A Google map showing the position of the places we visit during the tour is now available by clicking the new Tour Maps link on the home page.  Hope you find it of use.

Saturday, 11th February 2012.  Baldrick ponders the vagaries of life on a weekend visit to Blighty.  The Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, maybe the London Eye?  Nope.  Local war memorial.  Smile please.

This time its July.  And its raining.

Dadizele Communal Cemetery contains 27 British First World War burials, all casualties of the fighting in the vicinity during October 1918.

CWGC plaque at the cemetery entrance.

Panoramic view of Dadizele Communal Cemetery.

Although the majority of the British burials are situated along the southern boundary of the cemetery, a few, such as these two men of the Royal Irish Rifles, are to be found among the civilian graves.

Plot II contains most of the British burials here, two of which are the only Second World War graves in the cemetery; the headstone nearest the camera is simply inscribed ‘Two Soldiers of the 1939-1945 War’.  In the following photos we move down the line of First World War headstones, beginning with the second in line, one of two bearing two names:

Above left:

Above right:

Above left:

Above right:

The final headstone in the row, nearest camera, is:

As we are now near the southern corner of the cemetery, we ought to take a peek around the boundary hedge beyond which lies Dadizeele New British Cemetery, this time sans snow.

Dadizeele New British Cemetery was created after the war, which naturally begs the question, “why are there 27 men in the communal cemetery when there are more than a thousand buried just the other side of the wall in the military cemetery?”  The answer may be that although the military cemetery contains men brought in from the surrounding area after the war only, the communal cemetery was already there and the 27 men who lie within its boundaries were buried there at the time they fell.  But I’m not at all sure about that, so if you are any the wiser, do let me know.

Looking north west towards the Cross of Sacrifice in the distance, with the German bunker we visited previously to the left.

Above & below: View from the top of the bunker.

Returning to Dadizele Communal Cemetery, there are three remaining British graves that we have yet to visit…

…two of which are near the western boundary of the cemetery.

Behind these two graves, the hedge separates communal cemetery from military.

The final British burial.  Above & below:

Last view before we leave, looking north east across the roundabout immediately outside the communal cemetery towards the town itself.  The building on the left, the first building encountered on entering Dadizele from the west, supposedly (according to a local resident) survived the shelling that destroyed much of the town in October 1918 as the Germans retreated, and perhaps it did.  By the way, the signposts on the far side of the roundabout are indeed the same ones pictured at the start of our recent visit to Dadizeele New British Cemetery.

As we begin the final part of our tour, this view looks south, back down the road in the direction of the Birdcage, with Ploegsteert Wood to the right.

Our route north along the eastern edge of Ploegstert Wood takes us past two wayside crosses, memorials to Private Harry Wilkinson of the Lancashire Fusiliers, whose body was discovered here in 2001 and who is now buried, you will remember, in Prowse Point Military Cemetery.

A faded photograph.  A real man.  Never forget.

I believe that the body of Private Richard Lancaster, whom we visited earlier at Prowse Point, was also discovered somewhere in this field.  Which begs the question: How many other men still lie beneath these cornfields? 

Standing right on the British front line, which followed the course of the road at this point, this view looks towards the north eastern corner of Ploegsteert Wood.  To the right of the picture, the large farmhouse stands approximately on the site of what was known to the British at the time, for reasons that I shall leave to your imagination, as Three Hun’s Farm.

Before we turn west to follow the northern edge of Ploegsteert Wood back to Prowse Point, you may remember that I promised you previously that we would visit two of the craters formed by the mine explosions early on the morning of 7th June 1917, which heralded the start of the Battle of Messines.  To do so we must cross what was once No Man’s Land (don’t forget, we are still standing right on the British front line here) and follow the road pictured towards the German front line on the horizon.

In front of the building in the previous photograph you will have noticed yet another CWGC information board which gives you further information about the action here on 7th June 1917; the map shows that the entrance to the tunnel leading to the Ultimo & Factory Farm mines (officially known as Trench 122 Left & Trench 122 Right) was situated almost exactly where we are currently standing.

No Man’s Land.  The trees have since grown on the spoilheap created when the Ultimo mine exploded.

Two views (above and below) of the Ultimo crater, now a peaceful spot far removed from the carnage that must have been caused here when the mine was detonated.

Looking south from Ultimo Crater…

… the small hillocks in front of the trees in the centre of the picture…

…are the spoilbank surrounding the furthest south of the 19 mines detonated on that June morning, that of Factory Farm Crater.  The house in the centre distance is the same one pictured during our earlier visit to the Birdcage; you may remember that I mentioned at the time that it would come in useful later to get our bearings.  Point proved, methinks.

Okay, we won’t go any nearer, partly because that would be trespassing, and also because I have no intention of messing with these clearly ferocious Belgian cows.

The trees surrounding Ultimo Crater, taken from about a hundred yards behind the German front line.  You can just see Ploegsteert Wood in the distance to the left, and it’s high time we returned to the main road from where we will head west to complete our tour.

Back at the road, looking west at the northern edge of Ploegsteert Wood.  A few yards north of here a side road will lead us back to Prowse Point Military Cemetery, and thus the end of our tour.

Must be that way then. 

Indeed it is.  At the end of Part One of this tour I told you we’d eventually find the plaque on the site of Bruce Bairnsfather’s dugout in the hamlet of St. Yves (now St. Yvon) where, in the winter of 1914, he drew the first of his famous ‘Old Bill’ cartoons…

…and here, finally, it is.

And we aren’t the only recent visitors.

Just up the road we come across the Khaki Chums Cross, placed here in 1999 after members of the Association for Military Remembrance had spent five days over the Christmas period living in waterlogged trenches near this spot.  Looked after by the local population ever since, the Cross has become a shrine to commemorate the Christmas truce in 1914 that took place in the fields hereabouts (and indeed all along the nearby front lines at least as far south as Le Gheer), and the legendary football match that took place between British and German troops in No Man’s Land.  I say legendary because there is actually little real evidence that this happened, although what does seem certain is that footballs were kicked about during the truce, even if an actual match never took place.  I have read a number of descriptions of the truce where footballs have been mentioned, only one of which uses the word ‘match’, and it seems to me that, bearing in mind the number of photographs of fraternisation between the lines that have emerged in recent years, it is highly improbable that a football match would have gone unrecorded.

If you look carefully (click to enlarge, of course) you can just see Messines Church on the horizon immediately to the right of the Cross, and also, on the skyline to the left, the Irish Peace Tower, situated in the Island of Ireland Peace Park on the outskirts of Messines (now, of course, known as Mesen).

I also ought to mention that two more of the British mines that explodeded on 7th June 1917, Trench 127 Left & Trench 127 Right, were located in the fields beyond the Cross.

And finally, just a couple of hundred yards up the road, we find ourselves back at the very first cemetery we visited way back at the start of our tour; Prowse Point Military Cemetery.  And that really is the end of the ‘Tour of Ploegsteert Wood’.  I promise I shall update the accompanying trench map in due course, and I suppose, bearing in mind the number of times the Battle of Messines has been mentioned during the course of the tour, I’d better get started on the ‘Tour of Messines’, or whatever it eventually gets called, where we shall visit many other cemeteries, memorials, mine craters and, and this is a guarantee, lots and lots of mud.

Over the next few months we shall bring you the results of our travels, and we begin with by far the largest of the cemeteries we shall visit, Dadizeele New British Cemetery.

A winter’s day in Dadizele.  It snowed last night, and it is bitterly cold today.  Amidst the various singposts (sorry, we didn’t go to Dadi Park, whatever that might be) a CWGC sign points the way to Dadizeele New British Cemetery*.  You will note that one of the other signs points to Ledegem, where at a later date we will visit another, somewhat unusually situated, CWGC cemetery.

*Dadizeele is now known as Dadizele, and Dadi Park, it turns out, is an abandoned amusement park, which sounds eerily interesting, so perhaps we should have paid it a visit.

The Basilica of Our Lady in the centre of Dadizele, heavily shelled in the First World War, damaged again during the Second, and now rebuilt so you’d never know the difference.

Dadizeele New British Cemetery is a post-war cemetery, started when graves from smaller burial grounds in the area, and from the surrounding 1918 battlefields, were brought here for reburial after the war.  There are just over 1000 burials, and all, except for a handful from 1914, date from September to November 1918.  It’s worth remembering that the British suffered a staggering 350,000 casualties between the beginning of August 1918 and the end of the war in November.

The Cross of Sacrifice in the western corner of the cemetery.

View from just inside the cemetery entrance (see the Cemetery Plan below, courtesy of the CWGC) looking south west across the headstones of Plot I.

Dadizeele New British Cemetery Plan

Two more views of Plot I (the first five rows), with Plot IV beyond.

Panoramic view from near the cemetery entrance looking south.

Special memorials along the cemetery’s eastern boundary to the memory of three men, two of whom were prisoners of war, whose graves were subsequently lost:

The grave references above refer to Waterdamhoek Military Cemetery & Deerlyck German Cemetery, where these three men were originally buried.  Interestingly, a quick perusal of the cemetery plan shows four headstones, and the suggestion that there was also a memorial stone sited here at one point.  And if you take another look at the grave references, why is Rifleman Black Memorial No. 1, and Second Lieutenant Debussey Memorial No. 4?  Where are 2 & 3?  Cemetery plan notwithstanding, I suspect that at some point two memorial headstones (Deerlyck German Cemetery Special Memorials Nos. 2 & 3) were removed from here, presumably because the men’s bodies had been located, and the three remaining headstones were moved closer together (these are not, after all, graves, so moving the headstones would present no problem) and re-positioned where we see them today.  That’s my theory, anyway.  Moving on…

The Stone of Remembrance.  Beyond are more special memorial headstones that we shall visit in a moment (see picture below). The building to the left is in the adjacent Dadizele Communal Cemetery.

Special memorials to seven men known or believed to be buried in this cemetery.  Left to right:

Major Geoffrey Sowter, third headstone from the right in the photo above, and clearly not forgotten.

Register box and seat.

This large German bunker now forms part of the southern boundary of the cemetery.

North westerly view taken from the same spot as the photo above, showing Plot III in the foreground and the Cross of Sacrifice in the right background.

Looking west across the headstones of Plot III…

…and south across the same headstones, with part of Plot VI in the right background.

Black Watch graves in Plot VI.

North east view from Plot VI, with Plot III beyond, the bunker on the right, and the Basilica in Dadizele on the horizon.

Plot VI (left) and Plot III (right).

Headstones in Plot II.  Front row, left to right:

Looking west across the headstones of Plot I, with Plot IV beyond.

Plot I.  Above left, this time from right to left:

Above right: The four headstones to the left of the two unknown Royal Air Force Lieutenants (nearest camera) are, also from right to left:

Southerly view across Plots IV (nearest camera), V, and in the background, Plot VI.

Back at the Cross of Sacrifice looking south east across much of the cemetery.  Plot IV is nearest the camera.

Cross of Sacrifice, winter’s sky.

A beautiful day, but too damned cold.  Let’s go, Balders old chap; I suggest we return to visit Dadizele Communal Cemetery, where 29 British soldiers (two are Second World War casualties) are buried, another day.  Preferably a warmer one.

I wonder how many times during the War messages similar to this in content were hastily scribbled and sent by runner back to Company HQ?

The calvary at the crossroads at Le Gheer, sited exactly where it was a hundred years ago.  There’s a photograph of it taken in 1915 in the late Tony Spagnoly’s excellent book ’A Walk Round Plugstreet’, and you will find another one if you enlarge the photo of the nearby CWGC information board (scroll down a bit).  I can’t tell for certain whether the present figure of Christ is the same as the original, though it may well be, and it may also be that the wooden cross is original; it certainly suffered damage during the war, and its unusual proportions suggest that the arms of the cross may have been shortened as a consequence.  I wonder?

Dusk view of the calvary at Le Gheer…

…and, also taken in the evening, two views looking west (left), back the way we came from Lancashire Cottage Cemetery, and east (right) towards the British front line, which ran across the road from left to right approximately where the two cars can be seen in the centre of the picture.

CWGC information board detailing the actions that took place around here in late 1914.

Before we continue our journey up the eastern edge of the wood, let’s briefly carry on past the calvary and through Le Gheer a little way to the east.  This picture shows the view from the approximate site of the German second line trenches looking west towards Ploegsteert Wood; if you zoom in you can just see the houses at Le Gheer to the left of the wood.

As I said, just a brief diversion.  Here, we are back at the Le Gheer crossroads, and that’s the road we must now take as we head north up the eastern edge of the wood.

A couple of hundred yards up the road, this view looks back at the houses visible in the previous photograph, with the crossroads at Le Gheer in the distance.  The British front line ran parallel to the road, a matter of yards into the field on the left of the picture.

Just as it did ninety five years ago (see trench map), this cornfield (above and below) still cuts in to the edge of the wood.

Looking at the trench map, you will notice that the British front line crossed the road at this point, running through the cornfield and disappearing into the wood before continuing north…

…towards the site of the German front line strongpoint known as the Birdcage.

These houses (the hamlet of Le Pelerin) stand on the site of the Birdcage, named as such on account of the amount of barbed wire that surrounded it.  The German front line ran directly under the house in the centre of the picture.

The Birdcage.  Standing right on the German front line at this point, it’s impossible to imagine what this place must have been like between the first actions in October 1914 and the spring of 1918, when the Germans briefly captured Ploegsteert Wood.  Designed to ensure the British were unable to break out of their trenches within the eastern boundary of the wood itself and sweep through the German defenses towards Comines, the Birdcage did its job well enough.  The graves of the men from the Somerset Light Infantry that we visited way back in Part Four of our tour prove as much.

Worth looking at the map on this information board (click to enlarge, of course)…

 …as the next few pictures show the fields to the east of Ploegsteert Wood, beneath which thousands of pounds of explosives still lie.  Explanation time.  At 7.30 a.m. on 7th June 1917, nineteen huge mines, totalling some 900,000 lbs of explosives, erupted along the German front line from Hill 60 in the north, some mile and a half due east of Ypres (Ieper), to the mine (officially called Trench 122 Right) at Factory Farm, not far north of where we now stand.  The battle of Messines had begun.  The British , in actual fact, had laid twenty five mines the previous year in preparation for the offensive, but for varying reasons two further north were not detonated, along with four in the fields around us here.  Just prior to the British attack the Germans in this area had pulled back a few hundred yards; if the mines were exploded now, it would be Germans, not British, who would be the first to occupy the subsequent craters, and craters make excellent defensive positions.  The decision was made to abandon all four mines, and 112,000 lbs of explosives lay undisturbed until 1955, when lightning caused one of them to explode, I believe at the unfortunate expense of a local cow.  The remaining three lie here still.

So before we continue north we shall take the road east, just a little way, and have a look around.  The view above looks west, back towards the houses on the German front line at the Birdcage.  Umbro Trench crossed the road at about this point (see trench map), and one of the unexploded mines lies beneath the field to the left (see below).  Ploegsteert Wood, ever present, is in the background.

Once thought to be the site of the 1955 explosion (see ‘A Walk Round Plugstreet’, mentioned earlier), surviving tunnellers’ and engineers’ maps now show us that this field actually contains one of the unused mines…

…whereas, turning round, we now know that the site of the 1955 detonation was actually north of the road, somewhere to the left of the field pictured.

This panorama looks north east.  The trees on the horizon to the far left surround the crater made by one of the nineteen mines that were detonated, Ultimo Crater, while another, the previously mentioned Factory Farm Crater, is just a short distance nearer the camera; we shall visit both in the final Part of our Tour.  The second of the unexploded mines, aimed to detonate beneath Umbro Support Trench (see trench map), is just ahead of us close to the road, and the final one is somewhere beyond the vehicle tracks to the left of the picture.

View looking east towards the German rear area from the same spot.  Note the house in the centre of the picture, as it will come in useful to get our bearings during the final part of the Tour.  And with that, I think it’s time we returned to the road to continue our journey up the eastern edge of the wood.

After just a few minutes we find ourselves at the north eastern corner of the wood, and we shall soon turn west to roughly follow its northern boundary back to Prowse Point.  This final view looks back towards the area of the Birdcage; the British front line emerged from within the wood here, crossing this cornfield from right to left before following the the line of the road northwards.  As we shall also do, in the final part of our tour:

A Tour of Ploegsteert Wood Part Twelve