This is a follow on from this post last year:
TMP link
I mentioned how I would go and visit the grave in Abbeville of my WW1 great-uncle. If I went, I would be the second family member to visit his grave since the end of WW1, 106 years.
Not much was known about Bertie Beavis, other than he died on 29 September, 2015 and was buried in the communal cemetery at Abbeville, France. Apparently he was killed during the Battle of Loos in 1915. He was a member of the 9th Battalion, The Suffolk Regiment and his entire military service was just over 8 months. I have the original telegram of his death but none of the family really knew how he died.
A number of things didn't make sense. If he had been killed at Loos which was 63 miles away, why was he buried where he was? It was a long way to come to be buried.
At Abbeville, the communal cemetery has 700+ WW1 graves in it, but the main Commonwealth War grave is about 150 metres further up the hill. The war graves in the communal cemetery are administered by the war graves commission though and follow the standard of head stone for Commonwealth graves.
I had a number of questions and these were the answers I came up with:
1) War diaries of the 9th Suffolks showed me they were engaged on 26 and 27 September 1915 at Loos with casualties, but on 28 and 29 September were resting out of the line.
2) Dressing stations/Field hospitals were generally placed on railway lines near to harbours/canals/rivers. Abbeville is near the Somme and was also on the railway line.
3) Number 2 Stationary Field Hospital was based in Abbeville from mid August 1915 until mid January 1916.
4) A member of the hospital staff reports on how severely injured wounded were being removed from trains on the 28 and 29 September and treated at 2 Stationary.
5) Bertie Beavis' stone said he had died, not that he was killed, on 29 September which led me to believe he had died in the hospital at Abbeville on 29 September from wounds sustained on 27 September.
6) The graves in the communal cemetery were from mixed regiments and corps, of which most were involved in the Loos attack or were reserves fed into the battle. This would match severely wounded from those regiments being taken off the trains and treated at Abbeville. The dates matched this theory as well.
When I went into the cemetery, it was kept nicely, and the graves within the communal cemetery were a mix of mainly British and French with a single Belgian. The latter two have simple wooden crosses with name and date of death, nothing else. The Commonwealth graves have headstones, some with an epitaph. There was a visitor book there, so I went to fill out the visit by my wife and I when I was struck by how few entries were in the book. There was a gap of over 1 year from the last entry, which was general, and reading on, it seemed that the entries in the book were general and no-one was visiting a relative's grave. It made me wonder if some of these souls had ever had a visitor.
And because I was feeling melancholy, I put my thoughts into poetry, please excuse my indulgence.
ABBEVILLE:
In Abbeville no poppies grow,
No red heads bobbing, row by row,
Instead, the stones and crosses stand,
Upon the once, war torn land.
Its quiet here, upon the hill
This sacred ground, so quiet and still.
Graves from centuries past stand watch,
Over those who lie in this special patch.
Laid gently to rest, so long ago,
Casualties of war, the futility So
amply marked by cross and stone
Each with a neighbour, none ever alone.
The ground holds them steady, set in line by line,
As if like their owners, proud, tall, fine.
For the lucky few, the visitors appear,
Wandering slowly through the graves, "Here?", "No, here".
They kneel or stand before, a stone or cross
By touch and gentle voice, convey the sense of loss,
Families knowing a lineage will be forever incomplete,
Because the missing piece lies in the ground beneath their feet.
Some stay unattended, untouched and alone.
Some have no-one to love them, to visit the sentinel of stone,
That sits with others row by row,
In Abbeville, where no poppies grow.
finds out what happens when Elves go bad...
