Flesquières Hill British Cemetery
Flesquieres village was attacked by the 51st (Highland) Division, with tanks, on the 20th November 1917, in the Battle of Cambrai, but held for a time by a German officer with a few men; it was captured on the 21st. It was lost in the later stages of the battle, and retaken on the 27th September 1918, by the 3rd Division.
Flesquières Hill Cemetery was originally made by the 2nd Division, in 1918, behind a German cemetery ("Flesquières Soldiers' Cemetery No.2"); but the German graves were removed after the Armistice to Flesquières Communal Cemetery German (which in its turn was removed, with 583 graves, in 1924). Plots III-VIII were created on the site of the German cemetery and in them were reburied 688 British soldiers from the battlefields of Havrincourt, Flesquieres, Marcoing and Masnieres and from a few other burial grounds.
There are now over 900 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, over one-third are unidentified and special memorials are erected to five officers and men from the United Kingdom and two from New Zealand, known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names of three men of the R.N.D., buried at the end of 1917 in the 63rd Division Cemetery, Marcoing, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.
Three of the crew of Mark Four Tank D-51 “Deborah” are buried in the cemetery. The tank itself is now housed next to the cemetery in the Fesquières tank museum.
The pictures shown here were taken on 15 July 2024 using a Sony A7R IV camera body and a Sony FE16-35mm GM lens.
The music is Gymnopédie No. 1 by Erik Satie.
The trench map is courtesy of the National Library of Scotland.
#Flesquières #GreatWar #Deborah #D-51