YPRES SALIENT - Clapham Junction - Cryer's Farm Dressing Station - Capt. Brodie Memorial - Polygon Wood - Zonnebeke
- by Pierre Grande Guerre
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- 14 Mar, 2019
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Years of visit: 2005, 2006, 2016
The Flemish call it nowadays the "Nonnebossen". The British called it not "Nun's Woods", but "Nonnebosschen", according to the Dutch spelling of the period.
The “Battle of the Nonnebosschen” – 11 November 1914 |
On 11 November, from 6.30 hrs. until 9.00 hrs., the Germans started an artillery bombardment on the positions of the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, the Scots Guards and the Black Watch.
Captain E. J. Brodie - 1st. Battalion Cameron Highlanders - Killed in action: 11 November 1914
| In the morning of 11 November 1914, the Cameron Highlanders were heavily shelled.
The Prussian Guards, in great strength, broke through the British lines. Captain Brodie gathered together all the men he could find at the brigade headquarters in Glencourse Wood, now part of the “Nonnebossen”. Brigadier General FitzClarence, VC, who was killed the next day, ordered him to organise the defence. With the aid of orderlies, grooms, and telephonists, Brodie succeeded in driving the enemy back. Brodie fell in the ensuing counterattack. Trying to hold on to the edge of the wood Captain Brodie said "For God's sake men, don't retire"! At that moment he was hit in the stomach by a sniper's bullet, fell forward and died instantly.
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We park our car near the Polygon Wood Cemetery.
Polygon Wood Cemetery |
Polygon Wood was cleared by Commonwealth troops at the end of October 1914, given up on 3 May 1915, taken again at the end of September 1917 by Australian troops, evacuated in the Battles of the Lys, and finally retaken by the 9th (Scottish) Division on 28 September 1918. POLYGON WOOD CEMETERY is an irregular front-line cemetery made between August 1917 and April 1918, and used again in September 1918. The cemetery contains 107 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 19 of them unidentified. 60 of those buried here served with the New Zealand forces. There is also one German grave within the cemetery. A walled avenue leads from Polygon Wood Cemetery, past the Cross of Sacrifice, to the BUTTES NEW BRITISH CEMETERY. This burial ground was made after the Armistice when a large number of burials (almost all of 1917, but in a few instances of 1914, 1916 and 1918) were brought in from the battlefields of Zonnebeke. The BUTTES NEW BRITISH CEMETERY (NEW ZEALAND) MEMORIAL, which stands in Buttes New British Cemetery, commemorates 378 officers and men of the New Zealand Division who died in the Polygon Wood sector between September 1917 and May 1918, and who have no known grave. |
Source: Commonwealth War Graves Commission: http://www.cwgc.org |
German period photos of Polygon Wood - 1917
The Battle of Polygon Wood - 26 September - 3 October 1917
To give you an impression of Polygon Wood during the war years, I show you four German period photos. These photos were made during the Battle of Polygoon Wood on 26 September - 3 October 1917.
The Battle of Polygon Wood took place during the second phase of the Third Battle of Ypres, in the area from the Menin Road to Polygon Wood and thence north, to the area beyond St. Juliaan.
The first two photos above show the landscape from the German lines.
The next two photos below show photos of tired and wounded soldiers, and German Prisoners of War returning after a fight.
Buttes New British Cemetery |
A walled avenue leads from Polygon Wood Cemetery, past the Cross of Sacrifice, to the BUTTES NEW BRITISH CEMETERY. This burial ground was made after the Armistice when a large number of burials (almost all of 1917, but in a few instances of 1914, 1916 and 1918) were brought in from the battlefields of Zonnebeke. There are now 2,108 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in Buttes New British Cemetery. 1,677 of the burials are unidentified but special memorials are erected to 35 casualties known or believed to be buried among them. On the Butte itself is the Battle Memorial of the 5th Australian Division, who captured it on 26 September 1917. |
Both cemeteries and the memorial were designed by Charles Holden. Source: Commonwealth War Graves Commission: www.cwgc.org The Battle Memorial of the 5th Australian Division. |
Lt. Col. Allan Humphrey Scott won a Distinguished Service Order at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, when he was a Major and commanding officer of the 4th Battalion from August 1915 to January 1916.
In September 1917 Lt. Col. Scott commanded the 56th Battalion of the A.I.F., which advanced through the Butte in the second wave on 26 September 1917. During the night of 30 September they were relieved by a British Battalion, but Scott remained to brief the incoming commander. On 1 October Scott was shot through the head by a German sniper. The same bullet also struck and killed Lt. Col. D.R. Turnbull, C.O. of the 20th Manchesters.
Sources: Major & Mrs. Holt: “Battlefield Guide to the Ypres Salient” , (http://www.guide-books.co.uk/)
Australian War Memorial (www.awm.gov.au )
From the cemetery we enter the wood again.
Inleiding: Franz Von Papen & Werner Horn; schaker en pion
Onlangs stuitte ik in een oud boek (1) van 1919 op een opmerkelijk verhaal over een Duitse Luitenant, die in begin februari 1915 een half geslaagde bomaanslag pleegt op een spoorbrug over een grensrivier tussen de Verenigde Staten en Canada. Ook al staat de bekentenis van de dader, Werner Horn, deels in het boek te lezen, de naam van zijn opdrachtgever zal Horn blijven verzwijgen. Na wat verder zoeken vond ik ook de naam van Horn’s opdrachtgever, Franz von Papen, een van de aangeklaagden van het latere Neurenberg Proces in 1946.
In een Grote Oorlog als de Eerste Wereldoorlog is Horn’s aanslag op de brug uiteraard slechts een bescheiden wapenfeit. Toch vermoed ik dat dit relatief onbekende verhaal, dat de geschiedenis is ingegaan als de “ Vanceboro International Bridge Bombing ”, nog interessante kanten kent. Het is onder andere een spionageverhaal over hoe in een groter plan een sluwe schaker zijn naïeve pion offert.
Beknopte situatieschets Canada en de Verenigde Staten in 1915
This trip we start at the Léomont near Vitrimont and we will with some exceptions concentrate on the Battle of Lorraine of August-September 1914 in the area, called, the “Trouée de Charmes”, the Gap of Charmes.
After the Léomont battlefield we continue our explorations to Friscati hill and its Nécropole Nationale. Next we pay a visit to the battlefield of la Tombe to go on to the Château de Lunéville. There we cross the Vezouze to move on southward to the Bayon Nécropole Nationale. At Bayon we cross the Moselle to pass Charmes for the panorama over the battlefield from the Haut du Mont. North-west of Charmes we will visit the British Military Cemetery containing 1918 war victims. From Charmes we go northward to the battlefield of the First French Victory of the Great War, the Battle of Rozelieures of 25 August 1914. North of Rozelieures we will visit the village of Gerbéviller. From there we make a jump northward to visit the ruins of Fort de Manonviller to finish with an interesting French Dressing Station bunker, west of Domjevin.
During this visit, we try to focus on the day that the momentum of the battle switched from the French side to the advantage of the Bavarian side: the day of 20 August 1914, when the Bavarians rapidly re-conquered the territory around Morhange , being also the day of the start of their rather successful “Schlacht in Lothringen”.
We will visit beautiful landscapes of the "Parc Naturel Régional de Lorraine", memorials, ossuaries, and cemeteries. Sometimes we will divert to other periods of the Great War, honouring Russian and Romanian soldiers, who died in this sector. We start our route at the border village of Manhoué, and via Frémery, Oron, Chicourt, Morhange, Riche, Conthil, Lidrezing, Dieuze, Vergaville, Bidestroff, Cutting, Bisping we will finish in Nomeny and Mailly-sur-Seille, where the Germans halted their advance on 20 August 1914, and where they constructed from 1915 some interesting bunkers.
