With the British Army in Flanders

Parts of the Palingbeek remain relatively unknown, even today, to many visitors to the battlefields of the Great War in Flanders.  Even those who come to pay their respects to the men buried in the British cemeteries on the high ground of the Bluff, to the west of the Palingbeek, are often unaware that, on the other side of the hills to the east, there is much of interest to be found hidden away in the woods. Continue reading →

No more than a couple of hundred yards south of Perth Cemetery (China Wall), in the outskirts of Zillebeke, another British cemetery can be found behind these houses to the west of the road. Continue reading →

Another of the many cemeteries to be found in the Zillebeke area, Perth Cemetery (China Wall) was begun by French troops in November 1914, and it was not until June 1917 that the first British burials were made here, The Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) becoming the first non-French troops to use the cemetery.  Between June and October 1917 some 130 British burials were made in what is now Plot I, but as the tide of war moved east, slowly and bloodily, towards the Passchendaele ridge, the cemetery became redundant.  It was only after the war that the number of burials was hugely increased as men, some French but the majority British, were brought here from battlefield graves, and a considerable number of smaller cemeteries, for reinterment. Continue reading →