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Remembered Today:

Temporary Cemetery outside Rosieres-en-Santerre.


JPE

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In my research into the 1918 war graves at Rosieres, I found that some of the dead had been initially recovered from the local area and buried just outside Rosiere near the railway line (Circled Area) before being moved into Rosieres in 1919-20.  Available documentation only records the move from this field to Rosieres.

Can anyone please provide any information about the actual battlefield recovery of the fallen between Rosieres and Lihons in late August 1918.

 

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7 hours ago, JPE said:

Can anyone please provide any information about the actual battlefield recovery of the fallen between Rosieres and Lihons in late August 1918.

Hi @JPE and welcome to the forum.

Not quite sure what you are looking for - where the location of the initial cemetery was, or more general information about front-line cemeteries used by UK and British Empire units serving in the area at that time.

I would suggest a possible route to addressing your query would be an analysis of the units of the men re-located. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission website page for the Rosieres Communal Cemetery Extension only specifically mentions Camouflage Cemetery, (13 graves relocated) and Poplar Cemetery (19 graves relocated).  https://www.cwgc.org/visit-us/find-cemeteries-memorials/cemetery-details/32602/ROSIERES COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION/

I'm assuming therefore there can't be that many individuals involved.

You can then check the units war diaries to see if there are any maps that mention a Cemetery. The Concentration documents on the relevant CWGC webpages for these soldiers should have a map reference for where they were originally interred. You may need the War Diaries at the Brigade and Divisional level.

Alternatively a selection of maps are available at the National Library of Scotland, and combined with the tmapper application you may be able to plot where they were originally buried.

http://www.tmapper.com/

Hope that gets you started,

Peter

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Hi JPE, welcome to the forum.  

This was the site of the Rosieres Communal Cemetery and it appears 10 soldiers were subsequently exhumed from here and reburied with the 433 of their comrades at Rosieres Communal Cemetery Extension.  Map extract courtesy of IWM / WFA, 10/08/1918.  Annotated with cemeteries. Marked Sir Herbert Ellissen on reverse.

image.png.06c90d0a8c5939191da1413d03bbb792.png

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Hi Old Sweats,

Your railway map intrigues me.

As I would like to acquire this and others, can you give me details?

Up to now I have had to comb through CWGC recovery/concentration sheets and plot cemetery and isolated battlefield burials.

Do you have a lead on Grave Registration Units for 1918 in the Rosieres-en-Santerre and Harbonnieres-Lihon Road area, as some areas searched

in 1919-20 appears not to have found remains at known locations.

Thanks.

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Hi JPE,

Happy to help so PM me.

Before you do that, may I suggest you look at the many posts and links by forum member the late Richard Laughton. Richard (obituary here) devoted the same passion in his business to finding unrecovered war casualties and documenting and recording his approach.  He is sadly missed.  Search on posts by laughton, then download some of his documentation of original war cemetery locations.  That may stop you reinventing the wheel.  Richard helped many of us.

Richard's Websites: The CEFSG Forum and The Unknown Project.

Richard's posts: https://www.greatwarforum.org/profile/42-laughton/content/

Then search this forum for Individual Burial Locations, which give maps, data, locations and an explanation for unrecovered (and why the term Body Density Map is incorrect).  Hint, you will get more results with the latter search term.  These are marked up as a heatmap (chloropleth) and the link is given immediately below.  I have the raw data in Excel, sent many years ago by another generous forum member, John Reed.

Finally, forum member howard posts infrequently these days, but his recent answer to a similar question might give you some additional details.  I learned something from this post.

 

 

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