All British and Dominion dead in both world wars have either a known grave or a Memorial. The Thiepval Memorial commemorates over 70,000 British and 830 South African officers and men killed in 1916-17 on the Somme. Over 1,000 of those mentioned on the memorial have since been found and so have known graves.
The Memorial, in the form of a brick and masonry arch standing approximately 150 feet high, was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and is the largest of the Memorials built by the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission. The names of the missing are carried on masonry panels.
The Memorial was built to symbolise the Allied effort: it is designed to fly a British and a French flag, and the cemetery adjoining it contains 300 British and 300 French dead.
