Westoutre British Cemetery

Westouter’s second cemetery can be found just three hundred yards north of the church & churchyard that we visited last post. 

Trench map corrected to 11th July 1918, with Westoutre (now Westouter) top left marked in pink, and Mont Kemmel three or so miles away in green down in the bottom right-hand corner.  German positions, the furthest west that they would get in this area during the Battle of the Lys, are now marked in blue, with Allied positions in red.

This map from December 1916, with the church & churchyard marked in pink and the military cemetery in green, shows no sign of war whatsoever,…

…whereas by July 1918 German advances elsewhere had necessitated the construction of defensive lines to the north and west of  Westoutre; they would remain untested, the Germans failing to reach as far as the village, let alone the land beyond.

August 1918 aerial view of Westoutre (north a little off to the left), the churchyard and military cemetery marked as before.  The village may have remained in British hands throughout the war, but the numerous shellholes seen here suggest that, in 1918 at least, this was an unhealthy place for a picnic.

Extract from a French map from June 1918 showing plotted German artillery positions to the east of Mont Kemmel (green), many of which were aimed towards Westoutre (mauve) and the area surrounding it; the blue lines show the trajectory of the shells, responsible for many of the shell holes seen in the previous photograph.

The cemetery’s main entrance – there is a smaller set of steps at the other end of the western cemetery boundary – will look somewhat different in a couple of decades when the two conifers have matured.  The cemetery name and ‘In Perpetuity’ tablets…

…are inlaid into the wall ahead of us,…

…and a gate on the left allows us access to the cemetery proper.

Panoramic view from the other side of the cemetery,…

…the entrance we used now on the far right beyond the Cross of Sacrifice, the gate just mentioned almost obscured by the Cross.  The oblique row of five headstones just left of centre, closest to the Cross,…

…is actually the start of Row P, the first man in the row a Cameron Highlander, although the identities of all five of these men are unknown.  Fifty two of the one hundred and seventy five Great War casualties here are unidentified.

After a short gap, the sixth man in the row is another unidentified soldier, this time a man of the Royal Garrison Artillery,…

…and, after another gap, the final five headstones in the row,…

…are also unidentified except for just one man, second from right,…

…this Sherwood Forester serjeant killed on 26th September 1917.

A quick check shows that Serjeant Taylor, and the men buried around him in the row, are all concentration burials brought in from graves elsewhere and reburied here after the war, among fifty two concentrations we shall encounter in this cemetery.  The cemetery was not opened until October 1917, one would assume when the churchyard extension was deemed to be full.  The cemetery plan, thanks to the CWGC, can be viewed here.

At the end of the row, along the boundary wall, five special memorials remember three men ‘Believed to be buried in this cemetery’,…

…and two, closest to the camera on the left in this shot, that are ‘Known to be buried in this cemetery’, including, at this end of the row,…

…the headstone of Major Eric Stuart Dougall V.C., M.C., Royal Field Artillery, killed in action near Mont Kemmel on 14th April 1918 aged 32.  Four days earlier on 10th April he had, although I doubt he ever knew about it, earned himself a Victoria Cross, the citation for which, published on 31st May 1918 in the London Gazette, reads, ‘For most conspicuous bravery and skilful leadership in the field when in command of his battery, Capt. Dougall maintained his guns in action from early morning throughout a heavy concentration of gas and high-explosive shell. Finding that he could not clear the crest owing to the withdrawal of our line, Captain Dougall ran his guns on to the top of the ridge to fire over open sights. By this time our infantry had been pressed back in line with the guns. Captain Dougall at once assumed command of the situation, rallied and organised the infantry, supplied them with Lewis guns, and armed as many gunners as he could spare with rifles. With these he formed a line in front of his battery which during this period was harassing the advancing enemy with a rapid rate of fire. Although exposed to both rifle and machine gun fire this officer fearlessly walked about as though on parade, calmly giving orders and encouraging everybody. He inspired the infantry with his assurance that “So long as you stick to your trenches I will keep my guns here”. This line was maintained throughout the day, thereby delaying the enemy’s advance for over twelve hours. In the evening, having expended all ammunition, the battery received orders to withdraw. This was done by man-handling the guns over a distance of about 800 yards of shell-cratered country, an almost impossible feat considering the ground and the intense machine gun fire. Owing to Captain Dougall’s personality and skilful leadership throughout this trying day there is no doubt that a serious breach in our line was averted. This gallant officer was killed four days later whilst directing the fire of his battery.’

Before the war Dougall, pictured, had been an engineer at the Bombay Port Trust in Mumbai, where a plaque on a building named after him still remembers his exploits (above right – public domain picture).

Row O leads us back across the cemetery,…

…the burials in the row all British, as are by far the majority of burials in the cemetery,…

…all identified, and all, apart from the man at the very far end of the row who died in October,…

…are September 1918 casualties buried here at the time they died.

With Row O now on the right, Row N, on the left, is the longest row in the cemetery, and once again,…

…all eighteen burials are identified,…

…and all but two, like those in Row O, are casualties from September 1918.  There is again a single October 1918 casualty buried among them,…

…and a Canadian who died on 19th August 1916 buried at the end of the row,…

…another concentration burial from after the war, and the final, indeed only, name on this form.

Of the eleven burials in Row M, five are August 1918 casualties, five are September 1918 casualties, and just one man, closest to the camera, is unidentified.  The four men buried next to him…

…all died in the first days of September 1918,…

…and at the start of the row, these men are slightly earlier casualties from mid-August.

There are just six burials in Row L,…

…these men also casualties from August 1918, and behind, centre left,…

…the first two burials in Row K are, on the left, a Cheshire Regiment corporal killed on 4th July 1918 (K1), and on the right, a King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry private who died on 22nd September 1917 (K2).  However, it is at this point that the nature of the cemetery begins to change.  The man on the left is an original burial, the man on the right a concentration burial, and we shall find many more of both intermingled as we continue our tour.  What’s more, so far we have seen nicely laid out rows of headstones, but from here, a number of the rows feature groups of headstones separated by designated gaps in the flower beds, as you can see above,…

…and as you can see here, as we move along the row.  There is no grave at K3, these two KOYLI privates who died on 22nd September 1917, both concentrations, given grave reference numbers of K4 & K5,…

…the Burial Return showing that they were found together, along with the identified man we have already seen now buried in K2, and originally both were listed as unknown British soldiers, later amended to their correct, we assume, identities.

There is no sign of either K6 or K7, the next grave in the row being this solitary unknown soldier whose grave is designated as K8,…

…nor is there a K9, although if we zoom out, the same unknown soldier in the centre, the lighter grass on either side does seem to suggest that the flowerbed was once the length of the row, and not just where the British headstones now stand,…

…all of which is confirmed by these combined extracts from two GRRFs that show how Row K once looked before the French graves – the French buried seventy two men here in the spring & summer of 1918 – were removed, and before those in the first half of the row had been replaced by the British concentrations (note that the Cheshire corporal we saw at the very start of the row is confirmed here as an original burial).

The rest of Row K is as you can see on the GRRF minus the French graves, with an unknown British soldier buried at K10, a machine gunner who died in August 1918 buried at K11,…

…and then three casualties from April 1918, and an unidentified man at the end.

I wonder why Private Thomas (pictured), 17th Bn. King’s Liverpool Regiment, the first of the three April casualties, is given a date of death of 17th April 1918,…

…when he is not given any date of death on this amended GRRF, which shows Row K as it has been since 1922, the exhumed French graves now marked as ‘Vacant’.  Nor is he given a date of death on the original GRRF we just looked at, either.  I’m not so sure his date of death is actually known at all, unless other evidence exists that confirms it.  You can also see, from the faint red ‘C’ at the end of the final entry, that the unidentified man at the end of the row is a concentration burial; we could have worked this out anyway, as the first GRRF tells us that there was once a Frenchman named Laval buried where this unknown British soldier now lies.

The 17th Bn. King’s Liverpool Regiment were certainly in this area at the time Private Thomas died; their war diary for mid-April 1918 mentions a Second Lieutenant Crook who was badly wounded, along with another man, on 19th April, although ‘efforts to save them proved futile owing to intensity of enemy fire’.  The attached note (top right) suggests that this may well have actually taken place on the previous day, 18th April, and both Crook’s name and that of a 17th Bn. private who died the same day (the ‘other man’ mentioned who could not be saved, perhaps) appear on the Tyne Cot Memorial; I can find no mention of what may have happened to Private Thomas.

The third of the April 1918 casualties, Company Quartermaster Serjeant Percy John Dix Farmer (pictured), Norfolk Regiment, is given the same date of death, 17th April 1918, as Private Thomas, and although his date of death is confirmed by both GRRFs, there is no mention of his death in the 9th Bn. Norfolk’s war diary either, the entry for 17th April simply stating ‘At 8 a.m. on 17th this area was heavily shelled and they withdrew to dugouts……’.

By now you have probably noticed that the headstones beyond Row K all face the other way, and so it would seem eminently sensible to head down to the bottom of the cemetery…

…and continue our tour from here.  The three headstones closest to the camera are designated as Row BB,…

…and all are men of the Chinese Labour Corps…

…who died on Christmas Day 1917, although we know not why.

Before we head across to the regimented graves of Row A, there’s a grave in the corner behind us to visit,…

… although the identity of this 8th Bn. Canadian infantryman, the single burial in Row AA, is unknown.

The first burial in Row A is an unknown man of the Royal Army Medical Corps, followed by eleven men, four of whom are pictured above, of the 14th Bn. Hampshire Regiment, all of whom were killed on 1st October 1917,…

…as shown on this GRRF.  This clearly necessitates a look at the war diary,…

…which reveals that on 28th September 1917 the battalion had been met by buses at, where else, Bus House, and taken to camp at Mount Cocker Eel (actually Mt. Kokereele, also mentioned earlier in the 17th Bn. King’s Liverpool Regiment war diary) where they spent the next couple of days being reorganised and inspected.  The given map reference (R18c) for the camp…

…is within the pink square, Mt. Kokereele marked just to its west.  Mont Kemmel is marked in green on the right, with Westoutre British Cemetery marked in red.

The entry for 1st October is brief and details, I suppose, if not a typical day during the Great War, certainly not a remarkable one.  The battalion spent the day drilling, and in the evening a German plane flew over and dropped a few bombs on them,…

…killing ten outright and wounding fifteen, one of whom would soon die.  Hence these eleven Hampshire graves, the first burials to be made in this cemetery.  And if you remember the Hampshire Regiment private buried in Westouter Churchyard Extension that we saw last post, who also died on 1st October, he was presumably one of the fifteen wounded who must have died very soon after.   The three graves closest to the camera are from later in October 1917,…

…and the final burial in the row is a Royal Army Medical Corps quartermaster serjeant who died on 10th November 1917.

The next rows are full of gaps, where the French graves were once intermixed with the British ones.  There are seven graves in Row B, the two at the end also November 1917 casualties,…

…the remainder all December 1917 casualties.  The grave on the left at the start of the row…

…is that of Lieutenant James Lionel Bagguley, Durham Light Infantry, an Instructor with the Xth Corps School*, who died on 6th December 1917 aged 24.

*I have no idea what that is, or what it did, although I can probably make an educated guess, but if anyone knows for certain……?

The burials in Row C are all unidentified,…

…as is the first burial at the start of Row D.  Further down the row…

…these three R.E. sappers died on 14th April 1918.

The row contains burials from both the spring & autumn of 1918, with a single December 1917 burial at the end.  You will notice a French grave still remaining at the end of what appears to be the row behind, but is actually Row F,…

…because Row E, as you can see here, is a shorter row with fewer gaps,…

…the nine identified graves within all casualties from April 1918,…

…with an unidentified man at both the start and the end (above right) of the row.

The French grave at the end of Row F…

…is a Second World War casualty.

Eugène Cellier was killed on 27th May 1940, as British & French troops retreated towards Dunkirk.

Another Second World War grave, Gunner George O’Donnell died on 19th May 1940,…

…one of four British soldiers who died in May 1940, three on the same day, now buried in Row F.

The row continues with these two unidentified Great War burials,…

…and then more April 1918 casualties, including one of just three New Zealand soldiers buried here.

Looking back down the row, the gaps in this, and the rows behind, as clear to see in this shot as in any,…

…before we visit these two unidentified men at the start of Row F, and behind,…

…a lone K.R.R.C. rifleman who died in September 1917 at the start of Row G,…

…another of the concentration burials originally listed as an ‘Unknown British Soldier’, later identified as detailed on this form.

More unidentified burials in Row G,…

…and a Royal Scots Fusilier private who died on 17th April 1918 further down the row.

Looking roughly north, with the first grave of Row H (another unidentified man) in the foreground.  The signs of exhumed burials, or at least removed headstones and flowerbeds, even from many years ago, are unmistakable,…

…as they are again here.  Only one man among the burials in Row H is identified.

Row K, which we visited during the first part of this post, and, on the right, the first grave of Row J,…

…yet another unknown soldier.

As in Row H (there is not, nor was there ever, a Row I), there is just a single identified man…

…to be found among the unidentified casualties buried in the row.

GRRFs for Rows H & J, the red ‘C’s referring to concentration burials, the vacant plots once filled with French burials.

Back at the Cross of Sacrifice,…

…it’s time to take our leave, although we shan’t be going far.

From here (Westouter, pre-war, above) we shall next be visiting the village of Reningelst, just a mile and a half away to the north east, and a centre of behind-the-lines activity for much of the war.  ‘Next’ being a movable feast.