Barbed Wire. Source: Photo by Антон Дмитриев on Unsplash.
The twentieth century witnessed two world wars, with only twenty years separating the end of the First World War in 1918 from the beginning of the Second World War in 1939. Many British volunteers, who had enlisted in 1914 expecting a speedy conclusion to the war, were killed on the 1st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. tThe enormity of the disaster was shocking to a nation unprepared for modern warfare. Many men who were commemorated on family graves in the Cemetery died on 1st July or in the days that followed. British military deaths overall in the Second World War were fewer but the total number of deaths worldwide, both military and civilian, far exceeded those of the First World War.
You can read more about those who died in the First World War who are commemorated in the Cemetery in the Sheffield General Cemetery Trust’s publication A Life Too Soon Done.
