Princess Royal unveils a new memorial at Brookwood Military Cemetery

On 9 June, Princess Anne (The Princess Royal) unveiled a new memorial at Brookwood Military Cemetery to commemorate in excess of 400 Great War casualties.

Brookwood Military Cemetery covers a 37-acre site near Woking. It is the resting place of more than 1,600 men who died in the First World War and well over 3000 who died in the Second World War.

The land began as a civilian cemetery in the 19th Century but expanded into a military cemetery at the time of the Great War.

Princess Anne said that the memorial provides "a profound new chapter in our shared remembrance of those names lost in the archival shadows".

"Today we gather in a place where history is not simply remembered, but where there is an enduring promise that none who served will be forgotten," 

She called the new memorial "a physical realisation of that promise" to collectively remember "the soldiers who died of wounds far from the battlefield" or "succumbed to illness while still in service", along with those who "lost their lives in training accidents or were discharged as unfit, only to later die in the care of their families".

The memorial features 31 large stone slabs arranged to mirror the formation of the brightest visible stars in the sky when the Armistice was signed in the early hours of 11 November 1918.  It commemorates casualties who died in the United Kingdom during the First World War but for whom no graves could be found.