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On 8 June, Corporal Gunton, and other Royal Engineers posted to No.32 Graves Concentration Unit in January 1944, arrived in Bayeux to begin taping out the plot grids in a field outside the town. In a matter of days military hospitals, munitions depots and supply dumps, military encampments and the fuel lines out of Port-en-Bessin were taking shape. Bayeux was the heart of all this activity, and the Army war graves administration of all Commonwealth burials throughout Normandy would prove the most long-lasting aspect of the Commonwealth presence in the city.
On this blustery and cold June day, despite the weather and the task, the men seem quite cheerful, exchanging jokes. Working in this unit, Gunton seemed to have been allowed to take photographs of the work unhindered, yet they have never appeared in any official post-war publications perhaps because of the degree of informality seen here.
But Army personnel were needed to fight the enemy, so French civilians were recruited to take over the grave digging, supervised by NCOs so as to control the order of burials. On the left among the trees is the porcelain factory which was used as a recruiting office for grave labour. To its right is the sous-prefecture, Bayeux Cathedral, and alongside it the roofline and small spire of the Benedictine nunnery can be seen.
Albert Francoise (1888-1963) had worked for 18 years at the porcelain factory until it was forced to close in 1941. He lived in the nearby Rue de Littry and stands on the left tugging at the brim of his hat: this grim work put him extremely ill at ease. Rene Parson, the NCO in charge, peers at Gunton through his glasses
By the winter of 1944/45 the cemetery had already become the largest British and Commonwealth cemetery of the Second World War in France. The plots are burial mounds, each marked by a galvanised white metal cross which remained until I949. The wooden gates mark the site of the present main entrance, restored in recent times. The elms in the background all died in the 1970s.
The Entrance Today
Today there are 4,267 identified interments, including 3,602 British, 422 Germans, 178 Canadians, 25 Poles, 17 Australians, 8 New Zealanders, 7 Russians, 3 Christian French and 2 Muslim French graves, 2 Italians, and 1 South African; 388 graves bear no name.
A total of 28,375 men are buried in Normandy in 27 Commonwealth cemeteries of the Second World War, and one or more Commonwealth interments, often aircrew are to be found in 153 communal and 209 churchyard cemeteries.
The progress by early August can be seen in this corner of the cemetery. A temporary fence had been erected; the bypass was completed on 27 June and now there is a continuous stream of military Lorries out of Arromanches roaring past the graves; the men nicknamed the road the 'Merry Go Round'. Road ballast had been used for the footpaths and the final touches are being made to block 2 rows Land M, where a man is finishing the burial of 23-year-old trooper Tom Taylor (2:M: 19) of the Royal Tank Regiment, killed on 27 July 1944, the son (perhaps adopted) of Thomas and Martha Cox of Acocks Green, Birmingham, England.
The Grave of Trooper Tom Taylor
Three plots in the foreground await the bodies of an unknown sailor and two unknown soldiers. Lance Corporal Edward Rostron, 22, of the Essex Regiment (2:L:26), was killed on 31 July 1944: all of his comrades' graves in row L in the foreground bear the same date.
The Three Unknown Soldiers Graves
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