French Flanders: From Laventie to Neuve Chapelle Part Seven – Fauquissart Military Cemetery

Fauquissart Military Cemetery, five hundred yards south west of the crossroads at the centre of present-day Fauquissart, is a small, oblong, cemetery with widely spaced headstones that you just know on arrival will be a tricky one to photograph, at least in any kind of interesting way. 

So we shan’t go in yet.  Instead, we shall look at this map extract from March 1917 with the cemetery, the closest to the front that we shall visit all tour, marked in green, just behind the British front line (in blue, German in red).  And this was pretty much, with minor variations, the state of play here for three years,…

…until the Germans swept across the area in April 1918, this British aerial photo taken the following month, by which time Fauquissart lay some miles behind the German lines.

Shot of the ruined church at Fauquissart, supposedly taken from the British front line trench – the low angle of the shot certainly suggests the photographer was unwilling to expose himself unnecessarily – and beyond the church in the right background, a house, its roof shattered,…

…which rather handily leads us to another map, although this one, covering a larger area than the previous two, is somewhat different from the norm (and not just because the cemetery is here marked as a small blue square).  What this map shows is the field-of-view of a British photographer positioned in the attic of a shattered Fauquissart building, perhaps the one in the previous photo, the village itself marked with an orange circle.  Shooting towards the Aubers Ridge through a gap in the roof tiles, he could see from Fromelles (pink line to yellow circle) to south of Aubers (green line to red circle), a distance of about a mile and a half.  And his efforts still survive, or most of them,…

…this first of two non-joining shots looking towards the ruined church in Fromelles.  The sandbags denoting the British front line can be seen in the immediate foreground, with the German front line crossing the centre of both this shot and the one below.

It’s worth noting how gently the land rises towards and beyond the German lines,…

…and even if we pan to our right (click to enlarge), whereby the famed Aubers Ridge comes into full view, nowhere does the land rise more than around 130 feet.  The four pictures used to create this panorama follow.

Fauquissart would be in the front line when the British attacked at Neuve Chapelle in March 1915, Aubers two months later in May, and Fromelles in July 1916, by which time I doubt if there were any buildings left in the village from where a photographer could take such pictures.  The Germans knew that all sorts of British units – engineers, signallers, artillery observers and so on – were working, unseen, in the village, and over time they reduced it to ruins.  Portuguese troops would take over this sector in 1917, and would be manning the trenches in April 1918 when the Germans attacked – despite what you may read elsewhere, for a few hours the Portuguese defenders in the front line trenches here put up a spirited defence before both they and the British 40th Division to their north, were forced to retreat.  The ruins of Fauquissart would be finally recaptured from the Germans on 5th September 1918.

The cemetery entrance is over to the left,…

…and on our way, as we peer over the wall, it’s worth mentioning that of the ten rows of graves that comprise this burial ground, the first six are almost exclusively made up of casualties from just two battalions from two regiments, one of which will play the major part in our narrative.

Inside the entrance we find the ‘In Perpetuity’ tablet and cemetery register in its little cubby hole – please do sign your name if you visit any of the cemeteries – and as we do so, there follows a brief resumé of the state of play in French Flanders in 1914, as the war of movement gave way to the static trench warfare that followed.

As early as the second week of October 1914, German cavalry patrols were scouring the Laventie & Fauquissart (above, pre-war) area for signs of French troops, although within a few days it would be the British Expeditionary Force, moving up from their positions on the Aisne, who would first begin deploying in this area.  The German advance forces withdrew, knowing that far larger numbers of German troops were by now approaching French Flanders, their first encounters with the British taking place along the Aubers Ridge soon after.  The first British trenches at Faquissart were begun in October 1914, and for the next three and a half years, apart from local adjustments, their positions would hardly change at all.

It amazes me, frankly, that this little cemetery somehow survived throughout that time, but it seems it did.  As we enter, the two burials at the start of Row A in the foreground are both 2nd Bn. Royal Berkshire Regiment privates killed in November & December 1914,…

…their names the first two on this GRRF, all the rest of the burials in the row also being men of the Royal Berkshires.  It’s worth noting that apart from Private Lamb, the burials in the row are all chronological, beginning at the far end of the row, the same also applying to Row B, but not to Row C, at the bottom of the form, and that both these latter rows contain exclusively 2nd Bn. The Rifle Brigade burials.  It is also interesting to note that the first two rows originally included three men, including Private Lamb, whose identity was at the time uncertain, hence the ‘Believed to be’ in the first column, although all were later (apparently) correctly identified.

The cemetery was used for just eight months and contains 105 burials, the first being made in November 1914, and the final ones in June 1915.  Nineteen are unidentified, and all of these, apart from the man pictured in the centre here, buried beneath what is the third headstone in Row A, are to be found in the final few rows at the far end of the cemetery.

At which point it’s time to introduce the first of a series of pages from the 2nd Bn. Royal Berkshire Regiment war diary covering their time in the Fauquissart trenches (click to enlarge).  This first page deals with their disembarkation at Le Havre on 5th November 1914, their first day in the Fauquissart trenches on the 14th, and, on the last two lines and marked with stars (as are the pages that follow), their first fatalities, a couple of days later, one man killed on 16th November, and two on 17th,…

…all three now buried here at the end of Row A, the earliest burials in the cemetery.

The next four headstones are dated, from the far end, 24th November (twice), 4th December & 10th December 1914,…

…the two 24th November casualties marked by the second of the three stars I have added to this page.  The final star marks the death of Private Lamb, buried at the start of the row, on 27th November, but the first star, on the first line, marks the death of a man killed in action on 18th November, and there are no burials from that date in this row.  Maybe we will find him elsewhere later.  This second page begins a pattern that continues for most of the next month, a routine of four days in the trenches and two days in billets, on each occasion relieving, or being relieved by, 2nd Bn. The Rifle Brigade…

…before, on 14th December the battalion moved, although not very far, to the trenches at Rue Bacquerot, where they relieved the 2nd Bn. Devonshire Regiment.  This page also records the deaths of four more men, the first on 3rd December (I suggest this is the man now in Row A whose death is given as 4th December), the next on 10th December, which corresponds with the headstone closest to the camera in the previous shot, and then two men on 11th December,…

…who now share the same grave beneath the two headstones on the right.  Logic dictates that the unidentified man in the front row, on the left here, was buried during the week the Berkshires were away from the Fauquissart trenches, and indeed the earlier GRRF shows that he was indeed originally identified as a man of the Rifle Brigade, which fits that theory nicely.

The headstones of the two privates killed on 11th December are also good examples of, on the left, a hand-inscribed Portland Stone headstone, and on the right, a more modern Botticini laser-etched headstone.

The battalion spent a week in the Rue Bacqueret trenches before returning to billets in Laventie for a couple of days and then once again relieving 2nd Bn. The Rifle Brigade in the front line at Fauquissart on 23rd December, their first fatality since leaving Fauquissart ten days earlier, and the final one of the year, occurring that same day.  And back at the start of the row (below), the headstone on the right, next to Private Lamb, is the second of the first two names on the earlier GRRF, Private Nunn, and he was indeed killed on 23rd December.  And then came Christmas, and truces and fraternisation, as the war diary pages above & following explain.

The burials in both Row B, in the foreground, & Row C behind, are all men of 2nd Bn. The Rifle Brigade, and apart from the first burial in each row, both of which are men killed on 8th February 1915, the burials all range from late November 1914 to mid-January 1915.

These two unrelated Newmans near the start of Row C (see earlier GRRF) were killed a couple of days apart in December 1914.  Behind, Row D contains only 2nd Bn. Royal Berkshire burials, all, except one, men killed in January 1915.  And that one man, it turns out, and I apologise for the lack of a close-up, is buried at the start of the row, beneath the headstone furthest to the left in this shot, and he is the man killed on 18th November who was mentioned in the war diary, and of whom we could find no trace in Row A.  That’s because he was buried on his own here at the time, for some reason we shall never know.

Continuing along Row C, this Rifle Brigade casualty…

…and these, all December 1914 or January 1915 casualties, the January 1915 Royal Berkshire burials continuing in Row D behind, the Rifle Brigade men among the final names on the GRRF from earlier, and talking of GRRFs,…

…this one follows the previous one, the final three Rifle Brigade men in Row C at the top, then the Royal Berkshire burials in Row D, beginning with Private Samuel, the 18th November 1914 casualty, followed by more Rifle Brigade casualties in Row E.  One wonders how many of these men had exchanged cigarettes and chocolate with their soon-to-be-killers over the Christmas period just a short time before.

The 2nd Bn. Royal Berkshire war diary continues into 1915 as the rotation in and out of the trenches at Fauquissart with 2nd Bn. The Rifle Brigade resumes, the first three deaths of the year taking place on 1st, 5th & 6th January, although only two of these are listed on the GRRF we’ve just seen, for reasons we shall see later.

Four men were then killed on a single day, 12th January, and another on the 17th, all now buried in Row D,…

…two of the 12th January burials pictured here.  And while we’re here, if we zoom in on the headstones in the rows behind,…

…the graves in Row E are once again all men of the Rifle Brigade, the burials all from the second half of January 1915 – the two riflemen pictured killed on 15th (left) & 14th January – with a single February burial at each end of the row.  Behind them, Row F contains ten burials of which eight are Royal Berkshires, and there are four Rifle Brigade men in Row G, and for those of you suffering from brain-strain after all that,…

…this cemetery plan shows all in graphic colour, 2nd Bn. Royal Berkshire Regiment burials in green, 2nd Bn. The Rifle Brigade burials in mauve, unknown burials in blue and other regiments in white.  Totalling it all up, these rows contain 35 Rifle Brigade and 32 (including two special memorials) Royal Berkshire Regiment graves, a total of 67 out of the total of 86 identified men.

Looking through the headstones of Row C at Row D, the headstone on the right the man killed on 17th January, that on the left one of two men killed on 24th January (the other out of shot further left)…

…both mentioned here in the war diary, as well as two men killed on 29th January who are now buried at the start of Row F.

One striking aspect of these diary pages is the number of men sent to hospital on a daily basis, far outweighing the numbers wounded and killed over the course of each month.  Flanders winters pull few punches, believe me, and spending much of the time out in the elements took its toll.

Unidentified burials in Row J in the foreground, and one of six identified Middlesex Regiment burials from June 1915 – the final burials made here – that make up Row K behind.  Beyond the Cross,…

…three special memorials to men ‘Known to be buried in this cemetery’.   Two of these are Royal Berkshire men,…

…one of whom is our missing casualty from 5th January 1915.  As for the other man, here given a date of death of 18th February,…

…well, the war diary mentions three men killed on 3rd, 4th & 5th of February, and Row F contains three Royal Berkshire men whose dates of death are given as 4th & 5th, so I would suggest these are the same men,…

…but of a death on 18th February, there is no mention.  In fact the battalion’s final death in February took place on 22nd, this man also buried in Row F.

End of the month, and end of the Berkshires’ tenure of the Fauquissart trenches.  Not that they were off for a rest, nor would they be leaving the area, because in ten days they would find themselves, as would 2nd Bn. The Rifle Brigade, at Neuve Chapelle,…

…where casualties over the four-day battle would be so much heavier than during their four months or so at Fauquissart, and it may be that we will encounter some of these men later in the tour.

West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Own) lance serjeant, closest to the camera, killed on 9th May 1915, one of only three identified men in Row J.

The high number of unidentified men – fifteen out of twenty one – in Rows H & J at this end of the cemetery may be down to a couple of reasons; because we are so close to the front lines here, this part of the cemetery may well have been wrecked by German shellfire at some point (the presence of the three special memorials we have just seen supports this view), although, as I said earlier, it surprises me that anything around here survived intact, or it may be that these men had lain on the battlefield for some time before their bodies could be brought in and buried, their identities lost in the meantime.  Who knows?

Panning left from the previous shot, looking south across the cemetery, Row H now closest to us.

More surreptitiously-taken views (above & below) looking from Fauquissart towards the Aubers Ridge.  In September 1915, somewhere around here, one Rifleman Kulbir Thapa, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Gurkha Rifles, Indian Army, won himself a Victoria Cross.  I mention it because we recently saw a statue of him atop the new memorial I showed you in Aldershot.

Next, we need to head a mile almost due west, where Rue du Bacquerot No. 1 Military Cemetery is one of the more unusual of the cemeteries we are visiting this tour.  Why would that be, I hear you ask?  Well, for a start, it’s got two Crosses of Sacrifice.  And that is unusual.