DEVONSHIRE CEMETERY

With permission from the Express and Echo Newspaper here are copies of two articles that were published on 22/10/98.The first article is only an extract but can be seen in full at Express and Echo on their archive search page. The second article listing the buried men in France, please read the end note.

ARTICLE 1

We will remember them

by CHRIS MILLS

The Devonshire Cemetery is one of the smallest and most poignant of memorials which litter the Somme.

Unlike other graveyards where the dead of different regiments and nations are mixed into together, it is devoted to a single unit and their dead from one day.

Three days after the attack the Germans were forced back and the Devons collected their dead from no man's land.

A mass grave was fashioned out of the support line trench from where they went over the top and a wooden plaque was set up reading 'The Devonshires held this trench, The Devonshires hold it still'.

The present cemetery directly over the grave was consecrated in the 1920s.

Two long rows of headstones are overlooked by a simple stone cross. The narrow enclosure is bordered by a brick wall and sandwiched between a copse and a slope. Visitors can sign the book which is left in a metal-handled safe, together with a list of those interred.

From the copse looking north towards Mametz village, visitors can see the ground over which the 8th and 9th stumbled on July 1. Mansell Copse has since gone under the plough but when it rains the outlines of trenches can be seen through the chalk soil.

DIRECTIONS:
BY ROAD: From Calais ferryport and Eurotunnel terminal, take A26 motorway for Bethune and Paris to junction with A1 (Autoroute de Nord), take A1 south and come off at junction 14 for Bapaume, then follow D929 s to Albert. On Albert ring road take first left D938 for Mametz and Peronne. The Devonshire Cemetery sign is about 500 metres past the Mametz turn-off on the D938.
BY RAIL: Take Eurostar to international terminal at Lille, then stopping train to Albert. Taxis and bikes for hire outside station.

ARTICLE 2

Heroes all all

MEN of the 8th and 9th Battalions buried in the Devonshire Cemetery - all killed on July 1, 1916 Pte R.

And ten other men of the 9th Battalion, Devonshire Regt, whose bodies are unidentified

NOTE: First names, ages and home towns in Devon are given as recorded by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Some men who took part in the attack who died of wounds later or in the battles to come are commemorated elsewhere.

Copyright©1999-2009, Shirley Turner


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