French Flanders: From Laventie to Neuve Chapelle Part Six – Laventie German Military Cemetery

This somewhat sombre German cemetery – you could say they all are – began as a Battle of the Lys burial ground at the start of Operation Georgette on 9th April 1918, and was used until the German retreat four months later.

The understated cemetery entrance,…

…is, on this occasion, devoid of the VDK’s five crosses,…

…although there’s a little version of them here, where you might expect to find the cemetery register.  In a nutshell, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V. is a charity tasked by the German government to look after German military dead, both in Germany and abroad.

Unfortunately, all there is inside is this.

At the time of our visit…

…the cemetery’s trees were undergoing some serious pollarding,…

…and incidentally, quite why there is this large, empty area (above & below) on the western side of the cemetery on entry, I have no idea.  The obvious answer is that there were once casualties, presumably ‘enemy’ – maybe British, but far more likely Portuguese – buried here by the Germans, and long since moved to the Portuguese military cemetery at Neuve Chapelle, but evidence?  None.

Back to the pollarding, because it’s certainly not the norm,…

…to see metal crosses used as stands…

…for giant toothpicks.

Ah well,…

…I’m sure it was all being done in the best possible taste.

This is a cemetery of crosses.

There are no stone tablets inlaid into the turf to be found here,…

…no mass graves,…

…just the individual final resting places of 1,978 German soldiers.

Cemetery plan, of sorts, the position of the large cross marked in red, the cemetery entrance bottom left.

This post is more a stroll around, rather than an actual tour of, this cemetery, partly because it’s really very difficult to work out where in the cemetery some of these shots were actually taken,…

…but mainly because there is no list of the dead that I can refer to, nor documentation to accompany said non-existent list*, thus this is more a series of shots in some sort of order that give an idea of the essence of the place.

*sometimes, I think, we don’t realize how lucky we are with the amount of online information provided by the CWGC in the form of GRRFs, Burial Report forms and so on, so I thank them heartily once again.

Both Valentin Rogosch, a krankentrager (stretcher bearer),…

…and Max Uebrick, a landsturmmann – the Landsturm was a military reserve corps of older soldiers – were killed on the same day, 25th June 1918.

There are a number of Jewish headstones, or stelle, in this cemetery, that on the right here a gefreiter killed on 20th April 1918; we shall encounter most of the others on our wander.

Of the close to two thousand burials…

…most were buried here at the time of their deaths, although after the war the French authorities brought another 360 German soldiers, whose graves were all originally located elsewhere in various burial grounds in this area of French Flanders, here to be reburied.

It wasn’t until 1926, however, that agreement between French & German authorities allowed the VDK, the following year, to begin their renovation of this, and other, German war cemeteries in France; one imagines that, by that time, they were in quite a state!

By the early 1930s the VDK had taken over the running of all German cemeteries in France, their emblem the signature five crosses now to be seen on many of the cemetery gates (but not this one).

Trees were planted, grass laid and boundaries marked, but the permanent marking of the graves themselves, due initially to financial restrictions, would then have to wait until another German invasion in 1940 had been, ultimately, repelled, the VDK resuming their work in 1946.

Here at Laventie, the cemetery was re-landscaped in 1965, but it was not until the 1970s that the wooden crosses marking the graves were replaced by the metal ones seen today, and presumably the eight Jewish stelle, two of which can be seen above, were also added at the same time.

Both of these (above & below) men were killed in early August 1918,…

…with another here, an unteroffizier (sergeant) killed in the last week of July,…

…also seen over the right shoulder of this cross, that of an unknown German soldier, one of just seventeen unidentified men buried here.

August 1918 casualties (above & below),…

…with a broken, presumably vandalised – these things don’t break of their own accord – Jewish headstone just beyond.

And another of the Jewish headstones, this man killed in May 1918.  Allow your eye to wander toward the only pollarded tree in this picture, and just beyond you will spot a wreath, or the back of a wreath,…

…which looks like this – a typical Germanic effort – from the front, this soldier killed in June 1918.

Time to make our way back…

…towards the Cross,…

…and the toothpicks (the burials in the foreground were made in June 1918)…

…to the cemetery entrance.

Excellent photograph, usually described as a ‘German trench near Laventie’, although personally I would have thought it much more likely to be a captured British or Portuguese trench being shown off to the cameraman by the German officer on the right.  If you know how to spot the difference between a German and British sandbag, I’m all ears.

Our journey now continues almost due south for around a thousand yards towards the village of Fauquissart, and the cemetery closest to the old front lines that we shall be visiting on this first half of our tour.