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In memoriam

St Vaast Post Military Cemetery, Richebourg-L'Avoue

 

 

During the Battle of Festubert in May 1915, British soldiers began burying their fallen comrades in an old orchard near a forward dressing station which was located at the terminus of a trench tramway between the hamlet of Richebourg St. Vaast and La Croix Barbet. The cemetery was used by fighting units serving in the front-line and field ambulances until July 1917 and is the final resting place of over 70 men of the South Downs Pals battalion who were killed at the Battle of Boar’s Head on 30 June 1916. In April and May 1918, having captured the village in the April offensive, the Germans buried 90 of their dead in the south-east end of the cemetery and in September and October 1918, 18 British soldiers killed during the final Allied advance were laid to rest. There are now almost 800 soldiers of the First World War buried or commemorated at St. Vaast Post. Special memorials have been erected to three British soldiers buried in the cemetery whose graves cannot now be traced.

One man of the North Irish Horse, 2nd Lieutenant Johnston Shaw Kirker Hunter, is buried here. The location of his grave is shown on the CWGC cemetery plan below.

 

 

Information and cemetery plan sourced from Commonwealth War Graves Commission www.cwgc.org. Image kindly provided by Steve Rogers, Project Co-ordinator of the The War Graves Photographic Project, www.twgpp.org.