Jo and Calum - France 2015: Belgium 2015 - Day 6

One last cemetery before we head back to France and onto the Tour De France.

This one is Tyne Cot.

A view from outside the cemerty looking up the hill

'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 blockhouses, or 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 6 October to the end of March 1918, 343 graves were made, on two sides of it, by the 50th (Northumbrian) and 33rd Divisions, and by two Canadian units. The cemetery was in German hands again from 13 April to 28 September, when it was finally recaptured, with Passchendaele, by the Belgian Army.

TYNE COT CEMETERY was greatly enlarged after the Armistice when remains were brought in from the battlefields of Passchendaele and Langemarck, and from a other small burial grounds in the area.

It is now the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world in terms of burials. At the suggestion of King George V, who visited the cemetery in 1922, the Cross of Sacrifice was placed on the original large pill-box. (CWGC.org)

You can see the original concrete behind the Laurel. You may notice the division number has been altered. Originally the stone incorrectly stated the 2nd Australian Division captured the pill box. It was actually the 3rd Australian Division.

There are three other pill-boxes in the cemetery. You can see two of them in these photos.

There are now 11,956 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in Tyne Cot Cemetery. 8,369 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to more than 80 casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials commemorate 20 casualties whose graves were destroyed by shell fire. (CWGC.org)

Pano of Cemetery from the Cross of Sacrifice looking down toward the main entrance.

Some shots from the top of the Cross of Sacrifice looking down toward the main entrance. The Pill boxes can be seen under the trees in the photos.

The Tyne Cot Memorial forms the north-eastern boundary of Tyne Cot 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. (CWGC.org)

Views of the Memorial from the Cross of Sacrifice .

Part of the memorial wall. Each of the light panels between the brown stone is full of names

The memorial has several "chambers" in which are more panels containing more names. The New Zealand memorial panels are within one of these chambers. This is a pano of panels on the wall

This is a panel from the New Zealand chamber. The name I was interested in here was Tauranga farmer Walter Joseph Cunningham. He was a farmed on Cambridge road, which is very close to where I grew up. It's all residential now.

He was born in Australia on the 25 April 1882 and was killed in action in Belgium on 12 October 1917.