Non War dead in CWGC Register

[TD60]

Some but few entries in CWGC registers are under "Non War" casualty type.

Exemple:

Name: WILLIAMS

Nationality: United Kingdom

Rank: Civilian

Regiment/Service: Admiralty Civilian

Secondary Unit Text: 277th Admiralty Pontoon Crane.

Casualty Type: Non-War (Incidental)

Grave/Memorial Reference: Plot 8, Row D, Grave 3.

Cemetery: LES BARAQUES MILITARY CEMETERY, SANGATTE

What means this casualty type in the War Grave Commisison registers. I expected they were all 'War deads"

i e "Civilan war dead" or "Commonwealth War Dead"

Was it only for civilian serving under army organizations ?

In which conditions civilan were added in the registers ?

sorry if already explained before but search function doers not give results corresponding.

Regards

[Terry Denham]

This is a computer system error.

CWGC also records some hundred thousand Foreign National and Non-World War Dead which are in their care for various reasons - paid for by agreement with other authorities in most cases.

These names are not available through the website database. However, due to a glitch in the program, a number of names from a couple of small sub-groups do appear. There appears to be no hurry to fix this bug.

Amongst the sub-groups which appear are...

Category 5 Names - Non-World War Dead in CWGC Care (Incidental)

Category 6 Names - Non-World War Dead in CWGC Care (Staff)

Category 5 are the small number of non-world war names which 'just happen' to be in CWGC cemeteries. They were there when CWGC took over the sites from the army. They are not Commonwealth War Graves or Foreign National War Graves. Usually they are civilians killed during the world wars or graves which were already on the site before the war.

CWGC cares for these graves, not because they are paid to do so by another authority but because, if they did not, the look of the cemetery would be spoilt and because it would be unacceptable to ignore a few graves in the cemetery just because they were not war graves. CWGC has no legal obligation to look after these graves but does so anyway.

The Category 6 names are staff members who have requested that CWGC cares for their graves.

There are only a handful of names in these sub-categories and maybe they will disappear once the bug in the system is fixed.

For a full list of the CWGC name categories, see below...

Category 0 - Commonwealth War Dead (the official war graves)

Category 1 - WW2 Civilian War Dead

Category 2 - Foreign Nationals in CWGC Care

Category 3 - Non-World War Dead in CWGC Care

Category 4 - No Longer Used

Category 5 - Non-World War Dead in CWGC Care (Incidental)

Category 6 - Non-World War Dead in CWGC Care (Staff)

Those in red should not appear online.

[TD60]

Thanks Terry

I did not suppose at all it could be a 'bug' in the program/database and i tried to understand why

those and not the others.

_________________

May i underline another small bug in CWGC website.

If you put a name with a datte selection example RILEY with two dates 1919 / 1919 in the selection criteria,

you have answers of civilians who died in 1943.

Example:

RILEY, JOHN JOSEPH GEORGE Civilian Unknown Civilian War Dead Link United Kingdom WANDSWORTH, METROPOLITAN BOROUGH.

Maybe something to be corrected ?

I guess that death date unknown may correspond to 1919 but frankly this is not the case:

It is strange that no date is indicated under RILEY because with his other name the detail is there:

Name: LAUGHER, JOHN JOSEPH GEORGE

Initials: J J G

Nationality: United Kingdom

Rank: Civilian

Regiment/Service: Civilian War Dead

Age: 32

Date of Death: 07/11/1943

Additional information: (otherwise RILEY); Air Raid Warden; of 13 Sispara Gardens. Son of Frederick and Alice Laugher. Died at Cinderella Dance Club, Putney High Street.

Casualty Type: Civilian War Dead

Reporting Authority: WANDSWORTH, METROPOLITAN BOROUGH

hoping this could help.

Kind regards

TD60

[Terry Denham]

TD60

This is not an error but more a quirk which you have to know about.

If you enter Surname = RILEY and the two years dates as 1919 and 1919, you ONLY get names from 1919 - not as you said. All working fine.

If you do the same as above but also enter Force = CIVILIAN, you should get no responses as the 'civilian' category only refers to WW2 Commonwealth Civilians. However, you do get two responses.

These two responses are NOT actual casualty entries but duplicate 'CIVILIAN LINK' entries. These are simply a device for cross-referencing members of the same family who were injured at the same time but died in different hospitals in different reporting areas or other related deaths or aliases.

Each will have a full entry as indicated. They are like the duplicated entries for Commonwealth War Dead when they used an ALIAS - a simple cross-check reference.

Now - they should not appear when entering the above data but they do because the system searches for the dates selected and returns them - but it also returns anything with a blank date of death - as these Civilian Links have.

It is a slight bug which does not occur with the ALIAS war grave entries and is in the list of known fixes to be done.

[TD60]

Terry

Sorry, I understand your answer contradictory

you wrote

a) If you enter Surname = RILEY and the two years dates as 1919 and 1919, you ONLY get names from 1919 - not as you said. All working fine.

B ) Now - they should not appear when entering the above data but they do because the system searches for the dates selected and returns them - but it also returns anything with a blank date of death - as these Civilian Links have.

So we agree all is not working fine ?

It is what i tried to underline: date left blank when you indicate a year selection are selected even

if the date is nothing at all with that year. (probably my words were too confusing)

It is why you do no find the same number of answers if you select

a) years 1918 to 1918 (207 answers with Riley)

B ) years 1918 to 1918 and War = First world war ! (205 answers with Riley)

which is a surprising result, ... for me at least .

Of course, the impossible combination: years 1918 to 1918 and Second World War gives ... two results

However I agree it is a small 'default'

But why not adding in the 'civilian alias' the date 1943 in the exemple given to avoid such

strange results. It seems easy... from here.

Kind Regards

[Terry Denham]

It is not a fault because the system is working the way it was designed. It has to pick up blank date entries because there are some entries where the date is blank (ie unknown).

However, I agree that it could be avoided by the addition of a date in the CIVILIAN LINK entries where the date is known - as with the war grave aliases. I will suggest it.

[Terry Denham]

TD60

The glitch mentioned above has been added to the list of fixes to be done but it will take some time as it is not high priority.