Tag Archives: WWI

LANGEMARK GERMAN CEMETERY

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Not far from Ieper and just north of Langemark village on Klerkenstraat is the sombre Langemark German Cemetery. There are relatively few German cemeteries on the Western Front battlefields. As they had invaded, the land that France and Belgium was prepared to grant them was limited, in comparison to their British allies.

Although this cemetery is much smaller in area than Tyne Cot, in fact it contains many more burials because they are effectively in the form of several mass graves, although there are headstones (which are laid flat to the ground) as well. There are also occasional clusters of small crosses, but these are not grave markers.

Langemark German Cemetery

On entering the cemetery itself there is an inscription on a flat stone with a sculpted wreath. This records that 44,061 men are buried here. Ahead is the mass grave of nearly 25,000 men. The names of those known to be buried here are recorded on eighty-six upright bronze panels beyond this entrance.

Just to the left of this central inscription, on the edge of the first of the upright bronze panels is a plaque commemorating two British soldiers: Privates Albert Carlill (Loyal North Lancs) and Leonard Lockley (Seaforth Highlanders). Both died late in 1918. Carlill died as a prisoner of war aged 19, just a week before the end of the war.

Plaque to the two British soldiers buried at Langemark

The “Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof” (German Soldier’s Cemetery) in Langemark is particularly poignant because of its strength and simplicity. Over 44,000 Germans are buried behind the monumental gate made of pink Weserberg sandstone and almost 25,000 of these are buried in a mass grave. More than 3,000 student volunteers of the 22nd up to and including the 27th Reserve Corps found their last resting place here. They were killed in battle in October and November 1914 during repeated attacks in the First Battle of Ypres. The name of “Studentenfriedhof” (Student Cemetery) was given to the cemetery because of the large number of students among these volunteers.

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At the entrance there is a heavy building reminding one of a bunker. It was erected in red Weser/Vesder sandstone and was meant to make the transition from everyday life to the cemetery itself and in that way create some distance.
There are three rooms in the entrance building: the central passage and two side rooms.
On the oak panels of the “room of honour” to the right, are inscribed the known names of 6,313 soldiers killed in battle who were buried in the original (lower part of the) cemetery. Fencing the cemetery, there is a low wide wall made of the same stone as the entrance building. Pollard willows grow on street side (as a guard of honour) and the right part of the former poppy field is surrounded by a wide ditch symbolising the flooding of the Yser front.

Poppy memorial outside Langemark German Cemetery

PTE THOMAS CARTHY

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Grave of Pte Thomas Carthy

Private Thomas Carthy was from Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. He was the husband of Mary Carthy of 34 River Street. He was killed on May 24th 1915 aged 47.

CWGC details of Pte Carthy

Private Carthy served with the Second Battalion, Royal Irish Regiment. He is buried in Poelkapelle Military Cemetery near Ieper. Another Irish grave I came across there was that of 7335 Rifleman Francis Dunne of the Royal Irish Rifles. He died on 16th June 1915 aged 29. The CWGC details do not reveal where he came from.

Grave of Rifleman F. Dunne

PTE JOHN CONDON

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Grave of Private John Condon

The youngest soldier to be killed in the Great War of 1914-18 was 2622 Private John Condon, of the 2nd Battalion Royal Irish Regiment and came from Waterford in Ireland. Like a quarter of a million other boy soldiers from all over Ireland and Great Britain, John was underage. He arrived at the Western Front in March 1915 and two short months later he was dead. Killed in a German Gas attack at a place called Mouse Trap Farm near Ypres, Belgium on the 24th of May, a day they say when a greenish yellow mist crept from the German lines with deadly poison. John’s grave is in Poelkapelle Military Cemetery (CWGC) and is now reputedly the most visited grave on the entire Western Front for obvious reasons. There, amongst thousands of white headstones, there is usually an array of poppies, flags and wooden crosses around the final resting place of young John Condon and a gravestone that says it all. 6322 Private John Condon 24th May 1915 Age 14.

CWGC memorial book at the cemetery

PRIVATE ROBERT HAMILTON

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Name of Hamilton R. (Private) on panel 141 at Tyne Cot memorial. Our group visited the CWGC cemetery on July 25th 2019.

Pointing to the name of Pte Robert Hamilton

The panel with names of soldiers from the Royal Irish Fusiliers

Our group at the Tyne Cot Memorial following a short prayer service led by Canon Andrea Wills (Foxford)

Placing a cross at the Tyne Cot Memorial in memory of Pte Robert Hamilton of Ballinode

Private Robert Hamilton enlisted in Monaghan town in the Royal Irish Fusiliers (the ‘Faugh-a-Ballaghs’) when a recruitment party came to town in March 1915. He fought at the Battle of the Somme in July 1916 and was invalided at some stage so he would have returned home to Kilmore East. He left Ballinode on Easter Saturday at the end of March 1918 and returned to his unit on the western front in France, only to be killed in action three weeks later.

Private Robert Hamilton picture from The Northern Standard April 1918
There is also a plaque in his memory in St Dympna’s Church of Ireland church, Ballinode which has provided the springboard for a talk I gave to Tydavnet Historical Society on Friday 21st November 2014 in Ballinode. The talk would not have been possible without the research and interest shown by Marie McKenna and two distant Hamilton relations Ruby Heasty and Heather Stirratt and I acknowledge their assistance.

Plaque in St Dympna’s Church of Ireland Church, Ballinode, Co. Monaghan

PTE HUGH DALZELL

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Tyne Cot Memorial

Private Hugh Dalzell

9th Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers

came originally from Newtonards, Co. Down. His family moved to Belfast. Missing in action 16th August 1917. He joined the British Army on 17th March 1916 and arrived in France on 30th June 1916, the day before the Battle of the Somme began.

He was posted to ‘D’ Company 9th Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers. He was killed on 16th August 1917 during the 3rd Battle of Langemark. Gone but not forgotten – Faugh a Ballagh!

Name Panels on Tyne Cot Memorial

During the Passchendaele 100 commemoration on 31st July 2017 I read out his name during a live BBC television broadcast from the Tyne Cot nemorial and cemetery.

TYNE COT R.IRISH RIFLES

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Tyne Cot Cemetery

At Tyne Cot Cemetery, the graves can be seen of six members of the Royal Irish Rifles who died at the Battle of Passchendaele on 15th and 16th August 1917. I have now researched their background using the CWGC website and discovered that three came from Co. Down and one from Belfast. The fifth was from Luton and there are no details available for the sixth soldier, Rifleman W. Witterick. We will remember them.

Lance Corporal Samuel Coffey

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18/1063 Lance Corporal Samuel Coffey, 12th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles. Died on 15th August 1917 (Passchendaele), aged 21. Son of John and Mary Coffey of Killyleagh Street, Crossbar, Co. Down.

Lance Corporal William Gihon

GIHON_WILLIAM

14701 Lance Corporal William Gihon, ‘B’ Company, 14th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles. Died on 16th August 1917 (Passchendaele), aged 24. Son of John and Jane Gihon of no.5 Adela Place, Antrim Road, Belfast.

Rifleman Arthur Hawes

HAWES_ARTHUR

41477 Rifleman Arthur Hawes, 13th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles. Died on 16th August 1917 (Passchendaele), aged 26. Son of Thomas and Kate Hawes of 18 Dudley Street, Luton, England.

Rifleman Hugh McDonald

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16744 Rifleman Hugh McDonald, 13th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles. Died on 16th August 1917 (Passchendaele), aged 23. Son of George Francis and Margret McDonald of Gallows Street, Dromore, Co. Down.

Lance Corporal Henry Greer Mills

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18479 Lance Corporal Henry Greer Mills, 13th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles. Died on 16th August 1917 (Passchendaele), aged 27. Son of John and Annie Mills of Marino, Holywood, Co. Down.

Rifleman W. Witterick

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42590 Rifleman W. Witterick, 14th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles. Died on 16th August 1917 (Passchendaele).

Unknown soldier from the Royal Irish Rifles

TYNE COT MEMORIAL

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Tyne Cot memorial and cemetery

Tyne Cot Memorial bears the names of some 35,000 men of the British and New Zealand forces who have no known grave, nearly all of whom died between August 1917 and November 1918. This area on the Western Front was the scene of the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as the Battle of Passchendaele. It was one of the major battles of the First World War.

Cross of Sacrifice at Tyne Cot cemetery

  • It was designed by Sir Herbert Baker with sculpture by Joseph Armitage and Ferdinand Victor Blundstone. He designed many of the CWGC memorials and cemeteries in Belgium and France.
  • The memorial was unveiled by Australian soldier and veterans’ rights activist Sir Gilbert Dyett, on 20th June 1927.
  • The names are carved on the memorial on panels of Portland stone, set in high flint walls which have been built in a half circle.

Tyne Cot cemetery

The memorial is a semi-circular flint wall 4.25 metres high and more than 150 metres long, faced with panels of Portland stone. There are three apses and two rotundas. The central apse forms the New Zealand Memorial and the other two, as well as the rotundas and the wall itself, carry the names of United Kingdom dead.

Australian Division memorial at Tyne Cot cemetery

Two domed arched pavilions mark the ends of the main wall, each dome being surmounted by a winged female figure with head bowed over a wreath. The following inscription is carved on the frieze above the panels which contain the names:

1914 – HERE ARE RECORDED THE NAMES OF OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE ARMIES OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE WHO FELL IN YPRES SALIENT, BUT TO WHOM THE FORTUNE OF WAR DENIED THE KNOWN AND HONOURED BURIAL GIVEN TO THEIR COMRADES IN DEATH – 1918

At each corner of the structure there are carved wreaths. Atop each of the pavilions is a winged figure in grief surmounting a globe. The globe itself is ringed with symbols including a Fleur-de-Lys, a shamrock, an anchor, a rose, an eagle and an oak leaf.

Tyne Cot memorial and cemetery

The sculptors Ferdinand Victor Blundstone and Joseph Armitage were commissioned to work with Baker on the memorial. Blundstone carved the angels surmounting the chapels and record building, and Armitage did the wreaths carried by the angels. There was concern about the fragile state of the sculptures and Blundstone arranged for them to be completed from a scaffold after they were hoisted into place.

Tyne Cot cemetery July 2017

Tyne Cot cemetery cross of sacrifice

HILL 62 SANCTUARY WOOD

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Sanctuary Wood museum

In the last decade there has been a large increase in visitors to the Ypres Salient, and many have included a visit to the trenches at Sanctuary Wood, a few kilometres outside Ieper.

WWI shell and British Army cap badges

In the 1990s the trenches were covered in grass and the whole site was overgrown with undergrowth. Nowadays the ground around the trench line has been visited by so many pairs of feet that it is mostly bald with no grass or undergrowth.

British Army WWI recruiting poster

The need for the preservation of battlefield areas makes for an interesting discussion. The natural desire to be allowed to walk freely amongst historical remains such as these trenches is one side of the argument, the possibility that they will be damaged in so doing is another.

Vickers machine gun

It’s been a topic of discussion for some years already by battlefield historians, local authorities and the people who live with the scarred landscape all around them.

German machine gun

Sanctuary Wood is a fascinating example of how such war remains bring together the local people who own the ground and live with them daily, the people who come in their thousands each year to see them, historians who debate whether these trench remains are original or not, and the people who want to find ways to preserve endangered WW1 battlefield remains.

Belgian Royal Family Tree

The museum was developed by Jacques Schier, the grandson of the farmer who founded the museum and owned the site of the museum since before World War I. It has a unique collection of World War I items, including a rare collection of three-dimensional photographs, weapons, uniforms, decommissioned bombs and shells.

WWI British Army recruiting poster

On entering the museum through the café visitors will be in a room with display cases on tables in the centre of the room. Many interesting photographs are arranged on the walls. In this room you will find a large and rare collection of three dimensional photo images inside special viewing boxes. These 3D photographs were produced after the war and are absorbing and absolutely fascinating to look through.

Calling on young Belgians 18-25 to enlist

The museum collection contains equipment removed from the battlefield in the vicinity of Sanctuary Wood. There are several German grave markers reclaimed from the battlefields. These were removed from their original burial location after the burials were presumably moved from outlying battlefield burial plots into a formal German military cemetery during the battlefield clearance after 1918.

Last refugees in Ieper at the Cloth Hall 1915

Among the battlefield relics is a rare example of a British Army Cook’s Wagon. This was given a treatment of wood preserver in the 1980s by volunteers from the British Army’s Royal Corps of Transport serving near Antwerp.

Ruins of Ieper

In what was once a house, several rooms are dedicated to various displays of wartime memorabilia. They include some fascinating posters and pictures, including several showing the devastation of Ieper (Ypres) by the Germans during World War One.

More pictures of the destruction in the centre of Ieper

FLANDERS DAY FOUR

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WWI German trench mortar at Sanctuary Wood museum

The fourth day included a highlight of the tour, attendance at the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate and participation in a wreath laying ceremony.

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Laying a wreath at the Menin Gate, Ypres, on Day Four

It also included a return visit (for me) to Tyne Cot cemetery, where I had taken part in the Paschendaele 100 service on 31st July 2017. These two important locations will be featured separately.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

The day began with a visit to Hill 62 Zillebeke Museum, a few kilometres from Ieper. This is a privately owned collection. It is located in the vicinity of the Canadian Hill 62 Memorial and Sanctuary Wood Cemetery.

Picture: Attack on a German Trench

The museum was developed by Jacques Schier, the grandson of the farmer who founded the museum and owned the site of the museum since before World War I.      It has a unique collection of World War I items, including a rare collection of three-dimensional photographs, weapons, uniforms, decommissioned bombs and shells.

WWI shells at Hill 62 Sanctuary Wood museum

In the ground beside the museum there is a preserved section of the British trench lines, featuring a muddy maze of trenches. The attraction also has a small bar, café and gift shop.

Decommissioned ordnance on display inside the museum

The site is now one of the few places on the Ypres Salient battlefields where an original trench layout can be seen in some semblance of what it might have looked like. Elsewhere the trenches were filled in and ploughed over by returning farmers leaving only the occasional chalky outline of what had once been there.

Trenches at Hill 62 Sanctuary Wood

In the last decade there has been a large increase in visitors to the Ypres Salient, and many have, of course, included a visit to the trenches at Sanctuary Wood. In the 1990s the trenches were covered in grass and the whole site was overgrown with undergrowth. Interestingly, nowadays the ground around the trench line has been visited by so many pairs of feet that it is mostly bald with no grass or undergrowth.

Converted room in former house now used for exhibits

The need for the preservation of battlefield areas makes for an interesting discussion. The natural desire to be allowed to walk freely amongst historical remains such as these trenches is one side of the argument, the possibility that they will be damaged in so doing is another. It’s been a topic of discussion for some years already by battlefield historians, local authorities and the people who live with the scarred landscape all around them.

British ‘corkscrew’ barbed wire posts

Sanctuary Wood is a fascinating example of how such war remains bring together the local people who own the ground and live with them daily, the people who come in their thousands each year to see them, historians who debate whether these trench remains are original or not, and the people who want to find ways to preserve endangered WW1 battlefield remains.

British WWI two-inch trench mortar known as the ‘toffee apple’

NEWFOUNDLAND MEMORIAL PARK

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Newfoundland Memorial Park caribou memorial

Close to Thiepval and the Ulster Tower in the Beaumont Hamel area you will find the Newfoundland Memorial Park. The website greatwar.co.uk describes how it came to be situated there in an area that has particular significance for Canadians.

The Caribou is one of five such memorials on the Western Front which commemorate the location where the 1st Battalion of the Newfoundland Regiment was in action. The caribou is the emblem of the Newfoundland Regiment. The sculptor of the bronze caribou was an Englishman called Basil Gotto.

The Caribou memorial is situated on high ground at the western side of the park, behind the British front line of July 196, from where the 1st Battalion the Newfoundland Regiment began its advance into the attack on that fateful morning. The shrubs around the rocks are native plants from Newfoundland.

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Caribou Memorial

Newfoundland Memorial Park is a site on the Somme battlefield near to Beaumont Hamel. The land was purchased by the Dominion of Newfoundland after the First World War. It was named after the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, which had provided one battalion of 800 men to serve with the British and Commonwealth armies.

Pointing the way to Newfoundland

Its tragic part in the action of 1 July 1916 is remembered through this memorial park. The site is also a memorial to all the Newfoundlanders who fought in the First World War, most particularly those who have no known grave. At the base of the caribou memorial there are three bronze panels listing 814 names that make up the memorial to the Newfoundland missing, namely those who died on land or at sea during WWI and who have no known graves.

Memorial with names of those who died in WWI

The park does, nevertheless, preserve the memory of the men of the many other regiments from the French, British and German Armies who fought and died on this part of the Somme battleground from September 1914 into 1918.

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29th Division Memorial

On the morning of 1st July 1916 as the Battle of the Somme began, the 29th Division was in action on the British front line in the location that now forms the Newfoundland Memorial Park. The Division suffered a high number of casualties as a result of the success of the German defence in this sector. Many were cut down before they got anywhere near the German front line. Many were killed and wounded as they moved forward from the rear of the front line to follow on in the attack. The divisional badge was a red triangle.

Newfoundland became a province of Canada in 1949. The Newfoundland Memorial Park is one of only two Canadian National Historic sites outside Canada. The other is also in France at Vimy Ridge. The landscape architect who designed the park was RHK Cochius.

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Remains of WW1 trenches seen from the caribou memorial

Beaumont-Hamel was attacked by the 29th Division on 1st July 1916 and although some units reached it, the village was not taken. It was finally captured by the 51st (Highland) and 63rd (Royal Naval) Divisions on the following 13 November. The 29th Division included the 1st Battalion of the Newfoundland Regiment, as it was then called. The attack on Beaumont-Hamel in July 1916 was the first severe engagement of the regiment, and the most costly.

On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, no unit suffered heavier losses than the Newfoundland Regiment which had gone into action 801 strong. The roll call the next day revealed that the final figures were 233 killed or dead of wounds, 386 wounded, and 91 missing. Every officer who went forward in the Newfoundland attack was either killed or wounded. For this reason, the government of Newfoundland chose the hill south-west of the village, where the front-line trenches ran at the time of the battle, as the site of their memorial to the soldiers (and also to the sailors) of Newfoundland.

Of the few battlefield parks in France and Belgium where the visitor can see a Great War battlefield much as it was, Beaumont Hamel is the largest. The actual trenches are still there and something of the terrible problem of advancing over such country can be appreciated by the visitor. The memorial itself stands at the highest point of the park and consists of a great caribou cast in bronze, emblem of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. At the base, three tablets of bronze carry the names of over 800 members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the Newfoundland Royal Naval Reserve and the Newfoundland Mercantile Marine, who gave their lives in the First World War and who have no known grave (CWGC information).

Caribou memorial

The Danger Tree is a petrified tree and the only original tree in this location to survive the 1914-18 fighting in this location. It had been part of a clump of trees located about halfway into No Man’s Land and had originally been used as a landmark by a Newfoundland Regiment trench raiding party in the days before the Battle of the Somme. As a result, the Regiment suffered a large concentration of casualties around the tree.

The Danger Tree in front of the German lines is to the left of the cross of sacrifice at the CWGC cemetery