The Aubers Ridge Part Two – Aubers Ridge British Cemetery

It’s a rough old day up on the Aubers Ridge. 

The clouds are low, there’s mist around, and, trust me, the rain, although perhaps not so evident in these pictures, is cold and very wet.

Perfect conditions, really, for a visit to Aubers Ridge British Cemetery.

It’s not much of a ridge, maybe 130 feet at its highest if you’re lucky.  This photograph, taken on 11th November 1918, shows German blockhouses that would stand proud at the top until the final weeks of the war.

The cemetery was created after the Armistice, a short distance behind what had been the German front lines, the men buried within all either found on the battlefields surrounding Aubers, or moved from smaller cemeteries in the area that were later closed down,…

…as this map shows you, once I explain it, our current location beneath the yellow oblong within the pink square.  The green highlighted squares, each measuring 500 x 500 yards, show where bodies were found, after the war, and reburied here in Aubers Ridge British Cemetery, although two important points should be made before we continue; firstly, I am in no way suggesting that all the men found in each of the green squares were subsequently buried in this cemetery, as there may well have been bodies found in the same squares that are now buried in other cemeteries.  Or there may not.  Secondly, I find it inconceivable that, after the war, bodies – both British & German – were not found in every single square, shaded or not, on this map, all of whom were subsequently reburied in other cemeteries that you can visit to this day.   Makes you think, doesn’t it?  The orange-shaded area…

…is reproduced here in close-up in this December 1915 map extract, which shows our current location now in orange way down in the bottom right-hand corner, and two other cemeteries that we have previously visited; Fauquissart Military Cemetery, the small yellow oblong in square 24, and Laventie German Military Cemetery, the bright orange irregular hexagon at the very top of the map in square 18.  The other eight dots are all British military cemeteries that existed at the end of the war, many of which were originally begun by men of the Indian Corps, but were concentrated elsewhere after the Armistice, and exist no longer*.  Extrapolate this across the whole of Belgium & northern France, and you get an idea of what the countryside might have looked like had all the cemeteries been allowed to remain.

*From top: Rue Masselot (2nd Lincolns) Cemetery (Brown); Rue de Bacquerot (Wangerie Post) New Military Cemetery (Dark Blue); Rue de Bacquerot (Wangerie Post) Old Military Cemetery (Light Green); Rue de Bacquerot (Winchester Post) New Military Cemetery (Dark Green); Rue de Bacquerot (Winchester Post) Military Cemetery (Turquoise); Winchester Road Cemetery (Mauve); Baluchi Road Cemetery, Neuve Chapelle (Pink); Scottish Rifles (2nd) Cemetery, Neuve Chapelle (Olive Green).

We begin our tour here where, most unusually in this cemetery, all but one of the men in the two rows of Plot VIII are identified,…

…with the only unidentified man buried in the plot to be found second from the left in Row B in the background.  Across the whole cemetery, just 278 of the 722 men buried here are identified.  The CWGC website tells us that all these men in Plot VIII were once buried in two plots at Winchester Post Military Cemetery, on the Rue-du-Bacquerot, although to be strictly accurate, as we like to be, there were two cemeteries, just yards apart, Rue de Bacquerot (Winchester Post) Military Cemetery (marked as a turquoise dot in square 23 on the map) & Rue de Bacquerot (Winchester Post) New Military Cemetery (the dark green dot also in square 23) from which 123 bodies, all but six identified, were exhumed and reburied here in 1925.  Both Plots VIII & Plot VII, across the cemetery (here’s the cemetery plan, courtesy, as always, of the CWGC), consist only of burials from Winchester Post, and there are more to be found in Plots IV, V & VI.

Winchester Post, a strongpoint of interconnected trenches crossing a long communication trench called Winchester Street, is marked on this map extract from June 1918, at which time this was all German territory, and British maps such as this one showed all the detail they had been keen to conceal for the previous four years.  There was a battalion headquarters and a dressing station in the farm buildings that are marked, surrounded by a moat, on the map; the two Winchester Post cemeteries, which were used mainly between November 1914 & February 1916, were a short distance in front.  There’s still a farm today very close to the same spot, and traces in the fields immediately north of Winchester Road (now Rue Hubert) from where these men were exhumed if you care to look on Google Maps (other search engines are available).  Note the plethora of mine craters – I count seventeen – littering what was once No Man’s Land, right in front of the old German front line, in the bottom right-hand corner of the map.

The men buried in Plot II are all men of the 61st (South Midland) Division killed on 19th & 20th July 1916,…

…British casualties from the Battle of Fromelles,…

…and of the one hundred and twenty burials in the plot,…

…only four are identified,…

…three of whom are listed on this Burial Return form.  The map reference, the same for all six soldiers listed, shows that these men were originally buried…

…in the red-bordered green square at the very top of the map.  And that square, as do many of the green-shaded squares on the left of our map, covers No Man’s Land, between the British front line, in blue, and the German front line in red.  The Burial Return form confirms that all six men listed had no crosses on their original graves, the three men among them who could be identified done so by their identity discs, and I think we can presume that these men had lain in No Man’s Land (possibly buried by a night-time working party) since they had been killed, some years before they were found (the Burial Return form contains two stamps, both dated February 1920, and thus we know that the men listed had been exhumed, and reburied, by then).  The map also clearly shows the various German communication trenches between their front line and the second line running through the village of Aubers (mauve circle) and Fromelles (blue circle) up on the slightly higher ground of the ridge itself.

Rows of unidentified soldiers in Plot II.

Plot III contains 120 burials in total, of which thirty four are identified.  All are British, twenty of whom died at Fromelles on 19th July 1916,…

…and a look at the burial forms associated with these British casualties places their original burial sites in three areas close behind the old British front line just north of Fauquissart, as I have marked on this map extract (again, from the summer of 1918);

At least eight identified and two unidentified men, four of whom are listed on the above Burial Return form, were exhumed from where I have marked the green dot, three identified and four unidentified from the mauve dot, and ten men, including one unidentified, from the light blue dot.  That’s a total of at least twenty seven men,…

…and yet if we transpose the orange highlighted area onto our earlier map, none of these three small burial grounds appear,…

…nor are they noted on the original map on which these cemeteries appear, from which this is an extract, the same area again highlighted in orange, and thus there is no record that they were ever named.  When I say that none of them is marked within the highlighted area, you can see as well as I can that there is a burial ground, numbered 576, within the area, but the index of the book from which this map comes tells us that this is the site of Fauquissart Military Cemetery, which it is absolutely not, the cemetery’s true site being where I have marked the yellow oblong.  However, 576 is very close indeed to the green dot from where at least ten men were later exhumed, and, if you look back a couple of maps, that green dot is very close to a British defensive position called Fauquissart Post.  How about this burial ground once being known as ‘Fauquissart Post Military Cemetery’, although that still doesn’t explain why Fauquissart Military Cemetery itself is not marked, having been there since 1914?  What may explain all is that when The White Cross Touring Atlas of the Western Battlefields* was originally published, it is thought (believe it or not, there is no publication date) in 1920, the Western Front, in many places, was still a wasteland and probably pretty difficult to navigate, and errors were simply inevitable.  And, as we have just seen, quite a lot of men had already been exhumed and reburied by 1920, their original places of burial likely no longer visible on the ground.

*162 pages, sixty of which are maps, similar to the one above, of the British sectors of the Western Front from Nieuwpoort on the Channel coast to Epernay, south of Rheims – available for less than twenty quid from a good online book store.

There are also a few men buried in Plot III who died during the Battle of Aubers Ridge on 9th May 1915, as listed above.  And while we are talking about that particular battle,…

…these pictures show Lieutenant Colonel Crofton Bury Vandeleur, commanding 2nd Bn. Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), briefing his men on their role in the forthcoming Battle of Aubers Ridge at their billets in the Rue de Bois.  By this time Vandeleur, who had first seen action in South Africa, had already fought at Mons and on the Marne before, towards the end of 1914, he had been wounded and captured while commanding the 1st Bn. Cameronians (Scottish Rifles).  It took him six weeks to escape and return to the U.K. to tell his tale to King George V, becoming, in the process, the first British officer to make a successful escape from German captivity.

He would return to France to command 2nd Bn. Cameronians, these shots showing Vandeleur, in greatcoat, being introduced to his men on 27th April 1915, but would be seriously wounded in the hip during the Battle of Festubert later in May 1915, after which he would be restricted to home command.  He had been Mentioned in Despatches and would be awarded a DSO in 1919, retired in 1922, and died in 1947 aged 80.  Incidentally, his son was Brigadier Joe Vandeleur DSO & Bar, who commanded the Irish Guards during Operation Market Garden in the Second World War, a role portrayed by Michael Caine in the film ‘A Bridge Too Far’.

Back in the cemetery, this is Plot VI, the short row closest to us on the far left, Row A,…

…seen here in close-up.  Three of the ten men in the row are identified,…

…two listed at the top of this Burial Return form, both exhumed from square M24, which happens to be the same square in which Fauquissart Military Cemetery is sited.  Most of you who have been following this website for more than a little while already know this, and quite possibly knew it anyway, but it is worth stressing that you should never, ever, assume that an exhumed soldier was reburied in the closest cemetery to the place of exhumation, these soldiers being a case in point.  Whatever the ‘rules’ were in the immediate post-war years regarding reburials, burying a soldier close to where he fell was not a consideration.  Anyway, the first man on the list, Sapper Bragg, and the last man on the list, Rifleman Bramley (also found in square M24, and now buried here in Plot IV) both died on 25th September 1915, the opening day of the Battle of Loos, more about which later.

The remaining rows in the plot all contain twenty burials; of the one hundred and ten men buried in the plot, fifty nine are identified British casualties, making this one of only two plots in the cemetery where identified men outnumber unidentified.

A few men buried in the plot, such as the Rifle Brigade men near the top of those listed here, are casualties of the final days (26th & 27th May 1915) of the Battle of Festubert.

The majority of the identified men in the plot, however, twenty nine in total, are October 1918 casualties.  It was in October 1918 that men of the 47th (London) Division finally captured the Aubers Ridge, from which the Germans had looked down on the British for the best part of four long years.  These men in Row D are among seventeen men who were killed during the capture of Beaucamps on 4th October 1918 or in the days following, and who were once buried in a burial ground, now long gone, known as Chateau-du-Flandre British Cemetery (and if you look back at the very first map in the post, and find the green square with a black border, you will have found the cemetery’s location) before being reburied here.  It’s worth noting the differences between the emblem in the centre, on what is a replacement headstone, and those on either side (click to enlarge).

Looking south west from the cemetery’s northern corner, Plot VI directly ahead of us.  On the far right of this panorama you can see a short row of headstones beneath the trees,…

…all three of which are Second World War casualties that have been added to Plot VI and designated as Row G.  In the centre, a Polish pilot who died in June 1941 and must have been buried by the Germans, and, on either side, two British artillerymen who died in 1939 (left) & 1940.

Looking straight down the centre of the cemetery, Plot III on the right, Plot IV opposite, and in the left foreground, Plot V Row A,…

…another of the shorter rows of ten burials, seen again here in the centre (note the single headstone along the boundary wall hiding behind the Stone of Remembrance on the far left),…

…and now four rows from the front, Plot V Row D in the foreground.  The men closest to the camera on the right in Row D (and in the foreground below) are Royal Warwickshire Regiment casualties killed during the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March 1915,…

…and you will notice that six of the first seven headstones in Row C behind are inscribed with the emblem of The Rifle Brigade, and all share the same date of death, 25th September 1915, a significant date in the chronology of the war.

The seven men’s names appear, and are highlighted, on these pages extracted from the 12th Bn. The Rifle Brigade war diary*; there are eight pages similar to those above (centre & left), and around the same amount with a handful of names such as the page on the right, all listing men from the battalion killed or wounded on 25th September or the succeeding days.  That’s a lot of names.  From just one battalion within one regiment.  But then the Battle of Loos caused huge numbers of casualties, and 25th September 1915 was just the first day.  Loos-en-Gohelle is around ten miles almost due south of here, so why did these men come to be buried here?  Presumably, they were brought here from some temporary burial ground further south, so let’s see what the relevant Burial Return forms tell us.

*Other than our seven men, I checked half-a-dozen of the more unusual names from the form on the left, and all their names appear on the Ploegsteert Memorial to the Missing.  I then encountered two names that I couldn’t find anywhere at all, began wondering, for the umpteenth time, how many men are remembered, officially, nowhere, and gave up.

The names of six of the seven Rifle Brigade men buried in Plot V appear on these two Burial Return forms, all with the same map reference for their original burial sites,…

…which is here, this a close-up of part of the map we’ve seen (twice) earlier with the now-gone cemeteries (and the still-existing Fauquissart Military Cemetery, in yellow) marked on it.  The blue square is M25, and the red & black dot shows the exact position from where these men were exhumed, according to the forms; five of the Rifle Brigade men were exhumed from beneath a single cross.  So they weren’t actually killed on the Loos battlefield at all, but their names appear on the list in the war diary, and they are thus ‘classified’ as Loos casualties, simply because of their dates of death.

Still in Plot V, Row F, in the eastern corner of the cemetery, contains burials from 1915, although none are from the major battles already mentioned.  The two men, an officer and N.C.O., who are buried closest to the camera are 2nd Bn. Cameronians killed in February 1915, a couple of months prior to when Lieutenant Colonel Vandeleur, whom we met earlier, took over the battalion.  Behind,…

…Row E is another shorter row of ten burials, the nine identified burials once again all from 1915.  This is the second plot in which there are more identified men than unidentified; fifty eight of the ninety one burials in the plot are identified British soldiers,…

…and include men killed in the final days’ fighting on the ridge in October 1918 (above left), and from the first day of the Battle of Loos, 25th September 1915 (above right).

The Stone of Remembrance (above & below) is placed close to the cemetery’s southern boundary,…

…between Plot V, on the right, and Plot IV on the left,…

…and immediately behind,…

…the single headstone I mentioned earlier, actually a Special Memorial to Lieutenant Donald Mackintosh Coles, Northumberland Fusiliers, who died on 27th October 1914, and is ‘believed to be buried in this cemetery’.

Thirty six of the ninety nine burials in Plot IV are identified, twenty nine British, five Australian and one Indian.

The Australians all died at Fromelles on 19th July 1916, a dozen of the British burials are from various times in 1914 & 1915 (none of these earlier casualties died during ‘major’ battles), but the majority of the British casualties in the plot are from the fighting on the ridge in October 1918.  This view looks east across Plot IV.

Looking roughly north across the cemetery, Plot IV Row E in the right foreground, and Plot I Row E on the left.

Once again, the vast majority of the burials in Plot I are both Australian and unidentified,…

…just eleven Australian soldiers of the one hundred and twenty men buried in the plot being identified,…

…all of whom were killed at Fromelles on 19th July 1916,…

…one of whom lies here, the third headstone from the right, in Row E.

Unidentified men in Row D (above & below).  I often wonder about the little anomalies one finds on headstones in CWGC cemeteries.  All three of the above headstones feature an Australian emblem, those on either side with the usual inscription ‘An Australian Soldier of the Great War’, and yet the one in the middle says ‘A Soldier of the Great War’ and beneath, ‘An Australian Regiment’.

Row upon row of unidentified Australians.

There is a single identified British soldier buried among the Australians in the plot, a casualty of the Aubers Ridge debacle of 9th May 1915 buried in Row B, the closest headstone on the left as we look east down the cemetery,…

…and seen again here in the front row on the far right; on the left, another of the identified Australian casualties from 19th July 1916,…

…both men listed among the first four burials on this GRRF.

Plot I Row B (above) & Row A (below).  One hundred and eight unidentified Australian soldiers are buried in this plot,…

…all, like the eleven identified Australians, casualties of the Battle of Fromelles.

View looking east across the southern half of the cemetery, Plot I in the foreground, Plot IV & Plot V beyond.

The final plot we have to visit, Plot VII, much like its counterpart across the cemetery that we saw on first entering,…

…is made up of just two rows of burials, all identified British soldiers originally buried in one or other of the Winchester Post cemeteries; ten of these men died in 1914, twelve in 1915 & seven in 1916.

Cross of Sacrifice.

Because this is the final cemetery in French Flanders we are likely to visit, certainly in the foreseeable future, it follows that, should you require a guide to the cemeteries a little further south that tell the tale of the awful events that took place during the Battle of Loos (above, dramatic photo of British troops advancing through smoke and gas on the first day at Loos) between 25th September & 8th October 1915, and resulted in around 60,000 British casualties, a fifth of the total casualties for the whole of 1915, it will likely be someone other than me.

Although I have passed through the battlefields of Loos, more than once (above, the spoil heap at Mazingarbe, below, those at Grenay), I have never had the opportunity to spend any time there, so instead,…

…we’ll return to the war diary of 12 Bn, The Rifle Brigade, and finish with seven pages and a memo…

…that describe, in detail, the actions of this one battalion on the first day of the biggest British attack of the war on the Western Front up to that point.

We’ll leave it there.

The final Aubers post takes us to the village of Le Maisnil, three miles along the ridge to the north east.

This entry was posted in Aubers, French Flanders, Fromelles. Bookmark the permalink.

13 Responses to The Aubers Ridge Part Two – Aubers Ridge British Cemetery

  1. nicholas Kilner says:

    Another truly excellent post MF. I will, at some point take you on a tour of the Loos battlefield. We must get a date in the diary and go. I was hoping to be there this weekend for the unveiling of a new memorial to the men of the 3rd Australian Tunnelling Coy at Hulluch. The first memorial to be erected to Australian tunnelling companies in France.
    Sadly work did not permit. Still, its an excuse to go over another time.

  2. Daisy in Melbourne Australia says:

    Very sad Magicfingers to see all those Australian mates of mine showing ‘Unidentified’… So far from home and no idea who they are…really sad for me. Fromelles was an epic stuff up…

    • Magicfingers says:

      Indeed Daisy. A total mess, Fromelles; as you know, we have covered the whole debacle elsewhere on the site. But seeing the rows and rows of unknown Aussies – and, for me, too, the rows of unknown Brits from Fromelles in Plot II – buried here made quite an impression, I can tell you.

  3. Theo Ydens says:

    Prachtig en uniek, onmisbaar voor personen die belangstelling hebben in onze geschiedenis en in het bijzonder in W.O. I .

  4. Theo Ydens says:

    Sorry, verkeerd getypt niet ongebruikelijk maar onmisbaar

  5. Margaret Draycott says:

    Excellent post M the diaries made particularly interesting and poignant reading.
    So a trip to LOOS on the horizon, you lucky man.

  6. Alan Damm says:

    Thank you for a very interesting and thorough post. Frederick Charles Pepper, the younger brother of my great grandmother is buried here (Plot VII, B.13). According to a Ipswich newspaper he was a machine gunner at 4th battalion Suffolk Regiment and KIA 7th April 1915. The official records say 8th April. Maybe he was wounded and brought to the dressing station at Winchester Post and died the day after.

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