From Dickebusch Lake to St. Eloi Part Six – Bus House Cemetery

A beautiful Flanders day, and a cemetery.  Perfect! 

It’s a picturesque place, Bus House Cemetery, with Mont Kemmel, as ever, on the horizon.

And if you are already wondering why ‘Bus House’,…

…well here’s the answer.  This is a photograph of one of two 90th Company Army Service Corps (1st Auxiliary Bus Company) buses destroyed on 30th October 1914 and abandoned close to a farmhouse soon referred to by the British as Bus House,…

…the current farm buildings seen here in the background beyond the trees.

The cemetery, which was only in regular use between June & September 1917, was thus named after the British name for the farm, and now contains 194 identified Great War burials – after September, only eight more men would be buried here before the end of 1917, and later, just four men killed during the fighting in April 1918 – along with a dozen who are sadly unidentified.  The sign at the entrance, however, makes it clear that we have graves from both World Wars here,…

…and so, as is sometimes the case with the cemeteries we visit, this cemetery is not quite what it initially seems.

And it may be that the two French graves one encounters on entry are a precursor of certain things to come.  These two French soldiers, one an officer, both died on 27th May 1940 during the retreat to Dunkirk – over one third of the 338,000 men eventually evacuated from France between 26th May & 4th June 1940 would be French.

Cross of Sacrifice,…

…and the view from the Cross panning from south east…

…across the cemetery…

…to south west.  However this is not how the cemetery looked at the end of the Great War,…

…because here, on the left, is the cemetery as seen today, compared with, on the right, a Magicfingers-doctored plan of the cemetery as it would have looked in the immediate post-Great War years,…

…the Second World War additions here marked in orange.  As you can see, Row AA is the only row with just Second World War burials, the others all added to the end or ends of existing rows.

There are seventy identified Second World War casualties buried in this cemetery, the earliest deaths dated 10th May 1940, the final one 31st May 1940.  All, of course, died during the retreat towards Dunkirk.

And there are nine unidentified burials, all of which have ‘May 1940’ inscribed upon them.  This headstone can also be seen far left below,…

…alongside three other unidentified World War Two casualties in Row AA.  Can you see that small cracks are appearing in the ground in the foreground, quite likely portending what was to come at some point after our visit?  Not relevant to our current trip, there’ll be an explanation at the end of the post.

There are just over two hundred identified Great War burials in the cemetery, forty of whom could be said to be the first burial made here.  This is very much a Messines/Passchendaele cemetery, and those forty burials are all men killed on 7th June 1917, the day that nineteen vast mines devastated the German front lines on the Messines Ridge, presaging, over the following week, the first British advance in Flanders of the war. Among the dozen unidentified Great War casualties buried here, some, such as the headstone second from the left above, and in close-up below, also bear the date of 7th June 1917.

The forty identified men who died on 7th June 1917 are all buried in the first three rows behind the Second World War Row AA (not marked on this cemetery plan extract) and are identified in red.  The burial marked in blue is a man who died two days later on 9th June, and the green headstones mark three unidentified burials.  The single yellow headstone at the start of Row B is a later 1917 burial,…

…a private of The Queen’s who died in October 1917, seen here on the right.  On the left, a Seaforth Highlander serjeant killed in May 1940,…

…one of six Second World War casualties added to the start of the row.

Row C begins (and ends) with more Second World War graves, those pictured two privates and a captain of the Northamptonshire Regiment.

The Great War graves in the row include one man who served under an alias and who died on 7th June 1917 (he is marked on the previous cemetery plan extract),…

…and these two special memorials, both men ‘Known to be buried in this cemetery’, although one is a Messines casualty, killed on 13th June 1917, and the other, killed on 11th April 1918, a victim of the German advance in the spring of 1918.

His grave is seen once again on the far left here, alongside five touching headstones, all men killed in mid-June 1917, as are most of the Great War burials in the row, which also contains half a dozen July 1917 burials.

Unknown World War II casualty in Row D, which once again begins with Second World War graves, four in this case.

Wreath left at the grave of a Royal Garrison Artillery gunner, killed at the end of June 1917,…

…all the Great War graves in Row D once again men who died in the second half of June.  Look carefully beyond the unknown soldier buried beneath the headstone on the left, and note that the flower bed stops just past the headstone; if you check the cemetery plan once again, you will see that all the rows from Row D to Row I, at the far end of the cemetery in the background, are split into two, or even three, sections.

Westerly view along the rest of Row D.

After a slightly wider gap than between most of the rows, this is Row E,…

…the first row in the cemetery that contains no additional Second World War graves.  The man of the Army Cyclist Corps on the left died on 9th August 1917, but most of the men in the row are July casualties,…

…including these three men of the Royal West Kents in Row E, all three killed on 24th July 1917.  Incidentally, you might have spotted a number of artillery burials in Row F behind in the previous shot, and the majority of the burials in Row F are artillerymen killed in July 1917,…

…but not these three men, the two on the left both drummers with the 7th Bn. London Regiment, although all three are also July casualties.

There are ten Great War Australian burials in the cemetery, four here at the start of Row G.  This is a very unusual group of headstones in that all four men are 11th Brigade Australian Field Artillery, it would seem reasonable to assume that they were killed together, presumably by a German shell, and yet as you can see, the first headstone differs from the other three as it features an artillery emblem as opposed to the Australian emblem.  Why would that be?  Well, this is another of those headstone idiosyncrasies; the first man served under an alias, and because of this has an artillery emblem on his headstone as opposed to a national one.

Looking north west along Row H,…

…here seen crossing the cemetery from centre to left (with a substantial gap after the first nine headstones).  This view looks north from the cemetery’s southern corner, the four Australian burials in Row G on the right.  On the far left…

…Row I, which begins with two unknown soldiers, the man on the left a New Zealander.  Most CWGC cemeteries don’t include a Row I to avoid confusion with Row 1, although Row 1 doesn’t actually exist in any CWGC cemetery that I know of, because the rows are lettered, not numbered!

Eastern view from the cemetery’s western corner, the rest of Row I nearest the camera, the burials within mainly from September & October 1917.

September 1917 casualties at this end of Row H, Row I behind.  The headstone furthest from this end in Row I is actually a man of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps who was killed in early 1915 and brought here at some point during the war for burial; presumably, there being no suggestion he was originally buried elsewhere, he lay where he fell until somebody discovered him.

Five more August 1917 casualties in Row H.  The three centre headstones are more Army Cyclist Corps men, all three killed on 12th August 1917.

South easterly view across Row G.

Second World War graves at the end of Row A, in the foreground, and Rows B, C & D behind.  The fourth headstone from the end of the front row…

…features this most poignant personal inscription at the bottom.

As we leave, an explanation, as promised, about those small cracks in the ground I pointed out earlier.

Presumably, since our visit, they have grown.  For the past few years now, if you look on the CWGC website, you will have found the following; ‘Please Note: In the summer of 2018 severe stability problems occurred on Bus House Cemetery: shrinkage of the soil, settling of the foundations, open cracks and fissures in the boundary wall and leaning of the headstones and Cross of Sacrifice. Preliminary research is now being carried out in order to fully identify the scope of the damage and the restoration approach. The restoration works are planned in 2020-2021. As a temporary measure the boundary walls have been supported and the Cross of Sacrifice is dismantled.’  To which has more recently been added; ‘Restoration Works: We are currently carrying out necessary restoration works at Bus House Cemetery, that will be ongoing until Spring 2023. Significant works are required to avoid future further subsidence of the soil. The works, which are funded by the Flemish Government, will entail complete reconstruction of the boundary walls built on new foundations. In order to preserve the integrity of the site, the natural stone are recuperated and re-used as much as possible; and only quality materials, such as Boomse bricks and lime mortars are used.’  So now you know.  One wonders exactly what the root cause of these problems actually is, although, for what it’s worth, I have a theory that I’ll share next post (click the link) when we visit St. Eloi.