And so we arrive at the final destination of the first part of our Zillebeke tour, Spoilbank Cemetery, named after the banks of spoil heaped nearby when the cutting for the now disused Ypres-Comines canal was originally dug. 520 men, one fifth of them unidentified, are buried here, the majority from between February 1915 and March 1918, although further burials were brought in from the surrounding battlefield after the war.
On leaving the Bluff we need only travel half a mile or so west to reach the final two cemeteries on our tour. Only a few hundred yards apart, these cemeteries contain more than 900 British burials, mainly from between early 1915 and late 1917 (although Spoilbank Cemetery was in use until 1918). The most northern of them, and our first stop, is Chester Farm Military Cemetery.
Although a handful of burials were made here in March 1915, it was the East Surreys and the Manchester Regiment who began using the cemetery on a, sadly, more regular basis in April 1915. It continued in use until November 1917.
Now Baldrick and I rarely do things the easy way, so no real surprise when we find ourselves failing dismally to find the entrance to Woods Cemetery. Luckily for us the logs to the right of the photograph give us an alternative route. Correction. Give me an alternative route. Baldrick, you will be unsurprised to hear, is rather less successful, and finds himself floundering around in a marsh. Still, we get across, and after a traipse across the sodden field beyond, and a respectful clamber over the cemetery wall (I know, I’m sorry, but there really was no alternative by this time), we finally make it. Woods Cemetery.
1st D.C.L.I. Cemetery, The Bluff. The spires of Ypres on the horizon show not only how close the front lines here were to the city in 1915, but also how strategically important this slightly higher ground was to whoever could claim it, and why it was so hotly contested by both sides for much of the war.
Our journey continues east until we reach the little village of Verbrande Molen. Here, our road turns south beneath the low range of wooded hills, known as the Bluff and fought over almost continuously for much of the war due to the close proximity of the front line trenches, that we saw in the distance way back at Bedford House Cemetery. After little more than, a mile a left turn brings us to a conveniently situated car park, from where a ten minute stroll through the trees reveals a clearing, and the first of the three cemeteries located in these woods; Hedge Row Trench Cemetery.
Hedge Row Trench Cemetery is unusual in that every headstone here is actually a special memorial. Being so close to the front lines, and, as its name implies, being the site of a British trench that undoubtedly the Germans were well aware of, the cemetery was so devastated by shellfire that after the war it proved impossible to identify the individual burials that lay here. The names of the dead, however, were known, and special memorial headstones were erected bearing the inscription ‘known to be buried in this cemetery’ and placed around the Cross of Sacrifice in the manner you can see in these photographs.
Just a couple of minutes drive east from Railway Dugouts, a CWGC signpost points us away from the road down a short track towards Blauwepoort Farm Cemetery.
A short distance north east of Bedford House, just south of Zillebeke lake and about a mile and a half west of the village of Zillebeke itself, lies Railway Dugouts Burial Ground (Transport Farm). This cemetery is another large one, containing nearly 2,500 burials, of which 430 are unidentified. Bounded to the north east by the Ieper-Zillebeke road, and to the south west by the Ieper-Comines railway, the cemetery is sited in a position slightly sheltered by the marginally higher ground towards the east, and during the war the railway embankment provided cover for the numerous dugouts that were constructed in its side. A small farm also stood on this site; the British, it seems, referred to the place as either Railway Dugouts or Transport Farm (this was the final stopping point for supplies being transported up to the front lines around Hill 60), hence the cemetery’s name.
