Remembrance

We Will Remember Them

The WOPC has a major ongoing project to identify all men and women who died in conflict and/or service and have a connection to Wiltshire, to ensure they are remembered for their sacrifices.

As of June 2025, the WOPC has identified almost 16,000 such men and women. These men and women have a connection to Wiltshire either through birth, residency, education, employment, enlistment, death or burial in a Wiltshire parish, or service in a Wiltshire Regiment.

They include men and women who died in a conflict (not just the First and Second World Wars), an accident or in a terrorist incident. They may have died overseas or in the United Kingdom. Included in our remembrance are also civilians, prisoners of war, emergency service workers and retired service personnel and those people who have died in disasters.

The names of those we remember from Wiltshire may be viewed in three ways:

Why the Poppy – an article explaining why we use the poppy as our symbol of remembrance.

Global Maps of Wiltshire Casualties

In the WOPC We will Remember Them (WWRT) database we hold information about the location of burials and memorials to the Wiltshire fallen.

We have used this information to compile a number of Google Maps, each of which covers a particular geographic region or country by cemetery. Names are recorded in alphabetical order within each cemetery/memorial as they are added. Over time, more and more individual sites and casualty names are being added to these maps.

Africa          Asia          Belgium         Europe (Rest of)          France           Middle East          North America          Scandinavia          South America, Antarctica and the South Atlantic          United Kingdom

From time to time, we receive photographs from our members of cemeteries or memorials – located in the UK or Overseas – where personnel with Wiltshire connections are buried or remembered. Many of the photographs are of locations managed by the CWGC. These photographs may be found in one of these two galleries:

Note that photographs of INDIVIDUAL graves/memorials or memorials with PERSONNEL LISTINGS may generally be found on the relevant parish page.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)

The CWGC organisation plays the leading role in honouring and caring for the men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died in the First and Second World Wars.

The WOPC acknowledges the excellent work of the CWGC and the information it maintains for all casualties, not just those related to Wiltshire.

Family historians can interrogate the CWGC database to try and find information about the fallen and their cemeteries and memorial locations in a number of ways, on the following website:

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission | CWGC

Members have provided these documents, associated with the CWGC:

Wiltshire Recipients of the Victoria Cross (VC)

We have identified a number of Wiltshire personnel who have received the United Kingdom’s highest medal awarded for valour, many posthumously:

Wiltshire VC Recipients

Galleries of the Graves and Memorials of Wiltshire Casualties

Various members of the WOPC have contributed their own images of graves or memorials to the fallen of Wiltshire.

In particular, we would like to acknowledge the outstanding work by the late David Milborrow who visited each and every Wiltshire church, churchyard and cemetery that was open to him to take photographs of graves and memorial plaques. He was a very dedicated man who, whilst on one of his photographic missions,  had a fall in one of the cemeteries cemetery and may not have been found had it not been for the churchwarden checking on the church for wedding ceremony the following day. David also sat for several months in a locked stone tower in Salisbury Cathedral photographing the parish registers for the cathedral which were not available at WSHC so our records are/were unique.

Within the parish pages of this website may be found photographs of parish churches, parish memorials, parish rolls of honour, and individual grave photographs of personnel connected with each parish. See the War Memorials and Military Galleries on the parish pages.

If the person did not have any other Wiltshire connection (i.e. not associated with a Wiltshire parish) but served in the Wiltshire Regiment or Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry – then any images of their grave or memorial (UK or Overseas) that we may have (currently not very many) will be on the Wiltshire Regiment or Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry  pages within this Military section.

Research for Wiltshire Casualties in Overseas Cemeteries

Two overseas cemeteries have been researched by members to identify all the Wiltshire casualties in them. No further work on this is currently planned.

Other Memorials and Rolls of Honour containing Wiltshire Casualties

Listed below are some websites and transcribed documents that hold information for specific groups of casualties, which include Wiltshire casualties.

Wiltshire & Remembrance – Related Books

These are books that the WOPC has found useful in researching the fallen of Wiltshire.

General Information about Casualties