One of things I've had quite a lot of correspondence about this year is the condition of Commonwealth Wargaves Commission cemeteries in Belgium and France.

And I hope in this special episode of the old

front line we will uncover what the problem is what the history of that problem might be

and what the Wargraves Commission are hoping to do to remedy the problem and are remedying

the problem and what the future might hold in respect of this issue so I'm'm really pleased to be joined by John Gedling, who is the director of estates for the Commonwealth Wargaves Commission. So welcome, John. Hi, Paul. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Thanks. Thanks for joining us to talk about this. Now, I mean, some of our, quite a lot of our audience are not from Britain or the Commonwealth.

So I don't know if you want to say something very briefly about what the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is and what its remit is.

Yeah, sure.

So our organisation was founded during the First World War to care for the graves and the war dead originally of the Great War

and then extended to the Second World War after that.

So we are responsible for the care of 1.7 million war dead in about 153 countries.

So I'm director of the state, so I care for the structures, the buildings and the memorials.

I'm based our headquarters in the UK.

So for me, there's about of 2,000 constructed war cemeteries and

memorials around the world where there's something constructed there that we care for so that

that comes under my responsibility. And your work with the commission has extended over quite a few

years, I think. Yeah, so I've been with the commission has extended over quite a few years, I think.

Yeah, so I've been with the commission for eight years, so that makes me in commission

terms of a relative newbie. Some of my colleagues have done sort of 40, even 50 years in some

case. So an organisation with extraordinary long service of colleagues. But yeah, I'm in my background.

I'm a chartered building surveyor and I've come from caring for historic estates.

And most recently I have served a couple of terms on one of the governance committees for historic England.

So, yeah, sort of dealing with old building structures, memorials being very much part of my DNA.

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