Military History | Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial — Half the Circle Is Names, Half Is Open Screen

The memorial named for Neuve-Chapelle stands outside it, on the Estaires road in the commune of Richebourg. Its plan is a circle, and the circle is divided. One semicircle is a solid wall carrying the names of the missing; the other is a pierced stone railing, open to the fields, its rail cut with carved roundels. Small domed pavilions, chattris, close the ends of the screen east and west, and within the circle stands a column modelled on the inscribed pillars the emperor Ashoka raised across India, under a lotus capital, the imperial crown and the Star of India. Tigers flank it. Cut on the column, in English and in several languages of India, is "God is One, His is the Victory".

Herbert Baker designed the memorial and Charles Wheeler cut the sculpture. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission's own account describes the men commemorated here as Indian soldiers and labourers who died on the Western Front. Published counts of the names differ and none is printed here.

Why a memorial does the work a cemetery does elsewhere is on the record twice. The French dossier prepared for the site's UNESCO listing says most of these men were cremated according to the tradition of their cultures, and Rana Chhina and Adil Chhina, writing in the 1914-1918-Online encyclopedia, describe the memorial as commemorating the Sikh and Hindu dead whose remains had been cremated in accordance with their faith along with those never recovered. The same authors record that in the Middle Eastern theatres the Commission was directed that white officers and other ranks, and Indian officers, be commemorated by name, while Indian other ranks be recorded only as numbers of casualties by regiment. On this wall the other ranks are named.

The Earl of Birkenhead unveiled the memorial on 7 October 1927, with Foch present. In 1964 the remains of eight Indian soldiers were exhumed from the French military cemetery at Sarrebourg and cremated; the six who could be identified are named on these panels.

📸 Cover: the shelter chattri with the name-panel wall to the left and the pierced screen to the right, grassrootsgroundswell, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Second image: the entrance chattri and its jaali, looking through to the chattri opposite, Weglinde, CC0.