We’ve been here before. More than once. Although not at this time of year.
We’ve been here more than twice, actually – the trees within the cemetery have grown somewhat over the years, as such things do. But as we have covered this cemetery in great detail before, we shall not be staying here on this occasion.
If you’d like to know exactly where we are, well, Erquinghem is slap bang in the middle of this map, with the major conurbation on the right being Armentières, about a dozen miles due south of Ypres (Ieper). The front line ran for much of the war as shown on the far right, the British trenches marked in blue, the German trenches in red.
And it was along this sector of the front that these photographs of British & German troops fraternising in No Man’s Land,…
…and burying their dead, were snapped. Taken on 19th December 1914, they are surely among the earliest examples of the Christmas truce that exist. And unpublished, apart from previously on this website. No punches pulled here – enlarge at your own risk.
The cemetery, Erquinghem-Lys Churchyard Extension, is marked in mauve on this June 1918 map, towards the top, just south of the River Lys, but we shall be a little further south, half a mile or so, this post, in the area shaded red,…
…which looks like this in modern times, the town having now expanded as far as the railway, which is clear to see crossing both photograph and map. We are heading for the shaded area with the gold star, and, although it has little, if anything, to do with this post, the pink oblong bottom right is the site of Suffolk Cemetery (La Rolanderie Farm), a favourite place of mine, which will doubtless get a further mention at the end. In the meantime, if we transport ourselves to the road – the Rue Delpierre – alongside where the gold star is marked,…
…this is the view looking north east up the railway line, and turning to our right,…
…this view looks south, away from the town, and turning further right,…
…we now look across the fields to the south west.
However, it’s the rickety green sign we saw two shots back that gives the game away.
The sign points over here, to the field to the west of the road,…
…where an information board and brick memorial (marked by the gold star on the map),…
…remember the deeds of this man, twenty four-year-old Private Arthur Poulter, Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment,…
…who received a Victoria Cross…
…for his deeds in these very fields on 10th April 1918.
His citation was published in The London Gazette on 28th June 1918,…
…and reads as follows, ‘For most conspicuous bravery when acting as a stretcher-bearer, at Erquinghem-Lys, on the 10th of April, 1918. On ten occasions Private Poulter carried badly wounded men on his back to a safe locality, through a particularly heavy artillery and machine-gun barrage. Again, after a withdrawal over the river had been ordered. Private Poulter returned in full view of the enemy, who were advancing, and carried back another man who had been left behind wounded. He bandaged-up over forty men under fire, and his conduct throughout the whole day was a magnificent example to all ranks. This very gallant soldier was seriously wounded when attempting another rescue in the face of the enemy’.
A wounded Arthur (top left), and a healthier Arthur (bottom right), here seen having a quick smoke before meeting the King at Buckingham Palace on 11th December 1918 to receive his award. He would die in 1956, aged 62.
The ‘safe locality’ mentioned in the citation can be seen beside the road, less than a hundred yards away. No, not the farm on the left, but the little structure on the right.
This tiny chapel, ‘Our Lady of Lourdes’, privately built and consecrated in 1911, somehow survived the war, and it was the chapel walls that provided sanctuary, of sorts, for Poulter and his wounded men.
Walls that look like they might still retain (I am presuming here) evidence of the fighting.
While we’re here, in these fields south of Erquinghem, Arthur Poulter’s memorial on the left, I’ll relate another little tale that, as I have heard no more for a good few years now, presumably still has no conclusion,…
…and is likely still lounging in someone’s pending tray as the usual politics associated with such things is played out.
These two documents above, both relating to British casualties in this area, reveal evidence suggesting that these fields hold a secret. On the left, this German document,…
…headed Central Records Office, lists the names of seventeen deceased British soldiers, none of whom have known graves. The names of those shaded in orange are all to be found on the Tyne Cot Memorial, those in pink on the Ploegsteert Memorial, and the one in blue on the Villers-Brettoneaux Memorial. All, except one man on the Ploegsteert Memorial, died on 10th April 1918, the day Arthur Poulter won his V.C.. The German text at the start says something along the lines of, ‘The following listed dog tags were transferred by an Infantry Division through S.1 (Central Office for Probate Matters) on 15.5.18. The owners of the dog tags fell and were buried in a common grave north of La Rolanderie, approximately on the road to Fleurbaix’. Hm. Interesting.
The second piece of evidence concerns one of the men on the list, Private Oscar Brown, Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment, who was posted as missing on 10th April 1918, aged 27, his name now on the Tyne Cot Memorial, and who is confirmed here as ‘killed and buried in a common grave north of La Rolanderie near the road to Fleurbaix’.
So where might this burial site be located? Because it seems highly likely it’s still there, wherever there might be. Suggested sites are marked on this map, a close-up of the red-shaded section of our earlier map, with the gold star marking Arthur Poulter’s memorial now added. La Rolanderie farm is down in the bottom right, with Suffolk Cemetery (La Rolanderie Farm) marked in pink, and I don’t know the thinking behind the two possible sites marked in mauve and orange; both are on the road to Bois Grenier, for a start, not the road to Fleurbaix, and there’s already a cemetery close-by full of men killed in April 1918*. The three areas marked in red, green & yellow straddle the Fleurbaix road, and seem far more likely sites. Bear in mind that this was a battlefield, and La Rolanderie was a landmark; I don’t think I have a problem with any of these three sites being referred to as being ‘north of La Rolanderie’, and they are most certainly ‘near the road to Fleurbaix’.
*although both could be referred to as north of the farm, just about, and the aerial view earlier does show a bare patch evident close to the road, which I think is why the site marked in orange has been suggested as a possibility.
Back at the site of Arthur Poulter’s memorial, I’m not sure how well it shows up in this photo, but there is a distinct dip in the centre of this field, as marked here in, to match the map, red, which is why this is seen as one of the potential burial sites.
Across the road,…
…the second of the possible sites…
…marked by the green circle on the map,…
…is somewhere in this field,…
…possibly along the hedgeline, or perhaps more towards the centre, where there are once again undulations that might be significant. Or so I am told.
The third possible site is beyond the farm buildings opposite the chapel,…
…in this field (the yellow circle on the map). Whether we shall ever hear any more on this matter, well, who knows? But it does seem likely, don’t you think, that there are a number of men still buried together somewhere beneath these fields?
Back in the town, my friend Jack, the man responsible for Arthur Poulter’s memorial,…
…here seen regaling Baldrick with one of his tales of local wartime derring-do,…
…also runs a nice little museum in Erquinghem,…
…within which is this undated, unfortunately, but contemporary German map detailing war graves in the area (Gelaendgraeber im Gemeindebezirk translates as Graves in the Municipal District).
You should recognise this section of the map by now, La Rolanderie farm centre right, the Arthur Poulter memorial marked by the gold star, and annoyingly, it really isn’t of any help, with nothing whatsoever marked in the possible grave sites, nor anywhere south of the railway. It does, however, make it clear that the Germans knew the difference between the road to Fleurbaix and the road to Bois Grenier,…
…and this is most certainly the road to Fleurbaix. So, a V.C., and a potential grave site, or maybe sites. I wonder if we’ll ever hear more? And how many more undiscovered mass graves still lie beneath not just Flanders Fields, but fields the length of the old Western Front? It surprises me a little that only one mass grave has been discovered in Flanders in recent years, when the men who now lie in Pheasant Wood Military Cemetery, four and a half miles almost exactly due south of here, were discovered in 2009. Particularly as the number of missing bodies in Flanders alone is still estimated at around 200,000.
A reminder that if you would like to find out more about this little cemetery, the one marked on the maps in the fields close to La Rolanderie Farm, and my exploits having first visited it, then that tale begins here. It’s all cracking stuff!!
Otherwise, our previous visits to Erquinghem, should you wish to find out more about the men buried in the cemetery, begin here.