Matching Umbrellas

          

Just to prove to you that Balders and I are still hard at work, whatever the weather, scouring the Flemish countryside (or in this case the Flemish suburbs) for future additions to this site, here’s the two of us this very afternoon in Ledegem, braving the elements in our search for the tiny military cemetery that nestles somewhere among the housing estates on the town’s outskirts.  You will be pleased to know that we did eventually find it (closed roads and cycle race notwithstanding), so at some point in the future we will, of course, be sharing with you the photos we took on what turned out to be a VERY wet afternoon.

Thank heavens that the weather yesterday, when we revisited Ploegsteert Wood (look out for a huge update to the Tour of Ploegsteert Wood in the not-too-distant future) was simply glorious…

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Memories of Spoilbank

I thought you might like to see this.  Drawn by Lieutenant (and later Captain) H. M. Boyd, Royal Engineers, and kindly lent to me for use on this site by a member of his family (who naturally holds the copyright), it shows the area referred to as “Spoilbank” early in 1917.

Take a look at this trench map (click to enlarge) which shows the route of the first part of our Zillebeke tour.  Down near the bottom left hand corner you can see that “Spoilbank” is marked, just south of the Ypres-Comines Canal, with the green dot signifying Spoilbank Cemetery, directly opposite on the northern side of the canal.  You can even see “Blighty Bridge”, as Captain Boyd refers to it in the sketch, crossing the canal if you look carefully.  “Not to be used in daylight”.  Indeed not.

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The Road to Passchendaele Part Four – New Irish Farm Cemetery

So, we started this mini-tour at La Belle Alliance Cemetery, with its 60 British burials; we then visited Divisional Collecting Post Cemetery & Extension, where just over 750 men are buried; now we arrive at New Irish Farm Cemetery, where 4716 men are buried or commemorated.  This place contains only a few hundred fewer graves than at Bedford House (a big place, as you will know, if you have accompanied Baldrick and myself on our tour of the cemeteries to the south of Zillebeke), yet concentrated in a much smaller area.  Not much space here, but lots of flowers.

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The Road to Passchendaele Part Three – Divisional Collecting Post Cemetery & Extension

Divisional Collecting Post Cemetery & Extension, as seen from the grass path leading to La Belle Alliance Cemetery.

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La Belle Alliance Cemetery

About a mile and a half north, and slightly east, of Ypres (yes Baldrick, I know… Ieper), CWGC signposts point the way to the three cemeteries we shall be visiting on this mini-tour.  Although all three are sited on land held by the British throughout the war, for much of the time they were not so very far behind the front lines, as the accompanying trench map from April 1917 (see the Trench Maps section) clearly shows.

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Zantvoorde British Cemetery (Part One) & the Ten Brielen Bunker

Zantvoorde British Cemetery is unusual, at least compared to the other cemeteries we have so far visited, in that it didn’t exist until after the war.  Unsurprising really, bearing in mind that the Germans took the village of Zantvoorde (now Zandvoorde) at the end of October 1914 and held it for nearly four years, until the end of September 1918.  After the Armistice, bodies recovered from the surrounding battlefields (and perhaps further afield) and from nearby German cemeteries were brought here to be re-interred, which explains why the majority of the men who now lie here are unidentified.  Of a total of 1583 burials, 1135 have no known name.

View looking west along the cemetery wall towards the village of Zandvoorde and Zandvoorde Church in the background.

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Xth Corps Burial Instructions

Interesting, desperately tragic, yet entirely pertinent to the content of this website, these instructions for the recovery and burial of the dead were circulated by Xth Corps prior to the British attack on the Messines ridge on June 7th 1917.

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