Memorials To The Missing - Italy

2 officers of the Gloucestershire Regiment are commemorated on 2 Memorials To The Missing in Italy

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission was established by Royal Charter in 1917.   Its duties are to mark and maintain the graves of the members of the forces of the Commonwealth who were killed in the two World Wars, to build memorials to those who have no known grave and to keep records and registers, including, after the Second World War, a record of the Civilian War Dead.

GIAVERA MEMORIAL, which stands in the grounds of Giavera British Cemetery, commemorates more than 150 members of the Commonwealth forces who died in Italy in 1917 and 1918 and whose places of burial are unknown.

SAVONA MEMORIAL.   On 4 May 1917, the Hired Transport "Transylvania", proceeding to Salonika with reinforcements, was sunk by torpedo off Cape Vado, a few kilometres south of Savona, with the loss of more than 400 lives. The bodies recovered at Savona were buried two days later, from the Hospital of San Paulo, in a special plot in the town cemetery. Others are buried elsewhere in Italy, France, Monaco and Spain. SAVONA TOWN CEMETERY contains 85 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, all but two of them casualties of the "Transylvania". Within the cemetery is the SAVONA MEMORIAL, which commemorates a further 275 casualties who died when the "Transylvania" went down, but whose graves are not known.

Giavera Memorial   (1 officer)

Copyright and source -  "Swizz" of the Great War Forum

Savona Memorial   (1 officer)

Copyright and source -  Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Lost at sea with SS Transylvania on 4th May 1917

Notes:

1.   My thanks to "Swizz" of the Great War Forum for these photos, and others, taken in August 2008.