Hawthorn Ridge No 2 Cemetery-Auchonvillers

[Guest]

   A small problem with the CWGC description of this cemetery.  I have a local casualty, Private Charles Frederick Runagle, 2 RF lost on 1st July 1916 in the  attack on Gommecourt.  He is buried at the above cemetery-most graves around him are named. CWGC says the cemetery was started in 1917 but I am perplexed.  Does this mean that the named graves are those that were already left by the Germans  when they pulled back from the Somme in 1917-or that these are graves recovered from  either the former German line or the old No Mans Land of 1st July 1916?    I cannot see any concentration reports-which might  have map locations- for these men which suggests to me that the graves were already there.  On the other hand, my man does not appear (as far as I can work out) on the ICRC listings which suggests that he was not buried by the Germans in 1916.   The reason for the enquiry is that it would make the difference between my man, on balance, being killed in No Mans Land or the German lines. NML is the more likely - as the history of 2RF is pretty firm in that no man of the 3 companies engaged that day got anywhere near the German line.

   Not that important-just a little mystified as to who was buried, when and recovered from where!!  The grave registration reports are from 1920, not earlier.

[chaz]

according to M & M Middlebrook's Somme battlefields guide.:

 

consisting of two very closely packed rows of graves of men who died near here on the first day of the 1916 battle, not in November. There are 214 graves from units of the 29th division - 2nd Royal Fusiliers, 1st Border, 16th Middlesex, 1st Royal Dublin  Fusiliers, Newfoundlander s..

it goes on to talk about 2Lt A.W.Fraser of 1st Border leading the company into action, he was last seen at the German wire encouraging his men forward.

A small row of 9 graves added after the war, of which 4 Newfoundlander's from other parts of the battlefield 

[Ghazala]

[Guest]

Thank you both-   Chaz, for the write-up from Middlebrook. I had not thought to look there.

 

Ghazala- thank you for these photographs- which answers one question and sets another.  These are not the standard  CWGC individual markers.   It looks more like an existing mass grave that was plotted  out by GRU  after the war- or put in place with a battlefield clearance in 1917 after the Germans went back. It suggests,to me at least, that partial or skeletal remains were buried closer together as time and effort did not justify a series of individual plots