With the British Army in Flanders

Ypres Town Cemetery Extension was begun in October 1914 and initially used until April 1915.  More burials were added in 1918 and after the Armistice 367 graves were brought in from smaller cemeteries and from the battlefields to the north and east of the city.  There are now 598 First World War burials or commemorations in the Extension, of which 137 are unidentified.  There are also special memorials to 16 servicemen known or believed to be buried here, visible along the wall in the background of the above photograph. Continue reading →

A few minutes walk east of the Menin Gate, outside the ancient city walls, is Ypres (Ieper) Town Cemetery.  Within the cemetery, interred in several different plots among the Belgian civilian graves, are 145 British casualties from the First World War, all but one being killed between October 1914 and May 1915.  There are Dragoons and Hussars buried here, there is the son of a Baron, and of an Earl, there’s a Lord, even a Prince.  Men of the small but highly professional pre-war British Army, men whose numbers would be decimated in their dogged and ultimately successful efforts to prevent the Germans from breaking through the Allied lines during the first two battles of Ypres.

The British Army, however, would never be the same again.  Continue reading →