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Father and son who devoted their lives to preserving resting place of war dead to visit Aberdeen school

Staff and pupils at Oldmachar Academy are set to welcome two men who have devoted their lives to tending to the graves of thousands of men who died in two World Wars.

Days before Remembrance Sunday, father and son, George and Alex Sutherland, will visit the school to talk about their family’s century-long association with Lijssenthoek Cemetery, near Poperinge in Belgium.

George, who turns 90 on 21 December, is no stranger to the school’s pupils having welcomed dozens of them to the cemetery to learn about its history and the ultimate sacrifice made by the 10,721 soldiers who are buried there.

The pupils made the journey to Belgium as part of the Battlefield Project, which has seen dozens of standard grade history students from the North-east visit the Belgian town over the past decade.

The Sutherland’s devotion to war graves began when George’s father, Walter, who was originally from Inverness, took up a post as a gardener in Lijssenthoek in 1919, starting the family’s long association with the cemetery and the War Graves Commission.

Walter was gardener at Lijssenthoek for 35 years, latterly as Head Gardener and tackled the massive task of converting the cemetery into a full-blown Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemetery.

Thousands of flowers, shrubs and trees, were planted and, in the mid-1920s, the thousands of wooden crosses marking the graves of those who died in World War One were replaced by rectangular headstones – 10,400 British soldiers including 16 men from Aberdeen, the then Chief of the Clan Grant and the youngest Scottish boy killed in the war, Donald Snaddon, who was just 15 when he died, are buried in the cemetery.

Walter and his wife, Marie, had three children with George born on 21 December, 1921. He helped his father work at the cemetery from an early age and on the day World War Two broke out in 1939 he formally began his career as a trainee gardener at Lijssenthoek.

In May, 1940, the German army pushed into Belgium and the Sutherlands, along with many more British families who had settled in the area, left their homes and headed south into France, hoping to get a boat to England.

Then, aged 18, George managed to get into the RAF and became a mechanic in a nightfighter Mosquito squadron. But as the war drew to a close with allied victory George returned to his work at Lijssenthoek in 1944. After six years of neglect himself and his fellow gardeners encountered a great deal of hard work returning the cemetery to the previous glory George’s father Walter had worked so long to attain.

George can recall it taking eight men four days just to cut the grass in the cemetery using hand-powered mowers. By comparison, with today’s machinery it takes two men a day-and-a-half.

George’s son Alex was born in 1946 and, when he was able, he began helping his father in Lijssenthoek Cemetery. In 1962, he began formally as a pupil gardener at Lijssenthoek before went on to work for the CWGC, helping to care for and tend to cemeteries in 87 countries – from Gallipoli to El Alamein.

He retired from the War Graves Commission in 2006, having been awarded the MBE at Buckingham Palace. In all, the three generations of the Sutherlands served the CWGC for 125 years.

Oldmachar Academy design and technology teacher Steven Allan, who has taken part in several of the battlefield trips, said welcoming George and Alex to the city and the school was a huge honour.

He added: “George is a fantastic character and for the pupils to hear him speak about his experiences is fantastic, for three generations of one family to dedicate their lives to tending to the graves of thousands of soldiers who died defending their countries is remarkable.

“The pupils all love him and having him here in the school is a tremendous opportunity to say thank you for all his hard work. Staff and pupils have been looking forward to his visit and I’m sure it will be remembered by many of us for a long time to come.”

As well as visiting Oldmachar Academy, George and Alex will also lay a wreath following the city’s Remembrance Day Parade on Sunday.

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