Suffolk Cemetery, Vierstraat

[dfaulder]

I recently visited this cemetery. In case anyone is interested, I list for search engines the details on the headstones of the "Known unto God" graves:

C01: A Corporal of the Great War: York and Lancaster Regt April 1918

C05: A Corporal of the Great War: York and Lancaster Regt April 1918

C18: A Private of the Great War: York and Lancaster Regt April 1918

D01: A Private of the Great War: York and Lancaster Regt April 1918

D02: A Private of the Great War: York and Lancaster Regt April 1918

D05: A Soldier of the Great War

D06: A Soldier of the Great War

D07: A Soldier of the Great War: York and Lancaster Regt

I am puzzled as to how they could determine dates for the Corporals and Privates of the Y&L, but not for the Soldier of the Y&L.

David

[Peter Woodger]

David

I am not familiar with this cemetery but would suggest the following.

All these burials were post war, brought in from the battlefield. Those that are dated had a cross on their grave with that information. The undated man did not have a cross, or was unburied. You and I might be prepared to assume the man also died in April but the IWGC was not in the assumption game hence he is reburied with only the known information.

Peter

[dfaulder]

Peter,

Thanks for this comment and the thoughts which I need to try and factor into my thinking. The CWGC website's notes on the Suffolk say:

This cemetery was begun in March and April 1915 by the 2nd Suffolks. Apart from one burial made in November 1917, the cemetery was not used again until October 1918 when the 38th Labour Group buried men killed during the German advance the previous April, all but two of whom belonged to the 1st/4th and 1st/5th York and Lancasters. At this time, it was called Cheapside Cemetery. Suffolk Cemetery contains 47 First World War burials, eight of them unidentified.

The CWGC have confirmed to me that they have no burial records for this cemetery:

The Commission does not hold any Burial Returns for Suffolk Cemetery as we do not have any returns for burials made during the war. We only have returns for burial concentrations made post-war.

As far as I can make out these two battalions were only at Vierstraat for a very short while in April 1918. The Brigade war diary implies that they were marched there over night 25/26 April, fought a costly and unsuccessful skirmish on the morning of 26th and were withdrawn shortly afterwards. The two battalion headquarters were close to Klein-Vierstraat Cemetery (K-V) and Kemmel No1 (K1). The CWGC notes on K-V refer to Plot IV being begun in April 1918.

Accepting that we are dealing with a lot of uncertainty, we might set up a working hypothesis about those who fell in that period (for 26/4/1918, I have 33 1/4th Y&L and 17 1/5th Y&L, listed as KIA - the vast majority of whom are listed on Tyne Cot):

(i) Bodies that were recovered during (or shorty after the 26/4/1918 action) and those who died in the lines would have been buried in K-V plot IV (and of those who are listed as dying 26/4/1918, there are 2 1/4th Y&L in K-V IV and 1 1/5th Y&L in K1). (ii) Subsequent shellfire would probably have destroyed the majority of the bodies left on the battlefield. (iii) Subsequent fighting by other units would have left further bodies on the battlefield (or, can we assume that the vast majority were recovered?).

We then look to see how data might challenge this hypothesis. The biggest challenge is that the October 1918 burials in the Suffolk were (with two possible exceptions) exclusively 1/4th and 1/5th Y&Ls (i.e originating from a few days in the last week of April). I can understand that there would not have been previous casualties (as this battlefield was behind the lines until the loss of Mount Kemmel and surrounding areas), but what of subsequent casualties in the period May to September (inclusive)? I have yet to establish who was in the area (Tracking the occupiers of a patch of land - Great War Forum, Researching a battle ground - Vierstraat | The Western Front Association Front Forum ) ; for some of the time the French and the Americans were responsible for the area and I would suspect that if the 38th Labour group turned up French or American bodies they would have been handed over to those countries who would have made separate arrangements.

It is also possible that some of those buried by the 38th Labour Group, may have been from marked graves buried behind the lines, but not for some reason originally buried in K-V; possibly the burials were exceptionally hurried and there was not time to take a body a few hundred metres to an existing cemetery.

CWGC notes record that bodies were brought into K-V after the war; I would therefore expect that marked graves (which if they related to End April would have been behind the lines?) would have been consolidated into K-V. Therefore, I suspect that the (October 1918) Suffolk graves relate to battlefield recoveries which are unlikely to have been marked.

I remain puzzled, I suspect by my own implicit assumptions as by the actual situation. I await the return of Geoff's search engine to get a complete list of 1/4th and 1/5th Y&Ls who died in that area (i.e. the last week in April); I have a suspicion that the unidentified two Corporals (assuming they were not L/Cpls) buried in the Suffolk way just be tied back to Cpls George Hudson (201704) and Clifford Symons (203145).

David