St Symphorien Military Cemetery

The St Symphorien Military Cemetery is a First World War Commonwealth War Graves Commission burial ground in Saint-Symphorien, Belgium. It contains the graves of 284 German and 229 Commonwealth soldiers and principally contains those killed during the Battle of Mons. The cemetery was established by the German Army on land donated by Jean Houzeau de Lehaie, and was initially designed as a woodland cemetery before being redesigned by William Harrison Cowlishaw after the Imperial War Graves Commission took over maintenance of the cemetery after the war.

Notable Commonwealth burials in the cemetery include John Parr and George Lawrence Price, traditionally believed to be the first and last Commonwealth soldiers killed in action during the First World War and Maurice Dease the first posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross of the war. Notable German burials include Oskar Niemeyer the first Iron Cross recipient of World War I.

Establishment
Most of the British and German dead from the Battle of Mons were buried in civilian cemeteries in Mons and surrounding villages. Subsequently, the German Army decided to exhume and re-inter the dead in a single location as it became clear that the care and maintenance of these scattered graves was unsustainable over the long term. In the spring of 1916, a German officer named Captain Roemer approached local Belgian landowner Jean Houzeau de Lehaie while searching for an appropriate piece of land south-east of Mons. Jean Houzeau de Lehaie suggested a small area of old quarry land on their family estate lands between the districts of St. Symphorien and Spienne, potentially to ensure that land associated with Neolithic flint mines of Spiennes were not alternately employed. Captain Roemer initially proposed that the land be requisitioned with compensation being provided by the borough authorities. Houzeau de Lehaie instead donated the land on condition that the dead of both sides were treated with equal respect. Over 1916 and 1917 the scattered graves were dug up by Landsturm Infantry Battalions and taken to the new collective cemetery. The German as well as British deceased were reburied under graves marked with the motto Enemies in Life but United in Death (Im Leben ein Feind, im Tode vereint), a common German practice during the First World War. The cemetery was finally inaugurated on 6 September 1917 with a ceremony attended by prominent German figures, including Rupprecht, Crown Prince of Bavaria, Albrecht, Duke of Württemberg and Frederick Francis IV, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. At the end of the war, the cemetery officially contained 245 German and 188 British graves. Following the war a number of British and German graves from the vicinity were moved to St. Symphorien until the cemetery reached its current number of 284 German soldiers and 229 Commonwealth soldiers. Most of the identified German dead in the cemetery were from units of IX Corps and died in 1914.

Post-war
At the end of the war in November 1918, the maintenance of Commonwealth graves passed to Imperial War Graves Commission (now Commonwealth War Graves Commission). From June 1921, a supervisor was appointed by the Belgian War Graves Commission to maintain the German graves, as the Germans could not themselves manage their own cemeteries on account of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1926, an agreement between Belgium and Germany resulted in a gradual transfer of maintenance responsibility to the Official German Burial Service in Belgium (Amtliche Deutscher Gräberdienst in Belgien) representative at the German embassy in Belgium. The cemetery was officially referred to by Germans as '''Ehrenfriedhof Saint-Symphorien-Spiennes. Number 191'''; the 191 referring to the order of German cemetery in a Belgian list from after the end of World War I.

On 13 October 1930, representatives of the Official German Burial Service in Belgium, the Belgian War Graves Commission and the Imperial War Graves Commission met in Brussels to discuss the situation of the mixed British-German cemeteries in Belgium, which had been built by the Germans during the war and which had a majority of German graves. This meeting was brought upon by the fact that the Imperial War Graves Commission had begun altering these cemeteries without consulting with the Germans and replacing the existing headstones on the Commonwealth graves with the standardized Imperial War Graves Commission headstones. The German delegation hoped to retain the German character of the cemeteries but other than providing missing tombstones for a number of unidentified graves, control for the cemetery was immediately passed to the Imperial War Graves Commission. British architect William Harrison Cowlishaw immediately set about redesigning the cemetery in a style more consistent with other Imperial War Grave Commission cemeteries.

In 1933 Fritz Schult, chief of the Official German Burial Service in Belgium, wrote a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin concerning Saint-Symphorien cemetery noting that although the character of the cemetery was regrettably changed, the Imperial War Graves Commission maintained the German graves without expense to Germany and therefore requested that the Imperial War Graves Commission take control over other split British-German cemeteries such as those at Marcinelle New Communal Cemetery and Hautrage Military Cemetery.

Modern
On 4 August 2014, a ceremony was held at the cemetery to mark the 100th anniversary of the British and Belgian declaration of war following the German invasion of Belgium. It was attended by many important dignitaries including: King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of The Belgians, Prince William, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry as representatives of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Head of the Commonwealth, Joachim Gauck President of Germany, Michael D. Higgins President of the Republic of Ireland, Prime Minister of Belgium Elio Di Rupo and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom David Cameron.

Original Design
The design of the cemetery was accomplished by Captain Bäumer, assisted by militia-private Pieper. They developed a site plan based on the concept of Cemetery Reform (Friedhofsreform), which was strongly present in Germany at the time. In the cemetery design, particular attention was paid to ensuring simplicity with uniformity in each plot, all within a calming woodsy environment consistent with a woodland cemetery (Waldfriedhof) style. The German architects laid 13 plots in the cemetery. Young trees and later extra conifers were planted between the plots to ensure each plot was visually and physically separated. The cemetery land itself had many artificial differences in height due to the site being used as a dumping location for surplus soil associated with phosphate mining in the area. The plants being donated by the city of Bielefeld.

The German graves were positioned in groups according to military unit, with each grouping receiving a similar gravestone, but not necessarily the same as that in other groupings. There being a number of organizations in Germany at hte time being particularly opposed to mass produced identical gravestones. All the British were buried individually and grouped by unit as much as possible. A communal grave marking was put on a number of these British groups, which referred to the unit of the deceased. The German gravestones were carved from a locally extracted stone, principally bluestone and Belgian petit granit. German officers were provided the right to a larger tombstone in order to clarify the distinction of higher military rank. The deceased British officers were buried in a plot separate from their troops and it's not known what was initially on their grave markings. German regimental memorials within the cemetery were funded by the garrison towns of the units in question. A classic seven-meter obelisk memorial made of bluestone was positioned at the highest point near the cemetery entrance and contains a German inscription dedicated to the German and British soldiers that died during the Battle of Mons: "In memory of the German and English soldiers who fell in the actions near Mons on the 23rd and 24th August 1914." (Zum Gedächtnis der am23. und 24. August 1914 in den Kämpfen bei Mons gefallenen deutschen und englischen Soldaten). Near the cemetery entrance a tablet in Latin was set out to explain the land was gifted for the purpose of a cemetery and came from Jean Houzeau de Lehaie.

Cowlishaw Redesign
Full controlled of the St Symphorien cemetery was transferred to the Imperial War Graves Commission in 1930 after which William Harrison Cowlishaw set about redesigning the cemetery. The main change was the conversion from a woodland cemetery to the more open English garden style cemetery present at most Imperial War Graves Commission cemeteries. Many of the trees were chopped down, particularity those in the south-eastern, and predominantly British side, and grass sown in this area. Although the cemetery was made more open, the original rows of graves and plots were preserved in situ. The north-eastern half, which was predominantly German, was kept more characteristically of the woodland cemetery style, although many trees were pruned to maintain views through the various plots. The original German tombstones were retained and several German tombstones added due to transferred graves from other sites. The other main change was the construction of an artificial elevation in the middle of the cemetery and the erection of a Cross of Sacrifice on the raised hill. The German general monument was kept in the original position but Cowlishaw likely created the hill to ensure the Cross of Sacrifice was not dwarfed by the German monument. Special memorials were erected to five soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment believed to be buried in unnamed graves. Other special memorials record the names of four British soldiers, buried by the Germans in Obourg Churchyard, whose graves could not be found.

Notable graves
Notable German burials include Musketier Oskar Niemeyer from the 84th Infantry Regiment was the first recipient of the Iron Cross during the war. Having come to a crossing of the Mons–Condé canal with a closed swing bridge he swam across the canal, returned across the canal with a requisitioned small boat, paddled back across the canal with a team and then opened the bridge allowing the Germans troops to cross in greater numbers. He was killed shortly after opening the bridge.

Notable Commonwealth burials in the cemetery include Private John Parr, of the 4th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment and George Lawrence Price of the Canadian 28th (Northwest) Battalion each believed to be the respective first and last Commonwealth soldiers killed in action during the First World War, as is George Ellison, the last British soldier killed in action. Also buried in the cemetery is Maurice Dease who was the first posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross in the war. Dease was awarded the Victoria Cross for defending Nimy Bridge and maintained firing of a machine gun until he was hit for a fifth and final time.