Neuve Eglise (Nieuwkerke) Churchyard

Neuve Eglise church, the small green sign on the right telling us, as if we didn’t know it already, that there are CWGC graves to be found in the churchyard. 

The modern church overlooks what seems to me to be a rather large churchyard for what is still quite a small community of around 1,500 people,…

…within which there is a dedicated CWGC plot, seen here over on the right.  But first,…

…here’s a snapshot from early in the war showing the church, still relatively undamaged, in the background, with a Red Cross flag, marking the position of a Field Ambulance, fluttering close to the figure in the centre.  Two of the trees bear whitewashed trunks for nighttime navigation, and there is at least one vehicle, perhaps an ambulance, hidden behind more soldiers, on the far right.  Neuve Eglise was a couple of miles behind the front lines for most of the war, and, particularly during the early years, the churchyard was used by field ambulances to bury the men whose war ended here.  The Germans would eventually capture the village on 14th April 1918, and it would be recaptured by the 36th (Ulster) Division five months later on 2nd September.

As the Germans advanced west on 9th April 1918, sweeping the Portuguese defenders aside as they did, British divisions were rushed up to try to plug the gap.  On the evening of 11th April, men of the 2nd Bn. Worcestershire Regiment, along with the 16th Bn. King’s Royal Rifle Corps and the 9th Bn. Highland Light Infantry, took over the defences of Neuve Eglise.  The following day the German advance guard made contact, initiating two days of intense fighting which, by the evening of 13th April, had decimated the British defenders, just two platoons of the Worcesters remaining in the Mairie (the town hall, marked in blue) and nearby buildings, surrounded by German machine guns, as the map above shows, the gun marked in red on the right positioned next to, or in the ruins of, the northern corner of the church, pictured on the right below.

The story of the men in the Mairie during the night of 13th April and the following day is one you can look into yourselves, should you so wish, but suffice to say that 2nd Lieutenant (acting Captain & Adjutant) James John Crowe of the Worcesters would be awarded a Victoria Cross for his bravery (above left, receiving his medal from King George V in August 1918).

’25th April 1918: Worcesters’ Dogged Defence – Last to Leave Neuve Eglise’.  The special correspondent of The Times says, ‘Today I have heard some details of the doings of troops which did stubborn fighting in the defence of Neuve Eglise, when some five separate German attacks in strength were beaten back. For two days some Worcesters and King’s Royal Rifles held on to the Neuve Eglise positions at great odds and when the enemy more than once broke into the village they counter-attacked and drove them back. The last man to leave the Neuve Eglise was the commanding officer of the Worcesters, who declares that the German dead were literally piled in heaps before the positions his troops had defended and we know from many sources that the German casualties were terrible.’

In an article in the Brighton and Hove Gazette in 1962, James Crowe recalled the day he won his V.C., saying, ‘We were sent into Neuve Englise, near Kemmel, to hold it. We held it for seven days, but only fourteen survived out of 250 of us. We captured the German machine guns and recaptured our own.’  He died in 1965 aged 88.

Map from July 1918 showing Neuve Eglise in the centre, the church and churchyard marked in green; the Germans had by this time advanced some three miles further west, to the outskirts of Bailleul, but they would advance no further.  The defences shown to the east of the village were originally British, the clue being that the barbed wire is on the eastern side, allied to the fact that by the spring of 1918 the Germans could no longer afford to think in terms of defence.  They had to win the battle, or lose the war in the attempt.

The skeleton of the church after the war.  Exo-skeleton, I suppose.

The British plot in the churchyard begins with this space in front of Row A, which is slightly curious, perhaps, but probably not worth dwelling on,…

…the men in the row all East Surrey Regiment privates killed in early 1915, the two men on the left in January, and the other five all on 27th February.

Behind, in Row B, these three Manchester Regiment privates all died on 18th February 1915.

Two intriguing early paintings of the British plot, both of which suggest that the headstones once faced in a different direction.  I wonder.  The cemetery plan, as usual courtesy of the CWGC, can be seen here.

Row C contains just two burials, on the left, Driver James Thomas Allen, Royal Field Artillery, who died on 10th December 1914, and on the right, Private Alfred Blackwell, 6th Dragoon Guards, who died on 7th November 1914, aged 28.

On the far left in Row D, another early East Surrey Regiment casualty from December 1914, alongside a Devonshire Regiment private killed in early February 1915, and two R.F.A. men both killed on 25th February 1915.

Privates W. Breed (far left) & B. B. Farmer (centre), both D.C.L.I., died on 12th & 13th December 1914 respectively, and on the right, Private Thomas David Jones, Cheshire Regiment, died on 18th March 1915.

The first burial in Row F is a Monmouthshire Regiment corporal killed in March 1915, the second a New Zealand gunner who died in May 1917,…

…and the remaining five burials in the row are 13th Bn. Australian infantrymen, all of whom died on 22nd March 1918.

Both the burials in Row G are from 1917, on the left, Private Alfred Mazzei, South Wales Borderers, who died on 27th May 1917 aged 24, and on the right, Gunner R. H. Galloway, Royal Garrison Artillery, who died on 5th June 1917, aged 29,…

…this the view from behind their graves looking back the way we have come.

The earliest burials in the churchyard were made in October 1914, during the opening days of the First Battle of Ypres, by the end of which, 22nd November, ten men had been buried here, and by the end of the year a further five, all between Row C and the Cross of Sacrifice, and all marked in blue on the cemetery plan extract on the left, the Cross at the bottom of the plan.  The burials in Row G…

…include, on the left, Private Dennis Frank Turk, aged 22, 9th (Queen’s Royal) Lancers, one of two men who died on 21st October 1914 who were the first to be buried here.  The Border Regiment serjeant in the centre is a June 1917 casualty, and the man on the right is the only unidentified Great War burial in the cemetery.

Private A. C. Rawlings, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, on the right, died on 31st October 1914, as did, closest to the camera,…

…Captain Hugh Seymour Blane, 19th Lancers/Fane’s Horse.  As we so often find with early Flanders’ burials, there are several cavalrymen, from various regiments, buried here,…

…including the other man killed on 21st October 1914, Trumpeter Edward Egan, 9th Lancers, who is buried here in Row J, and pictured on the left, while on the right,…

…this is the grave of Major Clive Macdonnell Dixon, 16th (The Queen’s) Lancers, who died of wounds on 5th November 1914 aged 44.  Dixon had been present at the Siege of Ladysmith during the Boer War, but had resigned from the army in 1902 before re-enlisting in 1914.

Row K (above) & Row L (below) each contain just a single headstone, both artillerymen who died on 4th November 1914, Corporal Charles Reilly (above) and Gunner James Williams (below),…

…as did Driver George Anderson, his headstone seen here on the left, one of two R.F.A. drivers in Row M, the other, George Johnson, killed a day earlier on 3rd November 1914.

Two men of the 28th Bn. London Regiment (Artists’ Rifles) in Row N, both of whom were killed on 27th November 1914; on the left, Private W. J. Thompson, and on the right, Serjeant Walter Warren.

The last burial made in 1914 is that of Private S. S. Cork, Norfolk Regiment, who died on 20th December, and is the single burial in Row O.

Cross of Sacrifice, with Row P in the foreground.  The wind and rain had abated somewhat by the time we arrived, which, by the looks of the debris left behind, was no bad thing.

Personally, I think this Cross is the wrong size and should be bigger,…

…but as I have never yet discovered whether the size of Blomfield’s Cross is dependent on the size of the burial ground, or the number of graves within, what do I know?

The three graves in front of the Cross are all casualties from early 1915,…

…and are seen once again centre right here, the row actually starting with the headstones you can see closest to the camera facing away from us on the right,…

…all men of the Royal Irish Rifles killed on 2nd or 3rd September 1918.

Continuing past the Cross, for some reason the four burials in Row Q are split into two rows, although all four died on the same day, 5th March 1915.

In the foreground, on the left, John Whitty, aged 27, who served under the alias Private J. Wheelan, Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, and on the right Private J. Brown, Cheshire Regiment, and behind, two men of the R.A.M.C., on the left, Major Francis Graham Richards, and on the right, Private R. Taplin.

More March 1915 casualties in Row R, a Royal Engineer sapper on the left, alongside a captain and two privates of the Manchester Regiment.  Behind, on the far left, Row S begins…

…with these two Australians, both 45th Bn. Australian Infantry, who were killed on 29th May 1917,…

…as was the Australian on the far left here, as the row continues with these four burials.  Only the Australian, you might note, is marked on the cemetery plan, the two men in the centre both casualties from July 1915, and the Australian on the far right a casualty from August 1917.

And the same applies to Row T, where only two of these burials, the two furthest left, are marked on the cemetery plan.  The burials in the row are all from different regiments and all died at different times, from left, May 1917, April 1915, August 1917, September 1918 & June 1915,

Row U, and once again not all these graves are marked on the cemetery plan, the South Staffs officer killed on 6th May 1915 and buried closest to us on the left being an addition to the row.  The other four graves in this row are all North Staffordshire Regiment men killed later in May 1915.

Four New Zealanders, all Auckland Regiment, three of whom died on 5th May 1917,…

…and one, closest to the camera, the following day, end the burials in the plot.

North eastern view looking back down the length of the plot.

Back among the civilian graves, a closer look…

…reveals a number of CWGC graves, all of which are marked on the cemetery plan,…

…hidden among the Belgian ones.

This is Row W, both the closeness of the headstones and their communal grave reference number of W1 suggesting that this is, in effect, a mass grave.

The three Royal Irish Riflemen on the left were killed on 2nd September 1918, as were two of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers on the right; the two others died a day earlier, on 1st September.

A soldier tends to two horses on the right as more are led across the picture in front of the church in the background, very close to our current position in the modern churchyard.

Elsewhere, alone among the surrounding grey monoliths, the single headstone of Row X,…

…marks the grave of Canadian Second Lieutenant Eric De Wolf Rounsefell M.C., Leinster Regiment, killed on 3rd September 1918 aged just 19.

This might even be his original cross in the overgrown churchyard after the war.

These two men of the Royal Irish Rifles constitute Row Y, although both have the same grave reference number of Y1.

On the left, Rifleman R. J. Clarke, aged 21, and on the right, Corporal A. Pue, M.M., both men killed on 2nd September 1918.

And finally Row Z,…

…from left, Corporal James William Sadler, Royal Irish Rifles, who died on 3rd September 1918, Private T. Wylie, Leinster Regiment, who died on 4th September 1918, and Gunner James McCarthy, Royal Field Artillery, who died on 6th September 1918, aged 34.

At which point we’ll briefly return to Row W,…

…because according to the cemetery plan there are seven more British graves in Rows U & V in the eastern corner of the churchyard and, dagnabbit, I forgot to photograph them.  Come to think of it, I never even spotted them.  Hm.

And I think this photograph shows why.  They are no longer here.  One is the South Staffs officer whose headstone is now attached to the graves in Row U we saw earlier, the CWGC headstone closest to us in the bottom left-hand corner of this picture (Lieutenant Leonard Charles Billingsley Joynson, pictured), and the others?

Well, luckily, there is an Exhumation Report Form which lists six of the seven and confirms that they have indeed been moved, and explains the extra three burials in both Rows S & T in the main CWGC section that we saw earlier.

The seventh, Lieutenant Joynson, is listed here in Row U, and although I can find no Exhumation Report Form for him, note that this form says near the top ‘Regroupment carried out……’, and thus we have confirmation that he too has been ‘regrouped’.  Both this form and the previous Exhumation Report Form are dated August 1955.

At which point we are going to make our way back towards the Cross,…

…and indeed past it, because the eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed the line of headstones close to the boundary wall that I totally ignored during our first walk-past.

These graves are Second World War casualties,…

…all of whom, including the unidentified man on the right, died in the last week of May 1940 covering the withdrawal to Dunkirk,…

…and include men from the Gordon Highlanders, the Royal Artillery, the Royal Armoured Corps, the Leicestershire Regiment & the Royal Army Service Corps.

Eleven are British, the row ending…

…with a single French casualty, on the left,…

…alongside three Belgians,…

…the two centre & left both sons of Neuve Eglise, all three born during the Great War, and all three killed in May 1940.

As ever, we must move on.  Where to next?  Well, as I showed you some photographs last post of the valley of the River Douve and its northern tributary the Stuiverbeek, for much of the war overlooked by the Germans up on the Messines Ridge, perhaps we should head down into the land between the two and see what we can find down there.  This picture shows the view looking west from down in the valley, the church at Neuve Eglise still visible on the horizon as the sun sets and darkness approaches.  So it won’t be today.  Nor tomorrow, come to that.  But sooner or later.  Probably later……