Pune: WW I and II tombstones get a facelift

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There are three major war cemeteries in Pune, which have burial or commemorative memorials of soldiers and officers who fought at various places during WWI and WWII. The biggest of them all, the Kirkee War Memorial located on Mula Road in Khadki, has commemorative gravestones of 1,678 soldiers who died during WWII and over 1,800 of those WWI soldiers. This is one of the biggest and best-kept war cemeteries in India and was visited by royal couple of Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.

The St Sepulchre Cemetery also called Poona Cemetery located on Solapur Road and Kirkee New Cemetery have 146 and 115 burial gravestones respectively.

Manoharlal Bahanwal of Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), who is the manager at Kirkee War Cemetery, said, “Almost all the gravestones are made of a limestone called the Portland Limestone. Due to weathering and other effects many of them do not remain in the condition they were in. The CWGC has started to replace all such stones that are in bad condition with new ones, which are specially manufactured in France. Each stone has the name of the soldier, date of death, name of his battalion or regiment and its insignia engraved on it.” Most of the graves and memorials located in Pune are of soldiers of UK, the then undivided India, then Burma, Australia and New Zealand.

“From January till now, our team has replaced 80 gravestones from St Sepulchre Cemetery and over 75 from Kirkee New Cemetery. Both these have World War I memorials. Nine more gravestones of World War II soldiers in Kirkee War Cemetery have also been replaced. The new stones are made of Botticino Marble and they were engraved by an agency in France and shipped to India. Till now, as many as 1,163 gravestones in war cemeteries across India have been replaced with new ones in last few months.” Bahanwal added.

“It is not a very complicated job but doing it gives a feeling that we will keep reminding people of these veterans.” said Senthil Kumar, who headed the team of masons, as he stands next to the two newly-installed gravestones of Lt Col EFW Grellier of Royal Army Medical Corps who died on December 6, 1944 at the age of 58 and Warrant Officer RH Strachan of Royal Australian Air Force, who died on January 6 in 1945 at the age of 26.

Bahanwal added, “The CWGC is now aiming to woo visitors especially daughters, sons, granddaughters and grandsons of these soldiers as almost all the widows have passed away.”