Kirkee War Cemetery

Kirkee War Cemetery
Kirkee War Cemetery

The Kirkee War Cemetery is a cemetery in Khadki, a town near Pune in Maharashtra, India. The cemetery was created to provide graves for the fallen from central and western India in the Second World War, where there could not be certainty about their graves elsewhere being permanently maintained.[1]

The cemetery holds the graves of 1,668 Commonwealth service personnel from World War II, and 629 from World War I who were reburied here from Bombay's Sewri Christian Cemetery in 1962. The graves from Sewri are unmarked and their names listed on the Kirkee (1914–18) Memorial.

The Kirkee (1914-1918) Memorial is dedicated to 735 Commonwealth service personnel who died in India in World War I and whose graves were in various locations where they could not be maintained, to the 629 whose remains were reburied within the cemetery in 1962 from Sewri Christian Cemetery, and to about 193 soldiers of East and West African origin who died from 1939 to 1945 in various non-operational areas around the country.[2] There is also the Kirkee (1939-1945) Memorial to 197 Commonwealth service personnel (excepting East and West African) who died in World War II and whose graves in other parts of India and in Pakistan are unmaintainable.[3]

There are two special memorials erected by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. [4]

Notable burials, from Sewri Christian Cemetery

Name Year buried Known for
George Wittet 1926 Architect, designed the Gateway of India
Francis Newton Souza 2002 Avant garde artist
Frederick William Stevens 1900 Architect of the Victoria Terminus
Dom Moraes 2004 Poet[5]
Joseph Baptista 1930 Mayor of Bombay

References

  1. ↑ http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/2016600/KIRKEE%20WAR%20CEMETERY
  2. ↑ CWGC Cemetery Report, Kirkee (1914-1918) Memorial.
  3. ↑ CWGC Cemetery Report, Kirkee (1939-1945) Memorial.
  4. ↑ Kirkee War Cemetery CWGC Cemetery Report, Kirkee War Cemetery.
  5. ↑ Khushwant Singh. "This Above All Requiem to Dom Moraes". The Tribune. Retrieved 2009-02-05.
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