The White Cross Touring Atlas of the Western Battlefields

This book is exactly what the title suggests. It was obviously supported, in its original guise, by the White Cross Insurance Association Ltd., which was a significant insurer of the period. There are a number of interesting adverts for White Cross in the book. Explaining the book, the first 64 pages are touring maps which, although of their time, are clear and precise. There is imposed on each page, in red print, a series of numbers each of which represents a military cemetery. Pages 60 to 109 are text, and are descriptions of the battlefields. Pages 111 to 145 covers an Index to the war graves right across the whole of the Western Front. The book ends with 13 pages of photographs of various places on the Western Front, of course depicting them in their state within a short time from the end of the war. When this Touring Atlas was first produced, the CWGC was called the Imperial War Graves Commission, and the cemeteries looked very different to what they do in our present era. That is why this book is so important in our collection.