The Elverdinge Burial Grounds Part One – Hagle Dump Cemetery

At the end of the previous post we found ourselves here (see inset), if you remember, having just spent some time in Red Farm Military Cemetery, one of the smallest cemeteries in the Salient.  The four tall poplar trees that grow almost alongside Red Farm can be seen here in the background, right of centre of the main picture, and, by the way, in due course we shall be visiting all the cemeteries between there and Ypres (Ieper), three and a half miles further east. 

But for now, a quick reminder of where we are.  The Poperinge-Ieper road crosses the bottom of the map just above the railway line, with Red Farm Military Cemetery marked as a small red oblong.  Further along the road to the left, the blue dot shows the position from where the first photograph and inset were taken, and from where our walk to Hagle Dump Cemetery, marked in mauve, begins.

And as the map shows, after about half a mile,…

…we duly arrive.

The gateless cemetery entrance…

…is dated 1915-1918,…

…but the truth of the matter is that this cemetery did not exist until 27th April 1918,…

…when twenty three men, all casualties during what would prove to be the final days of the Battle of the Lys,…

…were buried just off the road here in what is now Plot I.  As always, the cemetery plan can be viewed here, courtesy of the CWGC.  About two miles north east of here the market town of Elverdinge, itself a couple of miles behind the front lines throughout the war, has five CWGC cemeteries officially within its environs, Hagle Dump being the final one to be created.

The ten rows of graves in Plot I are all casualties from between 27th April & July 1918,…

…except for the front row, Row AA,…

…these men all killed between 8th & 13th August 1918 (above & below).

The burials in the adjacent Plot II are all from between mid-July and mid-September 1918, and we shall be taking in both Plot I & Plot II as we make our way towards the far, western, end of the cemetery.

So, back in Plot I, this is Row A (Row AA now out of shot to the right), and just visible on the far right,…

…the first graves at the start of Plot II Row A, these men killed in July 1918.

Plot I Row B, and the grave of Lieutenant John Illingworth M.C., West Yorkshire Regiment, who died on 3rd June 1918, aged 26.  Killed by a stray shell, his captain reported, ‘The shell burst on the road quite near to him, and the shock was sufficient to cause his death. My traffic sergeant was killed by the same shell.’  Which allows me to restate my theory, entirely apposite for this particular post, that more men were killed by shock from explosions than by any other means during the Great War.  A sentence I always follow with ‘disprove me’, because I don’t believe you can.

Plot II Row B,…

…and the grave of Captain Hugh Roger Partridge M.C., R.A.M.C., killed on 24th July 1918 aged 27.

Back in Plot I, these are burials from May 1918 at the end of Row C,…

…but eight of the burials in Row C are men killed on 27th April 1918, when the first burials in the cemetery were made, all in this row, or in Row D immediately behind.  What is of most interest to us about this photograph (click, as with almost every picture I publish, to enlarge), however, is that two of the headstones in the front row, and the majority of those in Row D, as you can see, bear the emblem of the Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment).  And why is that significant?  Well, the explosion that took place somewhere hereabouts on 27th April 1918 killed a lot of men, and we paid our respects to those who were already wounded and being treated at a nearby casualty clearing station which was caught in the explosion when we visited Red Farm – and, as I have just mentioned it, quite possibly blast victims, I would have thought – but I said that we would be searching for the other victims of that day, and it seems we may just have found them.

Let’s backtrack slightly, photographically and textually.  In order to ascertain who else might have been killed in the explosion of 27th April 1918, it seemed smart to begin my research with all the men listed as killed on 27th April 1918, research which revealed that 798 identified British soldiers died on that date and are buried in CWGC cemeteries on the Western Front, 285 of whom are buried in Belgium.  And as one looks down the list of these 284 soldiers and one sailor, it soon becomes clear that, other than losses among the artillery regiments, it was the 10th Bn. Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment), with twenty men confirmed as killed on that date, who suffered the most casualties.  Finding the names of all the 10th Bn. men killed on 27th April led to burial sites and grave references, and wouldn’t you know it, sixteen of them are buried here at Hagle Dump Cemetery, confirmed as victims of the explosion by the war diary, as you will see later on.

Here I have highlighted all the headstones in Rows C & D that bear the date of death of 27th April 1918.  Sixteen sport shades of red, and these are all Queen’s Own burials, five in Row C, and eleven, in two blocks, in Row D behind.  The two blue headstones are Royal Engineers, the three orange headstones in Row D are Royal Garrison Artillery, and the two green headstones in Row C, although unidentified, are both inscribed with a date of death of 27th April 1918.

This is the left-hand block of six Queen’s Own burials in Row D, with one of the two Royal Engineer casualties on the far left, and the only officer killed, Lieutenant D. F. Anderson, on the far right,…

…and this is the block of five Queen’s Own burials further along the row (also below).  The close proximity of most of the headstones in Row D suggests that individual identification of the remains after the explosion may have been problematic.

So to be clear, sixteen men of the Queen’s Own, along with three artillerymen, two Royal Engineers and two unidentified men, twenty three men in total, all of whom were killed by the explosion on 27th April 1918, are buried in Rows C & D, and it is their graves that constituted the beginnings of this cemetery.  Some three weeks later another burial would be added to the row, the headstone on the far left here,…

…and the only headstone coloured in mauve here.  This artilleryman was buried on 18th May 1918, in the gap between the 27th April casualties, and he was the next burial to be made here, although it would be June before the cemetery would begin to be used regularly.  So, whereas the bodies of the already wounded who were killed were moved a short distance to what would become Red Farm Military Cemetery, these casualties were brought here to be buried in what was nothing but an empty field at the time – almost certainly this was where they were laid out to be identified.  Thus both Red Farm & Hagle Dump cemeteries owe their existence entirely to the explosion.  Neither would have been created had the events of that fateful day not occurred.

And we shall return to the explosion one more time before we end this post, because there are still questions that remain unanswered.  In the meantime, here we have an early August 1918 burial at the end of Plot II Row D,…

…and it is in Plot II Row D, and in this shot the headstone nearest the camera,…

…that we find the grave of Private George Ainley, aged 20, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, who was executed for desertion on 30th July 1918.  Ainley had been arrested and tried in January 1918 for a self-inflicted wound and it seems that between then and the summer of 1918 he deserted three times, making his likely execution once he was apprehended almost inevitable, I would have thought.

This extract from the register of soldiers’ effects shows that Ainley’s war gratuity, a payment introduced in December 1918 for men who had served for any length of time abroad, or completed six months duty at home, was considered ‘not advisable’.

…lies another man who was executed for desertion.  Private Walter Dossett, aged 22, had served with the Machine Gun Corps prior to his transfer to the York & Lancaster Regiment.  He went absent from his battalion during the German offensive in the spring of 1918 and I think, from what I can deduce, it was probably quite some time before he was apprehended.  The document below – not my scan – from the Yorkshire Telegraph & Star of 3rd February 1917 sheds some light on his later execution, because his desertion in 1918 was clearly not the first time he had gone missing.

The relevant piece being, ‘Walter Dossett, a deserter from the 25th Machine Gun Corps, whom the detective was looking for at the house……was also remanded for military escort’.

June 1918 casualties in Plot I Row F,…

…and August 1918 casualties across in Plot II Row F.

Still in Plot II, casualties from early September 1918.  Second Lieutenant Alfred Charles Ransdale, buried beneath the middle of these three headstones, was born in Rosario, Argentina, on 8th January 1895, to a British father and Argentinian mother.

He was conscripted into the Argentine Army in 1915 but with Argentina remaining neutral throughout the Great War, he set off for England, arriving in May 1917 and enlisting as a private in the Lincoln’s Inn Officer Training Corps before being commissioned into the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment in May 1918.  He joined 15th (Service) Battalion in Belgium on 27th August 1918, and survived precisely four days; on 1st September he was supervising a working party in the front line when the party was subjected to a particularly heavy German artillery barrage and he was killed.  As an afterword, the battalion suffered only two officers and twelve other ranks killed during their year abroad between July 1918 & June 1919.

More September 1918 casualties buried in Plot II Row H (above & below),…

…as are those in the row behind, the final row of the plot, Row J.

And these are the final rows of Plot I,…

…including two R.A.F. men in Row J, presumably ground crew, both killed on 10th July 1918.

Behind them, the single headstone of Plot V,…

…marks the graves of two Germans who died on 28th September 1918.

Looking roughly east across Plots V & I,…

…and on our left,…

…Plot VI,…

…with Plot IV on the far left.

Plot VI contains forty three graves, four rows of nine and this final row of seven,…

…almost all the burials from mid to late September 1918.

The headstones on the far left of the front row…

…are both Royal Field Artillery casualties killed on 14th September 1918. On the left, Second Lieutenant James Kenneth Mathewson, just 20, and on the right Captain J. E. Brown, aged 33.  Note the two different styles of the R.F.A. emblem used here (we saw similar with two R.G.A. headstones in Red Farm), and the difference in the engraving – on the left a laser-etched modern replacement headstone, and on the right, a much older hand-engraved one.

Row B,…

…and burials in Row C, these men killed on consecutive days in late September 1918.

In the final row, four men who died in early October 1918, the only non-September burials in the plot.  One of them, the third headstone from the left, is that of another Queen’s Own man, Major Vernon Holden D.S.O., M.C., Royal West Kent Regiment, who died of wounds on 2nd October 1918 aged just 25.  Holden had enlisted in July 1915 as a private in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, rapidly rising up the ranks and gaining a commission.  Mentioned in Despatches, awarded a D.S.O. during the Battle of the Somme and a Military Cross a year later, one wonders where his career might have taken him had he survived another few weeks.  At which point…

…we find ourselves back at the front of the cemetery, this time looking south west from the eastern corner with, nearest the camera on the right, Plot III.  Incidentally, at the war’s end there were twenty six Americans and two French soldiers also buried here, the Americans, I would imagine, buried somewhere here at the front of the cemetery, as they would have been the final burials to be made.  All were removed after the war.

Plot III is made up entirely of men brought here after the war from battlefield graves, along with twenty men (including four Canadians), who were killed between April 1915 & September 1917 and originally buried in Brielen Military Cemetery, near Brielen village, three miles to the east of here.

Many of the graves in this plot, such as these four in Row AA, the front row, are unidentified, although quite a few of the unidentified men buried in the plot – ninety five out of 137 graves in total are unknown – have some information on their headstones, be it nationality (far right), regiment (two of the above), rank, or date of death.

Plot III Row AA on the right, and Row A on the left.  The single grave at the far end of Row B, in the background on the left,…

…is a special memorial headstone, inscribed with ‘Buried near this spot’, to a Private R. Clark of the D.C.L.I. who died in December 1915.  He was originally buried here as an unknown soldier,…

…as this GRRF shows, his name once upon a time to be found on the Menin Gate, and it seems rather unfortunate that his exact burial spot has been lost.

Further along Row B, another D.C.L.I. man ‘Buried near this spot’ (right), and you will find Serjeant Duff’s name on the GRRF too.

Beyond Row C, the shorter row pictured above,…

…Row D contains more unknown burials (above & below),…

…and more special memorials inscribed with ‘Buried near this spot’, again D.C.L.I. men killed in December 1915, and again their names are to be found on the GRRF from earlier.

You might have spotted, a couple of shots back, how the trees had miraculously shed their leaves, and so, just for comparison, these are the same headstones pictured on a different visit; both Private Richards’ & Private Hughes’ names also once appeared on the Menin Gate.

And yet more unknown burials further along Row D, with a guardsman killed in October 1917 at the end.

The final two burials in Row E are both men killed in 1917,…

…as are the other identified men buried in the row.

Unidentified burials in Row F,…

…two unknown Canadians in Row G,…

…and then more unidentified burials in Row H, here a Royal Warwickshire Regiment man between two completely unknown soldiers,…

…here two men of the Royal Berkshire Regiment,…

…here an unknown Australian alongside three unidentified men of the Queen’s,…

…and here two unknown soldiers, a Canadian and a man of the Kings Royal Rifle Corps, on either side of the grave of Company Serjeant Major James William Dames D.C.M., M.S.M., Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry,…

…a veteran of previous campaigns, as his entry in the Cemetery Index briefly tells us, presumably recalled, or volunteered to return, to the colours in 1914.

None of the burials in the final row in the plot, Row J are identified (above & below).

Plot IV, the five rows in the northern corner, contains seventy graves, also all post-war reburials.

Only eleven are identified, all but one of these in Rows C, D & E.  Row A (above) has just a single identified burial,…

…and Row B, the first three graves (above) separated slightly from the rest of the row,…

…none at all (above & below).

More unknown burials in Row C,…

…two named privates of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in Row D (note the headstone on the left bears the inscription ‘Believed to be’), both of whom died on 29th September 1917,…

…and another of the identified men, on the right here further along the same row, buried alongside two unidentified Australian colleagues.  What is particularly unusual about Private T. J. Bentley is that his real name was John Joseph Pierce – nothing particularly unusual about serving under an alias – but there is no mention of this on his headstone nor any of the accompanying CWGC documents, which is curious, and unusual, I think.

Australian burials in the final row, Row E,…

…all but three of these men unknown (above & below).

Final view from behind Plot IV,…

…before we return to the Cross of Sacrifice,…

…the trees lining the old Ieper-Poperinge road from whence we originally came on the horizon.

And yet still we have unfinished business around here,…

…so while Baldrick and I head up the road to explore a little further to the north, let’s do some more research and see if we can find out exactly where the 27th April 1918 explosion took place.

The following photos of trees were taken a mile north of Hagle Dump Cemetery at what was known as Dirty Bucket Sidings on trench maps.  Bearing in mind the name, it won’t surprise you to learn that a number of railway lines from the west terminated here – only one continued further east towards Elverdinge – with associated trenches and huts, but there is no obvious evidence of anything today.  As you will see.

On the night of 15th April 1918, with the German advance further south on the Lys threatening the whole Ypres Salient, the British began to withdraw from their positions to the east of Ypres, shortening the line and releasing troops for the Lys battle.  Conditions are described in the war diary of the Assistant Director of Medical Services of 41st Division; ‘…the whole of the Divisional area during April, in both back and front and intermediate system, has been more or less under constant shellfire; the shelling taking place at all times of the day and night; every kind of shell being used.  Much gas shelling has taken place, especially around Ypres and in the Vlamertinghe area, mustard being the principal gas used; phosgene and the new shell consisting of mustard mixed with a little ethyldichloroarsine. The result of this constant shelling is that for a Division, simply holding the line, our casualties, especially for gas have been fairly high – principally gas, which although not fatal caused a fair number of admissions to hospital, approximately 50% having to be evacuated.’

The war diary continues; ‘On the 27th April, at midday, a large dump at Hagle just behind Red Farm containing over 2,000 lbs of gun cotton and much 9.2 ammunition was hit by an enemy shell and exploded blowing the whole of the A.D.S. at Red Farm, in occupation of 138th FA, flat and wrecking all huts, etc. 6 officers and 40 other ranks being wounded but over 200 were killed about the dump itself. This necessitated Red Farm itself being abandoned and the A.D.S. was moved forward to the school buildings at Brandhoek.’  A large dump at Hagle. eh?  Let’s have a look on the map.

Luckily, although unmarked on every other map I could find, this map from the summer of 1918 does indeed mark Hagle, highlighted in green, adjacent to the light railway, with Hagle Dump Cemetery marked in mauve, a little further down the line.  Up at the top of the map, the blue square shows where the accompanying photos to this section of the post were taken; sometimes you just have to explore, and sometimes you find nothing at all, but you are standing in the footsteps, and sometimes you can hear the ghost-whispers through the trees.  Probably just the wind.

What else do we know?  A sapper of the Royal Engineers, a mile away in Elverdinge, related, ‘This morning, just about noon, I was lying in my bed feeling particularly rotten when the whole building was shaken by a terrific explosion. We thought that a high explosive shell must have hit the chateau but there was no sign of anything of the sort. Later in the day we heard that a huge ammunition dump towards Poperinge had been blown up and hundreds of soldiers and civilians killed. The frightful shock had been sufficient to kill scores of them as the sat or walked about their huts or houses. The attitude of the bodies reveals their actions at the moment the shock struck them; all further movement was suddenly suspended; hands are still raising the glass or holding a cigarette. Tait, the driver, went nearly mad and was carried off to hospital with shell shock.’

Another soldier describes the area, ‘there was the road on the left leading to Dirty Bucket Camp. On the corners of this side road was a solid farm house and a Casualty Clearing Station with behind the CCS an ammunition dump. Further along the Dirty Bucket Camp road on the right-hand side was a line of houses occupied by civilians whilst on the left and beyond the farm house a wooden shack from which two Belgian girls dispensed fried eggs and chips.  One day as we were sitting on our respective kits, eating our stew from our mess tins, the top of the Nissen hut including the sandbags collapsed on the top of us. The entrance was blocked so we scrambled out over the top only to find the air filled with exploding .303 ammunition. It was obvious that the dump had gone up. Later in the day we were able to visit the ruined hut to salvage our equipment. We found the farm house had taken some of the shock from us and the sandbagged roof the rest. The CCS did not exist, the civilian houses were shattered and a crater the side and depth of a small lake had appeared where the dump had stood. The wooden shack had disappeared along with the two girls. All the houses in the area which had not been wrecked had lost their roofs. Half-way down the far side of the crater was a baby’s pram.’  Which brings our search for the civilians buried in Red Farm Military Cemetery (inset above) to a close, sadly confirmed by the line I have highlighted on the GRRF below.

A few days later this particular soldier found himself passing through the devastated area; ‘The night before we were due to go up to Ypres I developed a temperature. The next day I had not improved, so the doctor suggested that I had better have a few days at the Transport lines. So I set off after midday to Dirty Bucket Camp and then turned to the left on the road towards Brandhoek past the shell dump which had gone up a few days before. The area looked as though a tornado had struck it.’

The best evidence, however, comes from the 10th Battalion of the Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment) who had moved into Dirty Bucket Camp on 9th April and spent the next week manning the front lines to the west of Passchendaele.  The following week they were employed strengthening the Ypres defences, suffering some 200 gas casualties on 26th April, and were working on nearby defensive lines at the time the shell hit.

As this page from the 10th Bn. war diary relates; ‘A serious explosion occurred behind the Detail Camp at G6 a.2.3 Sheet 28 N.W. Belgium about 12.30 pm caused by a H.V. enemy shell striking an Ammunition and Guncotton Dump. The camp was wrecked and numerous huts set on fire by the explosion. Rescue parties at once set to work to assist in recovering the numerous casualties from the debris, and extinguish the fires, in face of great danger from recurring explosions from the dump. Casualties suffered by this Battalion totalled:- KILLED –  Lieut D. F. ANDERSON, Other Ranks 17, WOUNDED –  Other Ranks 28. MISSING – Other Ranks 1.’  Lieutenant Anderson is the officer whose grave I mentioned and we saw much earlier.

Unfortunately, ‘the Detail Camp’ is not marked on any maps I can find, which seems odd, but we do now have a map reference, and that map reference…

…is indicated by the yellow dot on this map.  Let’s not forget that the shell then set off the explosion at the dump, and as the reports we have just read tell us that the dump seems to have been somewhere to the south of where we now know the shell hit (and where the map shows us a light railway with siding, and a major trench), I have added a potential blast circle approximately 1000 yards in diameter, biased to the south, as we know that the blast killed men at the aid station at Red Farm.

This photograph, looking towards Hagle Dump Cemetery further up the road, is taken exactly where I have marked the yellow dot,…

…and these two (above & below) from the light blue dot on the map; this close to the point of the explosion, the blast must have swept across this field like a scythe.

A few final thoughts.  I am unsure of the exact number of casualties caused by the explosion, and I don’t suppose we shall ever know, although the report of two hundred deaths seems excessive.  We do know that twenty identified already-wounded casualties (killed at the A.D.S. at Red Farm) are buried at Red Farm Military Cemetery, along with three civilians, and that twenty one identified casualties are buried here at Hagle Dump.  Fifteen of the unidentified men buried at Red Farm can be presumed to have been killed on 27th April, and there are two unidentified men here at Hagle Dump who are, as we have seen, given that date of death.  Two more casualties, both Queen’s Own Royal West Kent men, survived just long enough to be taken to one of the hospitals south of the Poperinge-Ypres road at Brandhoek where they subsequently died, and are buried in Brandhoek New Military Cemetery No. 3, and another Queen’s Own man died on arrival at one of the hospitals in Boulogne later in the day, and was buried in Boulogne Eastern Cemetery on 28th April 1918.

What about the other cemeteries in the area?  Alongside the two Queen’s Own Royal West Kent men who lie in Brandhoek New Military Cemetery No. 3, one of whom is pictured above, another eight men who died on 27th April 1918 are buried in the same row (two are pictured), although as the cemetery served the Brandhoek hospitals and thus many of the burials follow each other closely date-wise, there is, as yet, no actual evidence to suggest they were victims of the explosion.

Five casualties from 27th April 1918 are buried in Vlamertinghe Military Cemetery (above), a mile and a half nearer Ypres, but I cannot see any of the wounded casualties being taken east as opposed to west, and these men must surely be, dare I say it, part of the natural wastage – the day-to-day deaths – along this part of the front.

And the isolated Gwalia Cemtery (above), just over a mile to the north west of Hagle Dump Cemetery, contains seven men who died on 27th April, five of whom are Royal Engineers, but again there is nothing to suggest that their deaths had anything to do with the explosion.  As none of the other Elverdinge cemeteries was in use at the time, one would have to head west on a serious detective hunt (Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery contains eighteen 27th April 1918 casualties among the ten thousand graves, but none are men of Kent) to find more potential casualties.  There are also eighty eight names of men who died on 27th April 1918 and whose bodies were never recovered or could not be identified on the Tyne Cot Memorial, but apart from a single 10th Bn. Queen’s Own serjeant* killed on 27th April and almost certainly one of the unidentified casualties of the shell, how many of the other eighty seven were killed here that day?  One hopes that the sixteen, in total, unidentified casualties from Red Farm are named among them.

*quite probably Serjeant George Jones (is he the missing man noted in the war diary?) is actually buried beneath one of the two unidentified headstones, one pictured below, in Row C at Hagle Dump.

All of which leaves us with a total of sixty one military casualties (forty four identified, and seventeen unidentified) and three civilians – the minimum death toll from the consequences of a single German shell – and with little idea about any men who survived for more than twenty four hours but subsequently died, nor those survivors whose lives were changed forever.  Sobering.

And after all that, we won’t be going far next post.  This map shows five cemeteries marked in various colours (Hagle Dump still in mauve at the bottom) in a rough circle to the west of Elverdinghe (now Elverdinge), and it is the smallest of these, Hospital Farm Cemetery, that we shall be visiting next time.