Passchendaele New British Cemetery

[laughton]

Although this cemetery has been researched many times for UNKNOWNS, it does not have its own page for the links to the CWGC Zip Files. That got kick-started today when @Becstar found a new set of concentration reports - yahoo!

 

That means we now have the following:

 

Passchendaele New British Cemetery

• GRRF 1824862-1825011
• COG-BR 1825015-1825063 2365793-2365904
• COG-BR 1825110-1825175 (Bec Linton January 2020)

 

As always, if anyone finds even one new document for any cemetery, let me know and I will go find the rest in that batch and add them to the list, as done here.

 

There are not a lot of details from the CWGC on the smaller cemeteries concentrated here but I will check all the COG-BR documents to see what I can find. It may be that all, or the vast majority, were battlefield concentrations.

 

From the CWGC:

Quote

The village of Passchendaele (now Passendale) and surrounding area were associated with every phase of the First World War. In the middle of October 1914, Passchendaele was briefly under Allied occupation but by 20 October it was in German hands, where it remained for the next three years. On 6 November 1917, after the severest fighting in most unfavourable weather, the 5th Canadian Infantry Brigade took, and passed, the village; this fight was part of the Second Battle of Passchendaele, the last of the Battles of Ypres, 1917.

 

In the middle of April 1918, in the Battles of the Lys, the Allied line was withdrawn far back on the road to Ypres, but on 29 September, in the course of the Allied offensive in Flanders, Belgian forces recaptured the village.

 

The New British Cemetery was made after the Armistice when graves were brought in from the battlefields of Passchendaele and Langemarck. Almost all of the burials are from the autumn of 1917. The cemetery now contains 2,101 burials and commemorations of the First World War. 1,600 of the graves are unidentified but there are special memorials to seven casualties believed to be buried among them.

 

These are any main areas of concentration noted from the COG-BR documents:

• details to follow

 

[laughton]

It would appear that there were no smaller cemeteries concentrated into the Passchendaele New British Cemetery. There are clearly major "identifiable" battlegrounds that were cleared, such as the area around Vindictive Crossroads 20.V.30.

 

I am not experienced with interpreting the DGR Body Density Maps, but it would not appear that they reflect the number of remains concentrated. There may be specific maps for those areas where there were large numbers recovered.

[Becstar]

A report has been done for an unknown CQMS Northumberland Fusiliers to be submitted. Great-Grandfather was a Northumberland Fusilier so there’s a slight connection and keen interest about the history of the Fusiliers.  I’ll add the details on here shortly as to how the evidence led to the one candidate.

Edited 27 January , 2020 by Becstar