With the British Army in Flanders & France

The last time we came to Dadizele (our visit to Dadizeele New British Cemetery) it was cold.  Very cold.  Beautiful, with the previous day’s snow still on the ground.  But very, very cold.  At the time I suggested that we should come back another time, when it was a bit warmer, to visit the adjacent Dadizele Communal Cemetery, and so we have.

This time its July.  And it’s raining.

Dadizele Communal Cemetery contains 27 British First World War burials, all casualties of the fighting in the vicinity during October 1918.

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If you were to travel some seven miles or so, as the crow flies, due east of the city of  Ieper (Ypres), you would find yourself amidst the battlefields of late 1918, when British, French & Belgian troops were pushing the Germans back from their long-held positions around the Salient.  Consequently there are a handful of seldom-visited CWGC cemeteries and burial plots to be found in the area, and Baldrick & I thought it only right and proper that we pay our respects to these men who lost their lives in the final few weeks of a long war.

Over the next few months we shall bring you the results of our travels, and we begin with by far the largest of the cemeteries we shall visit, Dadizeele New British Cemetery.

A winter’s day in Dadizele.  It snowed last night, and it is bitterly cold today.  Amidst the various singposts (sorry, we didn’t go to Dadi Park, whatever that might be) a CWGC sign points the way to Dadizeele New British Cemetery*.  You will note that one of the other signs points to Ledegem, where at a later date we will visit another, somewhat unusually situated, CWGC cemetery.

*Dadizeele is now known as Dadizele, and Dadi Park, it turns out, is an abandoned amusement park, which sounds eerily interesting, so perhaps we should have paid it a visit.

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