French Flanders: Armentières to La Gorgue Part One: Erquinghem-Lys Churchyard Extension

Okay, I’ve been intimating for some time now that we will be off on a new tour soon, so let’s bite the bullet and get started.  We begin with another visit – our third – to the cemetery at Erquinghem-Lys, just a mile south west of the outskirts of Armentières, and today well on the way to becoming an outskirt itself.

Our previous tours in French Flanders have taken in the front line cemeteries of the Nursery, as well as those associated with the Battle of Fromelles in mid-July 1916, and those to the north west of Armentières as far as Steenwerck, on the way to Bailleul, all of which you can see on this Google map.  Our new tour begins once again just south of Armentières, but this time we shall be heading upstream, following the meanders of the River Lys south west, through Erquinghem and Sailly (both marked – we have visited them before, but there’s a lot more still to see), Estaires and La Gorgue, taking in the cemeteries and memorials along the way.

The source of the Lys, which flows close to the northern cemetery boundary, no more than a hundred yards away, can be found some fifty miles to the west near Lisbourg in the Pas de Calais, from where the river flows north, north east and then roughly east until reaching Estaires; from there it flows north east to Armentières after which it forms the French-Belgian border for a considerable distance (and where we have followed part of its course, between Comines & Menen, the posts to be found in the Along the River Lys Category), eventually reaching the River Scheldt in Ghent, some 126 miles from its source.

The cemeteries we shall visit were all on land that remained in British hands for most of the war, the majority around three miles behind the front lines for much of that time, until the Germans unleashed Operation Georgette – the Battle of the Lys – between 7th & 29th April 1918, at which point all the land on which we shall travel this tour was captured in the first few days of the offensive, and held until late summer and the final Allied advance to victory.

As mentioned, we have visited Erquinghem (actually slightly closer to the old front lines, at about two miles, than most of the cemeteries we shall visit this tour) twice before, and if you remember* it has an unusual grave layout, eighteen rows of regimented British headstones…

*if you don’t, click here – there will be a link between the two older posts, and a link to return you here, and there’s plenty of interesting stuff to read, I assure you!

…followed by five rows of primarily German burials at the north eastern end, beneath the Cross,…

…and a single row of British soldiers along the boundary wall behind the Cross, quite a few of whom were originally buried in the nearby churchyard (now the church car park, actually, although still marked as a chuchyard on the cemetery plan), and moved here in the 1920s.

All but three of the 130 German graves are identified, and all but two died between 12th & 23rd April 1918, as the tide of battle swept across the land and the British retreated to the north west.  It is quite unusual to find this amount of German graves still in a British military cemetery, certainly in one this size, with so many graves in a relatively small area, and this is not the only CWGC cemetery along the Lys still containing a considerable number of German graves.  And yet at least two other cemeteries we shall visit, both of which once held a substantial plot of German graves, are now devoid of any, all of them moved post-war.  I can see no policy at work here; more research required, methinks.

The Germans had briefly occupied Erquinghem once before, entering the village on 6th October 1914, and departing within the week with the Somerset Light Infantry hot on their heels.  This time they would hold the village throughout the summer of 1918.  The two identified British casualties on the right were both killed in April 1918.  You would assume that these men, and a couple of others, lying among the rows of Germans, were most likely also buried by them.

Just days after Ludendorff had brought the first of his 1918 offensives, Operation Michael, to a close (despite capturing 1,200 square miles of territory, the Germans had failed to achieve any of their strategic objectives, and both Arras and Amiens remained in Allied hands), he launched Operation Georgette in Flanders, with the aim of finally taking the City of Ypres (Ieper) and the Channel Ports beyond.  The battle would last for three weeks, and the above map shows German progress over that time (I have marked in red the area we shall be visiting on this tour).  What is clear is how fast and how much land the Germans captured in the first few days of the battle (up to the dotted yellow line), and how much slower their progress was for the remaining two and a half weeks, as the Allies shortened their lines in the Ypres Salient, giving up the hard-won gains of Third Ypres the previous year in order to move men south to reinforce the troops fighting the battle, fresh reinforcements arriving too, British, French and to the south of the attack the 1st Australian Division, who took up positions in the Forest of Nieppe (see map again) and effectively halted the German advance towards the key Allied railway junction of Hazebrouck.  The Germans then turned their attention to the north of the offensive around Mont Kemmel, and they would take the hill from the French on 25th April, and even the Scherpenberg, a hill to the north-west of the Kemmelberg, on 29th April, but by then the German advance had stalled across the rest of the front, and Ludendorff ended the battle on the evening of 29th April.

But back to the start of the offensive.  The German attack on 9th April 1918, preceded by an intense artillery bombardment that began on the evening of the 7th, took place along a twenty five mile front, held by only twelve divisions, from Ypres in the north to La Bassee in the south.  At Neuve Chapelle, which the Germans had specifically targeted, the Portuguese defenders gave way, German troops pouring through the gap in the line and consolidating in the countryside behind, the British desperately attempting to breach the gap.  At Erquinghem the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment crossed the River Lys from the north and set up position in the fields to the south of the village along the railway line, but enfilade fire from a German machine gun positioned at the railway crossing (marked in dark green on the above map, the cemetery marked in pink) on the Rue du Moulin caused heavy casualties, as did a German field gun that, I suspect, was firing over open sights.  The Duke of Wellington’s were decimated; out of five officers and 139 men only one officer and nine men would survive.

Forward elements of the German army would enter Erquinghem itself later on 9th April, the main body of troops arriving the next day.  And it was on 10th April that a 24 year old Duke of Wellington’s private, Arthur Poulter, at the time of the fighting acting as a stretcher bearer, would be seen to make no less than ten trips to bring wounded men back to safety, all the while under extremely heavy fire, two of the men being hit again whilst he carried them.  Even after the order was given to withdraw to the north side of the river he returned once more, in full view of the enemy, to retrieve another man who had been left behind.  He then continued his work, still under constant shellfire, bandaging some forty men who were then evacuated by ambulance.  Seriously wounded in the head a few weeks late near Kemmel whilst attempting to rescue another soldier, Poulter was helped to the ambulance by a lieutenant, one of the men he had saved on 10th April returning the favour.  Whilst in hospital back in Blighty, Poulter was informed that he had been awarded the Victoria Cross.  His war was over, and he would die in 1956 at the age of 62.  The inset photographs show him before and, I presume, after he was wounded.  In 2009 & 2010 charters were signed, twinning the towns of Erquinghem and Skipton in Yorkshire, Arthur Poulter’s home town.

Over fifty different regiments are represented among the 551 identified British, Australian, New Zealand & Canadian burials here,…

…of which more than one hundred are men of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, South Wales Borderers and the Welch Regiment (burials from March 1918 in Plot II Row H above).

More Royal Welsh Fusiliers in Row F, these men all killed on 19th September 1917.  The layout of these six headstones, although none are actually touching, suggests men killed in a shell explosion, the centre four buried together, the two on either side slightly further apart, for sanitation purposes, probably.  You work it out.  Note the single unidentified Russian, whom we have visited before, to the far right of the second row.

Yet more Royal Welch Fusiliers at the end of Plot II Row E, these men killed in November 1917.

Seventy two men of the King’s Liverpool Regiment, whose headquarters was here at Erquinghem between March & September 1917, are buried in the cemetery, these men in Plot II Row B,…

…as are these casualties from April 1917.

Thirty two Australians were buried here between April and early July 1916, all in Plot I Rows K (above),…

…Row J (above & following two photos),…

… and a couple in Row H, visible in the second row above.

The three headstones in the centre here in Plot I Row G are inscribed with the names of five Royal Engineers, a Lieutenant, Corporal and three sappers, all killed, you would imagine together, bearing in mind the closeness of their headstones, on the last day of 1915.  A few rows behind, and visible in the right background, are two German graves that we have visited before,…

…those of Leutnant Oscar Teichmann & Flieger Josef Suwelack in Row E on the left,…

…about whom you will find out more in the previous Erquinghem posts, which you really should take a look at, as they contain further information on the cemetery, the men buried here, and a series of photographs taken in 1914 of the Erquinghem area.  I’ll give you a link in a minute.

Another young subaltern.  Twenty two years old.  And yet ‘My Great Uncle’.

As the Germans retreated and the war neared its end, the cemetery was once again used by the British, who made a few more burials here in September & October 1918.  There are nine British burials from the autumn of 1918 in the cemetery, four of which, having been discovered in the fields about a mile to the south west of the town, were reburied here after the war.

This building, a few yards from the cemetery, houses the museum of my friend Jack Thorpe (more here and here).  Do pop in if you are in the area.  And I promised you a link to the previous Erquinghem posts, so click here for the first, at the end of which another link will take you to the second.

Next we shall travel around 1,500 yards south, where Erquinghem’s second, much smaller, cemetery awaits us.  Only a little cemetery in the middle of the fields, it is, however, going to take two posts to tell its story.  I wonder why?  Click here to find out.