Railway Dugouts Burial Ground (Transport Farm)

Cemetery Details

Location Komenseweg, Zillebeke, Ypres (Ieper) - West-Vlaanderen, Belgium
Co‑ordinates N50.83526, E2.9035
Description

Railway Dugouts Burial Ground (Transport Farm) is located 2 Kms south-east of Ypres (Ieper) town centre, on the Komenseweg, a road connecting Ypres (Ieper) to Komen (N336).

 

The commune of Zillebeke contains many Commonwealth cemeteries as the front line trenches ran through it during the greater part of the First World War. Railway Dugouts Cemetery is 2 Kms west of Zillebeke village, where the railway runs on an embankment overlooking a small farmstead, which was known to the troops as Transport Farm. The site of the cemetery was screened by slightly rising ground to the east, and burials began there in April 1915. They continued until the Armistice, especially in 1916 and 1917, when Advanced Dressing Stations were placed in the dugouts and the farm. They were made in small groups, without any definite arrangement and in the summer of 1917 a considerable number were obliterated by shell fire before they could be marked. The names "Railway Dugouts" and "Transport Farm" were both used for the cemetery. At the time of the Armistice, more than 1,700 graves in the cemetery were known and marked. Other graves were then brought in from the battlefields and small cemeteries in the vicinity, and a number of the known graves destroyed by artillery fire were specially commemorated. The latter were mainly in the present Plots IV and VII. The cemetery now contains 2,459 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. 430 of the burials are unidentified and 261 casualties are represented by special memorials. Other special memorials record the names of 72 casualties buried in Valley Cottages and Transport Farm Annexe Cemeteries whose graves were destroyed in later fighting. VALLEY COTTAGES CEMETERY, ZILLEBEKE, was among a group of cottages on "Observatory Road", which runs Eastward from Zillebeke village. It contained the graves of 111 soldiers from the United Kingdom and Canada. It was in an exposed position during the greater part of the war. TRANSPORT FARM ANNEXE was about 100 metres South-East of the Railway Dugouts Cemetery, on the road to Verbrandenmolen. The graves in it were removed to Perth Cemetery (China Wall), Zillebeke, but one officer, whose grave could not found, is specially commemorated here. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.

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Names

Showing 8 people of interest from cemetery

RANGER, Lyle John

Service number 5605
Sapper
1st Tunnelling Company (inc. 4th Tunnelling Company)
AIF WW1
Born 27 Jun 1898

CLIFT, Harold Henry

Service number 4480
Corporal
4th Infantry Battalion
AIF WW1
Born 1897

MAXWELL, Edgar Allan

Service number 5054
Private
22nd Infantry Battalion
AIF WW1
Born 1892

MCBRYDE, James

Service number 1201
Lieutenant
1st Field Company Engineers
AIF WW1
Born 4 Jan 1884

DABBS, John Wilfred

Service number 615
Second Lieutenant
2nd Infantry Battalion
AIF WW1
Born 9 Apr 1889

CRACKNELL, Frederick William

Service number 3305
Private
11th Infantry Battalion
AIF WW1

COPAS, William John

Service number 4091
Private
19th Infantry Battalion
AIF WW1
Born 1892

GOODSON, George Ernest

Service number 3297
Sapper
Born 1879

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