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The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Westhoek Ridge Small Cemetery


Mat McLachlan

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Hi all,

Thanks to Simon J's excellent response to my last post, I'm now chasing up info about Westhoek Ridge Small Cemetery that was concentrated into Hooge Crater after the war. I know from Paul Reed's site that it was in Westhoek village, "near the Area Commandant's pillbox and the A.D.S."; it was used in the autumn of 1917, and it contained the graves of 16 soldiers from Australia and six from the United Kingdom.

Any other info the learned pals can share with me?

Cheers,

Mat

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No worries, matey.

See my last PM and good luck.

Kind Regards,

SMJ

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  • 16 years later...

Hi, I am also interested in any information relating to this cemetery's exact location and when it was concentrated into Hooge?

Do we have any of the names of the individuals interred their and subsequently re-interred to Hooge? How many were 'Unknown'? Within Hooge, are those from the outlying cemeteries identified in sections of parts of teh cemetery  so that you can determine from which cemetery they were originally interred?

Thanks in anticipation.

Regards

 

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Westhoek Ridge Small Cemetery was at 28.J.7.b.90.30:
https://www.cwgc.org/find-records/find-war-dead/casualty-details/459488/harold-hedley-tobitt/#&gid=2&pid=1

There are 3 pages for this cemetery with 22 soldiers: doc2014599 (the one above) and 2014600 and 2014601.

I also have a German cemetery nearby with 34 German soldiers.

4 hours ago, Noddy said:

Within Hooge, are those from the outlying cemeteries identified in sections of parts of teh cemetery  so that you can determine from which cemetery they were originally interred?

The graves are together but sometimes in different rows, you really need the paperwork to find them.

Hope this helps,
Luc.

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Westhoek Small Ridge Cemetery is an interesting one as those men who were recovered into Hooge after the war from there were originally buried with the five Australian soldiers that were recovered fifteen years ago and were reburied in Buttes (Hunter, Storey, Calder & Gibbens) Gibbens was only identified through DNA last year so don't think he's had his rededication ceremony yet.

Identifying our fallen & overseas Anzac services | Defence Ministers

According to the records at the time Westhoek Small Ridge Cemetery was located at 28.J.7.b.7.7.

below is a sample of he original burial returns

image.png.5c693f7cbce991cbd074eb010f60bc16.png

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On 11/06/2024 at 15:58, LDT006 said:

Westhoek Ridge Small Cemetery was at 28.J.7.b.90.30:

28 minutes ago, Andrew P said:

Westhoek Small Ridge Cemetery was located at 28.J.7.b.7.7

Must have been really difficult to identify any trench map reference in that landscape!

image.png.fb98e5cdf8f0866800d2c98d831c2cc8.png

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Just looking at CWGC recoveries in 28.J.7 for soldiers serving in the Passchendaele timeframe, there were 20 taken from 7.b.9.3, so a good candidate for an IWGC cemetery.

image.png.a413ab79a1c8f0b456af181cbf6a1d82.png

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38 minutes ago, WhiteStarLine said:

Just looking at CWGC recoveries in 28.J.7 for soldiers serving in the Passchendaele timeframe, there were 20 taken from 7.b.9.3, so a good candidate for an IWGC cemetery.

 

It doesn't matter what coordinates are on the documents: we know where exactly the "Zonnebeke 5" were found, don't we? So that is where the cemetery was, no matter wat numbers were written in documents before.

Jan

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Hi Jan,

Up to now, every post has been "where was Westhoek Ridge cemetery".  The first post gave a description and mentioned 22 burials.  The third post asked for an exact location.  The fourth post gave coordinates and cited a primary source with 22 soldiers there.  The sixth post gave slightly different coordinates and cited a burial return with 7 soldiers there.

It's probably timely to stop and say "in this vicinity" but perhaps you could tell us where the Zonnebeke 5 were found and if they were buried in the Westhoek Ridge cemetery?

Cheers, Bill

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2 hours ago, WhiteStarLine said:

Hi Jan,

Up to now, every post has been "where was Westhoek Ridge cemetery".  The first post gave a description and mentioned 22 burials.  The third post asked for an exact location.  The fourth post gave coordinates and cited a primary source with 22 soldiers there.  The sixth post gave slightly different coordinates and cited a burial return with 7 soldiers there.

It's probably timely to stop and say "in this vicinity" but perhaps you could tell us where the Zonnebeke 5 were found and if they were buried in the Westhoek Ridge cemetery?

Cheers, Bill

Hi Bill,

There's a report (in Dutch) about the excavation: https://oar.onroerenderfgoed.be/publicaties/ROEV/1373/ROEV1373-001.pdf

Jan

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15 hours ago, WhiteStarLine said:

Hi Jan,

Up to now, every post has been "where was Westhoek Ridge cemetery".  The first post gave a description and mentioned 22 burials.  The third post asked for an exact location.  The fourth post gave coordinates and cited a primary source with 22 soldiers there.  The sixth post gave slightly different coordinates and cited a burial return with 7 soldiers there.

It's probably timely to stop and say "in this vicinity" but perhaps you could tell us where the Zonnebeke 5 were found and if they were buried in the Westhoek Ridge cemetery?

Cheers, Bill

Hi Bill

Thanks for posting the maps very interesting. The page I posted from the burial returns was just one page of the list from those coordinates. I should have made that clear. Some of the men listed don't have known graves. I will post the rest below.

Cheers

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The rest of those listed in the original 1st ANZAC burial returns for Westhoek Ridge Small Cemetery. Probably not a comprehensive list of all those buried there but hopefully interesting 

image.png.87fbb08185ea5d7105c6632c093998cd.png

image.png.e5c9932cc030d697170054e0d2807087.png

image.png.5ae73d1dd2fa5440b4fa6ce301e4b96e.png

image.png.6e3791efae59e2a1a7f4123e0e385a26.png

image.png.25346d009f9856ef2bcf4ad86cfd7d33.png

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Just to confuse matters further the 1st Division burial returns has a different map reference for these men

image.png.abe6577d1b5eaab3ad1268cfe3b7542d.png

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The 4th Division burial returns also has a slightly different reference for some of these men.

image.png.189874d38a46f47c3bbccf467bed485d.png

image.png.ab078f7b8d5f8c34e0ae1f8ed7e143bb.png

image.png.529a3860baf519d6575d1b4c0efdf7b3.png

image.png.f5cc77d0f62c1962b2278b5c6114e165.png

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All this shows that blindly believing map coordinates is extremely dangerous.

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