In memoriam
Tyne Cot Cemetery and Memorial
Tyne Cot Cemetery and Memorial, Zonnebeke, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium. 'Tyne Cot' or 'Tyne Cottage' was the name given by the Northumberland Fusiliers to a barn which stood near the level crossing on the Passchendaele-Broodseinde road. The barn, which had become the centre of five or six German pill-boxes, was captured by the 3rd Australian Division on 4 October 1917 in the advance on Passchendaele. One of these pill-boxes was unusually large and was used as an advanced dressing station after its capture. From October to the end of March 1918, 343 graves were made here.
Tyne Cot Cemetery was in German hands again from 13 April to 28 September, when it was finally recaptured, with Passchendaele, by the Belgian Army. The cemetery was greatly enlarged after the Armistice when remains were brought in from the battlefields of Passchendaele and Langemarck, and from a few small burial grounds. It is now the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world, with 11,954 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried here. Some 8,367 of the burials are unidentified.
Tyne Cot Memorial forms the north-eastern boundary of the cemetery and commemorates nearly 35,000 servicemen from the United Kingdom and New Zealand who died in the Ypres Salient after 16 August 1917 and whose graves are not known. The memorial stands close to the farthest point in Belgium reached by Commonwealth forces in the First World War until the final advance to victory. This is one of four memorials to the missing in Belgian Flanders.
Twenty-two men of the North Irish Horse are commemorated here: Second Lieutenants F.J.E. McFarland, D.J. Miller, W.L. Reavie, G.H. Farley and R.J. McCullough, Lance Corporals T. Stevenson and W.J. Robinson, Riflemen J. Connell, N.H. Hale, A. Johnston, A.J. Knox, C.A. Morrison and E.A. Stevenson, and Privates J.A. Bowden, F.StG. Cooke, A. Davey, W.H. Dundas, W.G. Leinster, R. McConnell, R. Park, H. Mortimer and T.A. McReynolds. The location of their memorial inscriptions is shown on the CWGC cemetery and memorial plan below.
Image 1 kindly provided by Steve Rogers, Project Co-ordinator of the The War Graves Photographic Project, www.twgpp.org. Images 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 Copyright © Phillip Tardif with all rights reserved as set out in this Use of Material policy. Information and memorial plan sourced from Commonwealth War Graves Commission www.cwgc.org.