This year marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day. This video explores the stories behind Yorkshire's Commonwealth War Graves cemetery - through those who care for it. With gardeners, and craftsmen, whose job it is to tend the grass or fix the headstones and make sure it's absolutely pristine. There are 1,000 servicemen and women buried here, including 660 Canadian Airmen who have no family nearby to tend their graves
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00:00 Hi, I'm Tim Lambert, I'm the head garment for the Commonwealth Wildlife Commission, the North Region.
00:06 And I look after sites like this across the whole of the North of England.
00:11 The day-to-day job is basically the horticultural maintenance of all our sites across the North of England,
00:18 making sure that they are up to our specification, looking beautiful for all the visitors that we get.
00:26 We are all individuals that gave their life for our freedom and what we have.
00:33 So I think to honour their respect, their choices and their courage, I think they should be looked after in perpetuity.
00:49 I'm Stuart Miller, I work for the Commonwealth Wildlife Commission as a senior maintenance craftsman,
00:55 which basically involves anything to do with the stonework, be it headstones, crosses, sacrifice, stones and remembrance.
01:03 I do everything from inspecting to cleaning to straightening them up, some of the lettering, replacing old or broken headstones,
01:14 to redoing all the foundations the headstones are set in.
01:19 It's usually a two and a half year cycle covering six counties in the North East of England.
01:26 I have relatives who served, also died in the Second World War.
01:31 I was formerly in the army myself, so for me personally it's more of a pride to be able to look after the fallen from both wars.
01:44 I also think that they should not be forgotten, personally.
01:50 They're a reminder of the sacrifice given and a reminder of the result of politics failing.
01:58 So I believe they should be looked after.
02:02 It comes to the point where you do look at the ages, you look at where they served, what they served with.
02:09 I'm privileged to meet a lot of the families in various places I go to work, be it churchyards in the middle of nowhere,
02:17 from replacing an old headstone with a new one, the families come along.
02:22 To have the personal story of their relative having shown the pictures and who they were, that is quite humbling.
02:32 It does bring home to me more about what my job is and why I'm doing it.
02:40 A lot of people forget that there is a story behind every headstone.
02:45 There is a person and a story and a family.
02:49 I do come away quite humbled sometimes when I meet the families and the relatives.
02:57 To me it makes all the difference in the job.