Steenwerck Communal Cemetery entrance.
There are just nineteen Great War casualties buried here,…
…of which five are unidentified (above & below).
These unknown British soldiers were buried here by the Germans in 1918.
The identified casualties are to be found in two rows,…
…three men, killed in May, June & July 1916, buried together in Row A,…
…the other eleven in Row B.
The first grave in the row is that of Lieutenant Colonel Robie Fitzgerald Uniacke, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, attached to the General Staff, appointed Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster-General in March 1915, and mentioned twice in Sir John French’s despatches in the early months of 1915, who was accidentally killed on 28th May that year. Next to him, a South African second lieutenant, one of three men in the row killed a year later in May 1916.
And the row ends with seven Royal Engineers, all killed on 27th May 1915, a German shell presumably doing its deadly work.
The reverse of Row B.
The unidentified soldiers buried by the Germans that we saw earlier (above & below). The Germans buried 31 of their own men here in 1918, all now moved to nearby Steenwerck German Military Cemetery.
According to the CWGC website there are five Second World War casualties buried here, men killed during the retreat to Dunkirk in late May 1940, but time was short, and I’m afraid that I failed to find them. A cemetery plan would’ve helped, but there doesn’t appear to be one.
And so on to our final stop on this tour, Le Grand Beaumart British Cemetery.