Ramleh (now Ramla) War Cemetery Israel

[Reminiscene2]

One for Terry, perhaps.

A contact of mine has sent me this photograph of part of the Ramleh (now Ramla) War Cemetery in Israel. With the exception of the second headstone from the right in the second row from the back, the headstones seem to be of the type provided by CWGC but the odd one out has a different shape to the top. Might this mark the grave of a non-Commonwealth national? If so, any idea as to which country it might represent?

[michaeldr]

There are at least 24 different forces represented at Ramleh, 12 of them from outside of the Commonwealth.

I was going to refer you to this previous thread, but alas the photographs seem to have been lost

click & see here

regards

Michael

ps: see post #6 below

[Reminiscene2]

Thanks for pointing me towards such an informative thread, Michael. Shame about the missing pictures, though.

I shall now slap my wrist for not searching the forum before posting!

[Terry Denham]

Besides all the Foreign National War Graves there, Ramleh also contains 525 Non-World War Graves - mostly from the inter-war years.

The name of the cemetery is still Ramleh War Cemetery regardless of what the locality is now called or how it is spelt. CWGC retains the name of a cemetery at the time it was built - if they own it. If the cemetery is the property of another authority, they amend the name according to that used by the owner. Hence in Belgium, Dadizeele New Military Cemetery is the correct name but Dadizele Communal Cemetery is the correct spelling for that location - same with Poperinghe/Poperinge, Locre/Loker, Reninghelst/Reningelst etc when used in cemetery names by CWGC!

[michaeldr]

quote: 12 of them from outside of the Commonwealth

info from the CWGC gives the 12 non-Commonwealth nationalities here as

Arab, Austrian, Belgian Czech, French, German, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Turkish & Yugoslav

If the above photograph is from the WWI section then I imagine that the headstone in question is either Austrian or German

but that's only a guess at this stage

[michaeldr]

It has taken some time, but I have rummaged through my files and with the aid of Photoshop and Photobucket I have today been able to refurbish the old thread referred to in post #2 above

I hope that it is of either help or interest

Michael

[Reminiscene2]

Terry

Many thanks for putting me straight on CWGC's cemetery spelling policy.

My own experience of visiting war cemeteries to date has been limited to those which have (or at least appear to have) separate sections for each nationality. It therefore came as a bit of a surprise to find that, in this case, different nationalities might be buried alongside each other.

Michael

Thank you for taking the trouble to refurbish the old thread. I found the photos with all the different headstones very interesting. My contact expects to go back to Ramleh War Cemetery in the near future so I will ask him to check out the headstone in the photograph I posted.