Pozières British Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing

Written by Mike
Pozières British Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing from the south west, 13 March 1993.  (Ref 93-102-03) Pozières British Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing from the south west, 13 March 1993. (Ref 93-102-03)

Pozières British Cemetery contains 2,758 graves comprising 1,800 from the United Kingdom, 714 from Australia and 209 from Canada.  There is also 1 German soldier buried here.  There are 1,380 unknown graves in the cemetery.  Most of the graves are of soldiers killed in 1916.

The village of Pozières was attacked on 23 July 1916 by the 1st Australian and 48th (South Midland) Divisions, and was taken on the following day.

Pozières was lost on 24-25 March 1918, during the great German advance, and recaptured by the 17th Division on the following 24 August.

Pozières Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing.   20 March 1994.  (Ref 94/107/14)

Pozières Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing. 20 March 1994. (Ref 94/107/14)

Plot II Pozières British Cemetery contains the original burials of 1916, 1917 and 1918, carried out by fighting units and field ambulances. The remaining plots were made after the Armistice when graves were brought in from the battlefields immediately surrounding the cemetery, the majority of them of soldiers who died in the Autumn of 1916, but a few represent the fighting in August 1918.

There are special memorials to 23 casualties known or believed to be buried among them.

Pozières Memorial to the Missing

Pozières Memorial to the Missing, 20 March 1994. (Ref 94-107-16)

Pozières British Cemetery is enclosed by the Pozières Memorial which relates to the period of crisis in March and April 1918 when the Allied Fifth Army was driven back by overwhelming numbers across the former Somme battlefields, and the months that followed before the Advance to Victory, which began on 8 August 1918.

Pozières Memorial commemorates over 14,000 casualties of the United Kingdom and 300 of the South African Forces who have no known grave and who died in France during the Fifth Army area retreat on the Somme from 21 March to 7 August 1918.

The Corps and Regiments most largely represented are The Rifle Brigade with over 600 names, The Durham Light Infantry with approximately 600 names, the Machine Gun Corps with over 500, The Manchester Regiment with approximately 500 and The Royal Horse and Royal Field Artillery with over 400 names.

Pozières British Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing were designed by W H Cowlishaw.

Pozières Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing is situated 0.5km south west of the village on the north side of the D929 Albert to Bapaume road.

Mike

Mike

Mike McCormac has been a photographer since about ten years old.  He's a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and lives in a village in the hills near Paphos in Cyprus.

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