Core Location 1 – Lijssenthoek Military Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Cemetery, Poperinghe

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Directions – Take Junction 13 off the A25 sign-posted Ieper and follow the D948. After a couple of kilometres you’ll reach the Belgian border (don’t worry no border guards these days!) where the road is renamed the N38. Carry on until you reach a long straight avenue lined with trees. After a few hundred yards on the right is the signpost for Lijssenthoek CWGC Cemetery. Take this turning and the next right – the cemetery is a couple of hundred yards on your right.

Practical Information – This location is best visited on the drive into Ieper from the Channel Ports. For visitors staying the weekend, between 2:00pm and 3:00pm on a Friday afternoon is ideal – leaving time to see Talbot House in Poperinghe and/or the “In Flanders Field Museum” in Ieper. This cemetery is usually fairly quiet and parking shouldn’t be a problem. The sheer scale of burials provides the first-time visitor with an unforgettable visual impact of the human cost of the fighting in the Salient and is a good place for them to become familiar with the layout and design of a CWGC Cemetery.

Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. The tremendous work of the CWGC gardeners can be clearly seen. Photo: Mark Sluman. Click on image for full size.

Entrance porch, Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery. Photo: Mark Sluman. Click on image for full size.

Historical Notes – The French first used the nearby farm as an evacuation hospital in 1914 and the British established a number of Casualty Clearing Stations (CCS’s) in the area during 1915 and 1916. The CCS’s were used throughout the Third Battle of Ypres and most of the soldiers buried here would have died prior, during or after medical treatment. For that reason there are only 20 unknown graves – a tiny proportion compared with the percentage of unknown burials in post-war “concentration” cemeteries such as Tyne Cot at Passchendaele. Altogether there are around 10,800 burials including 7,332 British, 1,131 Australians, 1,053 Canadians, 658 French, 291 New Zealanders and 233 Germans.

Eyewitness Account – In 1923, the “St Barnabas” charity organised a trip to the cemetery for relatives of the dead. The correspondent of the "Daily Express" wrote:

"No-one who was present at the memorial service at the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery this morning will ever forget that slow-moving procession of a thousand lion-hearted bereaved parents, widows and orphans shuffling along the Poperinghe road under the hot sun, with shawls and rugs slung over their shoulders, artificial flowers and brown paper parcels in their arms, gathered from Ayr and Cornwall, Halifax and Lincoln, Balham and Barnstaple, to pay homage to their glorious dead."