and later Skyros...

 in the Aegean Sea

Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea[p] is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...

, having died whilst en route to fight in the Gallipoli Campaign

Battle of Gallipoli

The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...

.

The British War Memorial Project, founded in 2001, aims to create an archive of names and photographs of all Commonwealth military graves and memorials from 1914 to the present day.

See also

• American Battle Monuments Commission
  American Battle Monuments Commission
  The American Battle Monuments Commission is a small independent agency of the United States government. Established by Congress in 1923, it is responsible for:...
  
  
• Burial at sea
  Burial at sea
  Burial at sea describes the procedure of disposing of human remains in the ocean, normally from a ship or boat. It is regularly performed by navies, but also can be done by private citizens in many countries.-By religion:...
  
  
• 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...
  
  
• Mortuary Affairs
  Mortuary Affairs
  right|thumbnail|A soldier from a graves registration unit attempts identification of a skull during [[World War II]]Mortuary Affairs is a service within the United States Army Quartermaster Corps tasked with the retrieval, identification, transportation, and burial of deceased American and...
  
  
• National cemetery
• The Unknown Warrior
  The Unknown Warrior
  The British tomb of The Unknown Warrior holds an unidentified British soldier killed on a European battlefield during the First World War. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, London on 11 November 1920, simultaneously with a similar interrment of a French unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe in...
  
  
• Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
  Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
  Tomb of the Unknown Soldier refers to a grave in which the unidentifiable remains of a soldier are interred. Such tombs can be found in many nations and are usually high-profile national monuments. Throughout history, many soldiers have died in wars without their remains being identified...
  
  
• War memorial
  War memorial
  A war memorial is a building, monument, statue or other edifice to celebrate a war or victory, or to commemorate those who died or were injured in war.-Historic usage:...
  
  
• Wreck diving
  Wreck diving
  Wreck diving is a type of recreational diving where shipwrecks are explored. Although most wreck dive sites are at shipwrecks, there is an increasing trend to scuttle retired ships to create artificial reef sites...
  
  

Sources

• Major and Mrs Holt's battlefield guide to the Ypres Salient ISBN 0-85052-551-9
• SI 2009/3380 The Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 Order no 2009/3380