French Flanders: Neuve Chapelle Part Two – Neuve-Chapelle Farm Cemetery

Soldiers of the Corn. 

I don’t know what that means.  Anyway, blink and you’ll miss it.  This narrow passageway between the houses…

…leads to a cemetery,…

…and although it’s a bit of a trek to get there, you really couldn’t find a better example of a battlefield cemetery than this, as you’ll see as we look around.

What I will tell you, as we make our way to the entrance, is that the British front line once ran parallel to our grass track, just a few yards into the cornfield on our right, and that, one day in March 1915, these fields swarmed with British soldiers,…

…some of whom died here, and were buried in this little cemetery, close to where they fell.

The cemetery name is to be found on the panels on either side,…

…with the Cross of Sacrifice greeting us on entry.

From an administrative point of view, this is one of the more curious cemeteries you are likely to visit, which may not be very interesting, but is crucial to understanding the place.  There’s you, expecting me to describe a cemetery with three long lines of headstones (plus a few others),…

…whereas I am about to embark on a description of a cemetery of twenty three rows and a number of special memorials, because the rows have been lettered across the cemetery, as opposed to down the length of the cemetery, as the cemetery plan shows.

The only two headstones that are not (quite) in line but do constitute a row are here at the front, where Row A consists of the man who lies buried beneath the headstone closest to the camera, and the unidentified soldier furthest on the right of this shot (close-up below).

And if we return to the identified man in Row A, his headstone reveals a Lincolnshire Regiment private who died on 10th March 1915, and 10th March 1915 was, of course, the first day of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle and, according to the CWGC, ‘Neuve-Chapelle Farm Cemetery was begun by the 13th London Regiment (The Kensingtons) on the first day of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle’.  However, it was the second battalions of the Royal Berkshires, Lincolns & Royal Irish Rifles who attacked across these fields in the first wave (map later), with the 13th Bn. London Regiment (The Kensingtons) in the second wave.  Certainly, the cemetery contains far more Kensington burials than any other regiment, but only one of them has a date of death of 10th March.  So who’s to say that it wasn’t the Lincolns or the Royal Berkshires, both of whom buried a number of men killed on that first day here, who made the earliest burials?  You decide.

Rows B & C, all five men unidentified.  Thirty one of the sixty six men buried in this cemetery are unidentified,…

…and of the thirty five who are identified, twenty one of whom are Kensingtons, thirteen (all Kensingtons) are remembered by special memorials along the cemetery wall, as seen in the shot above, and all but one died between 10th & 16th March 1915.  According to their headstones, that is, although I think we might be able to narrow those dates down even further.

This is a Battle of Neuve Chapelle burial ground, make no mistake.  Twenty nine of the identified men who lie here died on 10th, 11th or 12th March 1915 (the dates of the battle are, officially, 10th to 13th March, and, curiously, there are no burials from 13th March here), with another five between 14th & 16th March 1915.  The Kensington private in the foreground above died on 12th March 1915 and is buried in Row D.

Row E with, on the left, the second of the five identified men of the 2nd Bn. Lincolnshire Regiment killed on 10th March, half-obscuring a third immediately behind in Row F.

The 2nd Bn. Lincolnshire’s war diary for March 1915.  The entry for 10th March, which begins here,…

…and continues here…

…and here, describes the battle in some detail, along with a long list of officer casualties, killed or wounded, on the right.

There’s a fourth 2nd Bn. Lincolnshire Regiment burial in Row G closest to the camera, next to another unidentified man on the left,…

…the third grave in the row another Kensington private killed on 12th March.  Behind, five of the six headstones in Rows H & I bear the emblem of the 2nd Bn. Royal Berkshire Regiment, although the grave at the end of Row H…

…is that of Rifleman W. Hunter D.C.M., Royal Irish Rifles, killed, according to his headstone, on 10th March aged 26.  The only man of the Royal Irish Rifles buried here, he was awarded the D.C.M. ‘for gallant conduct on 12th March 1915, when he conveyed an urgent message with great speed over ground swept by rifle and shell fire. It was open to Private Hunter to have gone with his message by a less dangerous route, but he went direct regardless of danger’.  Spotted the discrepancy?  In this shot he is flanked by two men of the Royal Berkshires in the row behind,…

…all five of the Royal Berkshire burials in Rows H & I,…

…men killed on 1oth March (one says 10/15th March), according to this GRRF (the final entries at the bottom), although not according to the CWGC database, two being given dates of death of 14th & 15th March for no apparent reason, and, of course, these are the dates that subsequently appeared on their headstones.  Which seems odd, doesn’t it?

These cemetery plan extracts show, on the left, the different dates of death of the men buried here according to the CWGC database, and therefore the dates to be found on their headstones, compared to, on the right, the different dates of death of the men buried here according to the Grave Registration Report Forms compiled back in the 1920s.  Surely the GRRF version makes far more sense (would you really choose to bury men killed a few days later among the men killed on 10th March?  That would simply have been horrible), and remembering that the headstones left white are all unidentified men, suggests that, most likely, the first two men in Rows A to K, twenty men in all, were all actually killed on 10th March, whatever it may say on their headstones.

Behind the Berkshire men in Row I in the foreground, the next seven rows, as far as Row P, contain eighteen burials, fifteen of whom are unidentified,…

…and most of which can be seen here.  The yellow flowers on the left…

…grow in front of one of the three identified men, buried here at the start of Row L, this Royal Berkshire Regiment private killed on 15th March.  The three other burials in Row L…

…are all unidentified, as are the men immediately behind in Rows M & N, except for the final burial in Row N, on the far right,…

…which is the grave of a Kensington private who died on 12th March.

With the final Lincolnshire private killed on 10th March buried here at the start of Row N,…

…we’ll return to the 2nd Bn. Lincolns’ war diary as it continues through 11th, 12th & 13th March (above & below),…

…until, the battle over, the diary, almost brusquely, at the end of such a detailed account, tells us that ‘total casualties during action of Neuve Chapelle – 7 officers killed – 8 officers wounded – 298 men killed and wounded.’

Rows O & P, all four men unidentified.

The single burial in Row Q is this Kensington private killed on 12th March, and the headstone behind on the right in Row R marks the grave of the only man buried here who was not a casualty of the Battle of Neuve Chapelle and its aftermath, this Wiltshire Regiment private buried in September 1918,…

…and listed on this second of only four GRRFs covering the burials in this cemetery.  As you can see at the very bottom of the form, two officers are buried in Row S,…

…both captains with the Kensingtons, and both killed on 14th March, according to the GRRF,…

…although Captain Gates’s headstone, on the left, is inscribed with a date of 12th March instead.  No, I don’t know why.

The final few rows, four of these six men unidentified.  In the foreground, this lieutenant of the Royal Horse Artillery, killed on 12th March, is the only burial in Row T,…

…with the only other identified man the single man buried in Row W,…

…another Kensington private killed on 12th March.

And there is presumably some good reason why his headstone faces in a different direction to the others, but again, make up your own story.

The final few rows once more, with the two Kensington captains in the foreground,…

…as we begin our journey back down the cemetery.  Take a look at the view in the background – for future reference – but as we go…

…we still have the two rows of special memorials along the boundary wall to visit,…

…the first seven of which are designated as ‘Special Memorials A’, all seven inscribed with ‘Known to be buried in this cemetery’ above the regimental emblem.

The thirteen special memorials, as this final GRRF tells us, are all to men ‘Buried in this Cemetery, actual graves unknown.’, and all are ’13th. Battn. London Regt. Killed in action 10th to 12th March. 1915.’  In other words, all thirteen are Kensingtons.

Interestingly, the headstones all have individual dates of death, although quite how these were ascertained I don’t exactly know.  The earliest dates of death, 10th & 11th March, are at this end, the eighteen-year-old private closest to the camera the only Kensington headstone in this cemetery with 10th March inscribed upon it,…

…while four of the first five from this end are given dates of death of 12th March.  Despite the GRRF you have just seen, one of these headstones, third from the camera, is inscribed with a date of 16th March.

Looking towards the cemetery entrance, and if by now you’re knackered, on the far left…

…there’s a seat where you can rest your weary bones and consider the actions that took place in this very field, and those surrounding, in March 1915.

You might need a map, and this one will do very nicely, showing, as it does, the British lines and deployment around Neuve Chapelle on the eve of battle, with the dotted red lines showing the British positions at the end of the first day.  Our current location, just yards behind the British front line, is marked as a green dot, the German front line no more than a hundred yards away at this point (and even closer to our left, where you can see the houses in the previous photograph).  The Battle of Neuve Chapelle was intended to support a French attack on the Vimy Ridge which, as it turned out, never took place, as many of the French troops required were tied up in the Second Battle of Ypres further north.  Nevertheless, the British attack still went ahead, the intention being to capture the Aubers Ridge and perhaps, with a bit of luck, open the way to Lille ten miles beyond.

Despite inclement weather, the first day of the battle, which began at 7.30 a.m. on 10th March 1915 with a thirty five minute bombardment by 330 guns, started well, British & Indian troops in the centre of the attack advancing a mile or so, and capturing Neuve Chapelle itself by mid-morning.  Thereafter, stiffening German resistance, particularly on the flanks, and a gap caused by attacking troops to the south moving too far to their right, would prevent further advances, while communication difficulties in the heat of battle – the report on the battle stated that the First Army command system had ‘disintegrated’ – a serious lack of artillery ammunition, indeed of supplies in general, and a German counter-attack on 12th March, would see the British attack halted, before being abandoned on 15th March.

Nevertheless, the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was the first time that the British had managed to break through the German lines on the Western Front, and although of little strategic importance, it did show that the British could successfully combine artillery & infantry in a coordinated offensive, and it did show the benefits of a short hurricane bombardment followed by a surprise attack, a tactic repeated, if somewhat half-heartedly, and without success*, on 9th May 1915 at Aubers, and then promptly forgotten for the next two years.

*partly because the Germans had seen that their defences at Neuve Chapelle had not been srong enough, and had spent the two months inbetween adding more lines of trenches, more barbed wire, and more machine guns.

As we know, the headstones in the second row of special memorials, designated as ‘Special Memorials B’, are also only to men of the Kensingtons, the four closest to the camera killed on 12th March,…

…and the two at this end 11th March, and all are ‘Known to be buried in this cemetery’.

British & Indian casualties between 10th & 13th March 1915 at Neuve Chapelle were estimated at around 11,000, with German losses put at around 10,000, although there is a certain amount of, relative, disagreement on specific numbers to this day.

I suggested taking note of the view to the east beyond the cemetery earlier, and just behind those trees on the right, about three hundred yards away and therefore, although still in the same cornfield, some yards behind the German front line as it was on 10th March 1915, is Neuve Chapelle British Cemetery, our next destination.

I rarely visit Flanders in the summer months, mainly because I like an unimpeded view of the battlefields, and summer foliage often obstructs,…

…but come here on a day when the wind is rustling the corn sheaves,…

…and it’s not so difficult to imagine the bullets whistling across the ground, and men falling where now the corn grows tall.

It may be that one day this little cemetery will be surrounded by buildings, as the modern world encroaches, unless underground workings from a hundred years ago – and there were plenty over the course of the war – prevent such modernization,…

…but for now it remains alone here in the fields, oh so close to where the men buried within died.  Long may it remain so.

This cracking little map of Neuve Chapelle in 1915 before the battle shows the British front line as a dotted black line, with Neuve Chapelle Farm Cemetery marked in green.  The German front lines, in red, curve around the west of the village, and now you can see the location of Neuve Chapelle British Cemetery, across the other side of the field and marked in mauve, just behind them.  Next post.