The 20th Light Division was established in September 1914 as part of K2, the second of the Army Groups raised following Kitchener’s call to arms on being appointed Minister for War on 5th August, the day following the outbreak of war.
The New Armies were initially not expected to see action until 1917 (unlike many, Kitchener was anticipating a long, bloody war), but circumstances would dictate that the men would be needed much, much sooner.
And so the 20th Light Division found themselves in France in July 1915, initially undergoing training and experiencing the trenches for the first time in the Nursery.
Over the next three and a half years they would take part in many of the major actions on the Western Front, at Mount Sorrel, on the Somme, at Third Ypres, Cambrai, St. Quentin and during the last Hundred Days.
Total casualties for the division during the war, killed, wounded and missing, amounted to 35,470.
There is a second memorial to the division, a stone tablet, with identical wreath and inscription, at Guillemont on the Somme.
With the four stops to the south west of Langemark completed, next post we shall be moving north of the village, to where the transparent light green oblong allows you to see a cemetery already marked on the map beneath.