Ypres – Divisional Cemetery

It has to be said that, over these many years now, and twenty five Flanders trips, or however many it is, I have generally been very lucky with the weather. 

But not so this day.  This day, well, you brave the elements or you watch the telly.

Another cemetery with just a single plot,…

…these long rows ahead of us on entry…

…are among the later burials made here, most of the earlier graves to be found at the far end of the cemetery in front of the house,…

…with the remainder…

…among the three rows that run parallel to the road seen here, Row E on the left, Row C in the middle, and Row A closest to the road (you can view the cemetery plan, with the usual thanks to the CWGC, here).  Last post you may remember that I mentioned that the outskirts of Ypres now reach as far west as this road that runs past both Railway Chateau Cemetery & Divisional Cemetery, and here you can see the proof; those are the offices of the Ieper Roads & Traffic Agency on the other side of the road, and as you’ll see in many of the later photos in this post, the view the other way is still nothing but farmland.  For the moment.

The last burials in Row A are also later burials, New Zealanders killed at the end of 1917 or early 1918, including the man whose headstone is pictured above.  Major Victor Rogers DSO, New Zealand Field Artillery, was killed in action on 8th February 1918 aged 29, among the final half-a-dozen burials made in this cemetery.

I don’t believe we have ever looked at New Zealand service papers before, but, surprise surprise, they are pretty much like any other.  Born in England (Kent, actually), as was the case with more than just a few of the Anzacs who joined up in the early war years,…

…Victor must have been in New Zealand for some years prior to the war; the earliest date I can find here is March 1913, at the top of this section of the form, at which time he was a lieutenant.

Details of wounds and a period of suspected German measles in May 1917.

His Distinguished Service Order was gazetted on 1st January 1917, ‘During operations in September 1916 this officer, though wounded, continued to carry on his duties in a most efficient manner. He has always displayed great coolness and has brought his battery to a most satisfactory state of efficiency. During operations on the 15th September he re-organised and practically took over command of the 12th Battery when its O.C. became a casualty. This he again did in a most efficient manner on the 25th when its O.C. was again a casualty, and by his personal supervision and coolness, instilled confidence in the battery personnel during heavy shellfire.’

He was killed on 8th February 1918, the details of his death noted in this extract from ‘The New Zealand Division 1916 – 1919: A Popular History Based on Official Records (Chapter VIII – Winter at Ypres)’, which also deftly highlights the dangers of life behind the lines in the winter of 1917/1918, not just from enemy artillery, but from Gotha bombers: ‘About the beginning of February [1918] the enemy began definitely to imitate our policy of an irregular series of sharp brief ‘shell-storms’ on cross-roads and other known centres of activity. Rations for the front line troops were for this reason not infrequently delayed. In one of these concentrated local bombardments as early as December, the 2nd Otago limbers were caught at the transport-head at Wattle Dump. Twenty 5.9-in. shells were hurled at the dump in a few minutes, and in addition to other casualties in men and animals, Otago lost 3 company-quartermaster-sergeants of whom 1 was killed and 2 wounded. On these rear tracks many valuable lives were lost. Major V. Rogers, D.S.O., O.C. 5th Battery, was killed on Jabber Track near Railway Wood.  Capt. L. S. Serpell, M.C., the Regimental Medical Officer of 1st Canterbury, with the orderly-room sergeant and other members of the Headquarters staff were killed at Jargon Cross Roads, a place of particularly evil associations, behind Glencorse Wood. Near Wattle Dump Major R. D. Hardie, D.S.O., Divisional Machine Gun Officer, was severely wounded.  To these rear areas, and the battery positions, and especially to the wagon lines and camps west of Ypres, Gothas also paid continual attention. On clear frosty nights the sky was often asound [sic] with the low-pitched drone of enemy aircraft and stabbed with the shafts of our searchlights. The Division, however, never again experienced such misfortune from the air as it had suffered in the autumn, and the casualties in men and animals that were incurred in January and were to be incurred in March were due, not to bombs, but to high-velocity long-range guns’.

More New Zealand artillerymen, the man on the left killed in January 1918, the other two men both killed on 4th October 1917.  The two headstones on the left are carved from Portland stone, the one on the right is a replacement Botticino marble headstone; note the different-sized Broad Cross inscribed on this laser-etched headstone compared to the other two.

The names on the headstones we have just seen, including Victor Rogers, are listed at the top of the left-hand GRRF, and the bottom of the right-hand GRRF.  However most of the burials in the row, as you can see on the right, are from April or May 1915, apart from one man buried in the middle of the row,…

…actually another Rogers, this man a Royal Engineer sapper who died on 27th May 1918, and who was the final burial made in the cemetery.

Continuing down the row, these burials from early May 1915 (above & below),…

…and these, at the start of the row, from April 1915, among the first burials made here.

Looking back along the row, which is actually split into two halves with a significant gap in the middle; the headstone slightly out of alignment with the rest of the row, the furthest headstone to the left in this shot, is that of Sapper Rogers.  The row on the right of this picture is Row C, a few of the burials at this end of the row from April 1915, but by far the majority from May 1915,…

…all of whom, I am fairly certain, are casualties from the fighting at Hill 60 during the Second Battle of Ypres.  These men, a corporal, on the left, and six privates, are all 2nd Bn. Dorsetshire Regiment men given dates of death of either 1st or 2nd May 1915,…

…the battalion war diary detailing casualty figures of ‘one killed, one wounded’ followed by ‘Killed by gas poisoning – Lieut C. G. Butcher, 52 other ranks’.

The Dorset casualties can be seen here on the left, but what these two GRRFs show is that the majority of the men in Row C are men of the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding Regiment), all of whom died on 5th May 1915, gassed, just like the Dorsets, at Hill 60.

The Germans had only introduced the French & British defending Ypres to the delights of chlorine gas a few weeks earlier, on 22nd April,…

…and the first rudimentary gas masks were hardly the ghoulish, although somewhat more effective, affairs of later in the war, these British soldiers sporting the early ‘goggles & soaked cotton wool’ style, the photo probably taken as early as May 1915.

The men of the Duke of Wellington’s now lie here,…

…many of their headstones bearing three names, with the headstone third from the left…

…and here on the far right, bearing just a cross and the regimental emblem, serving for all the headstones on either side.

Their war diary for 5th May records that ‘At 8 a.m. the enemy sent over asphyxiating gas with disastrous effects. The Bn had to vacate HILL 60 and trenches 40, 43, 45 on account of there being practically no men left to hold them.’, and later ‘Nearly all the men were very badly asphyxiated and large numbers died from the effect.’

Why on earth are these men buried three to a grave, I hear you ask?  Well I think there is a very good explanation.  They aren’t.  It may be that these men were indeed buried here soon after they died, but, saturated with gas as they would have been, and to protect the burial party, I am quite sure they would have been placed in a single mass grave instead of in individual graves.  Or it may be that when, on 5th May 1915, these men, and the Dorsets, died enveloped in clouds of yellow gas, their corpses laid on the battlefield, or in old, unused trenches, for more than two years, because on that date, Hill 60 would pass into the hands of the Germans, and it would not be until 7th June 1917, when the nineteen huge mines, the furthest north at Hill 60, devastated the German front lines and presaged the first unequivocal British victory on the Western Front for two years, that the hill would return to British hands, and finally, the men who died in 1915 could be given a proper burial.  That this occurred, I have no doubt.  Whether that is what happened to these men, we will never know.

Only the final half-a-dozen burials in the row are from later in 1915, with one more New Zealand artilleryman killed in January 1918 at the end.  And we shall encounter more New Zealand burials later because by the end of 1917 this cemetery was almost exclusively being used to bury men of the New Zealand Field Artillery.

The third of the three rows that run parallel to the road is Row E, the burials at this end from late 1915 or early 1916,…

…including one of only five unidentified men buried in this cemetery, this Royal Fusilier killed on 18th February 1916.

August (left) & October 1915 burials further down the row.  Quite why the two Lincolnshire Regiment privates, right & centre, have different styles of headstone (Latin Cross centre, Broad Cross on the right) I have no idea, but perhaps it has something to do with the man in the centre being attached from the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps.

The four burials that start the row…

…are men who died in May 1915, and the man buried fifth from the camera, whose headstone I failed to photograph in close-up (but someone else has – inset below),…

…is Lieutenant Colonel Percy Cecil Evans-Freke, commanding officer of the Leicestershire Yeomanry, who was killed at the Battle of Frezenberg Ridge on 13th May 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres.  I have no idea why he had two original wooden crosses (insets left) considering both still exist, but both are on display in Bisbrooke Church in Rutland.

With the three long rows we have just seen and the road now on the far left, this view looks down the length of the cemetery,…

…the nine headstones of Row B directly in front of us.  The five men buried at the far end of the row are also Duke of Wellington’s Regiment casualties from 5th May – all twenty nine men of the regiment buried here died on 5th May 1915.  The headstones in Row D behind are all, barring one, also 1915 casualties, the four on their own, centre left…

…all mid-May 1915 casualties,…

…the R.F.A. driver on the left here the only non-1915 burial, his date of death 9th February 1916, the Lincolnshire private on the right an October 1915 casualty,…

…and of the final four headstones, the two on the left are July 1915 casualties, and the two on the left May 1915 casualties.  Of the 283 burials in this cemetery, eighty two men died between the first burial, on 23rd April 1915, and 20th May 1915, dates which correspond closely with those of the 2nd Battle of Ypres (22nd April – 25th May 1915), after which the next burial was some three weeks later on 12th June.

Row F, these men all summer 1915 casualties,…

…those closest to the camera all men killed in July 1915.  By far the majority of the burials in this cemetery are men killed in 1915,…

…and thus the burials in Rows G & H (nearest camera), all from 1915, roughly follow the chronological trend we have seen so far,…

…these men in Row H all killed on 17th October 1915.

This single grave at the start of Row I (close-up below), and the other burials in the row, are all from the latter months of 1915.

Row I on the left and Row J, on the right, the burials at this end still from 1915.  There are seventeen burials from the early months of 1916 to be found here, a few in Row J, seven in Row L, the remainder scattered, but after 31st May 1916 the cemetery remained unused for well over a year.

On 31st July 1917, day one of what became known as the Battle of Passchendaele, three men of the Royal Irish Rifles were buried here, but it was not until the New Zealand Field Artillery buried eight men here on 4th October 1917, and another seven, along with an engineer, on 11th October, that the cemetery began to be used on a more regular basis once more.

Soon after, on 15th October 1917, the Canadians too began burying casualties here, also mainly artillerymen, these men at the end of Row K among twenty two Canadians buried here in 1917.

Original Canadian grave markers in Row K, these men’s names to be found on the GRRF below.

Between 4th October 1917 and early February 1918, sixty four New Zealand soldiers would be buried here (and one more in March 1918), all but the aforementioned engineer being artillerymen,…

…and most buried in the final two rows.  The New Zealanders buried in Row L mainly died in October 1917,…

…as did these three Canadian gunners, all killed on 18th October 1917.  In the right background, the final two headstones in Row M also display a Canadian emblem,…

…although a closer look reveals two names on each headstone (the second name on the centre headstone almost hidden by the shrub, but it is there, trust me),…

…all four men killed on 25th or 26th November 1917.

Barring one other Canadian (whose headstone is attempting to sneak into the picture in the bottom left),…

…the remainder of the row consists entirely of New Zealand casualties, a large number, such as these men, killed in October 1917,…

…and a few, such as here, in December 1917,…

…although the first ten graves at the beginning of the row- take note of the gap between the six headstones closest to the camera and the four on the left – are all men who died in early 1918.

The six men were all killed on 10th January 1918, and the four men on 1st February, almost certainly more artillerymen blown to pieces by their opposite numbers a few miles to the east.

Away in the distance, the chain of hills beyond Mont Kemmel (somewhere off to the left) across the French border briefly appear through the mist and rain…

…and so, with a final look towards the cemetery entrance, beyond the headstones, and the pylons and industry now so close on the other side of the road,…

…we take our leave, and however much I wanted to visit one more cemetery on this dismal day, Baldrick was having none of it.  Wise man.  Probably.