3779 x 5039 px | 32 x 42,7 cm | 12,6 x 16,8 inches | 300dpi
Aufnahmedatum:
17. Mai 2015
Ort:
Essex Farm War Cemetery, Ieper, Belgium
Weitere Informationen:
The Essex Farm Cemetery is a few miles out of the centre of Ypres (Ieper) in Belgium. The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, the man who also designed the nearby Menin Gate in Ypres. There are 1, 199 burials at the cemetery though there are 1, 185 graves in it including that of Rifleman Valentine Joe Strudwick of the 8th Battalion the Rifle Brigade who died on January 14th 1916 aged 15 – one of the youngest fatalities in the British Army in World War One. Essex Farm Cemetery also includes headstones grouped together for men who are known to be buried in the cemetery but no one is sure where. The large majority of those buried at Essex Farm were named as they would have been known to the men who worked in the makeshift 'medical centre' there. Unlike many World War One cemeteries, there are few graves (just 102), which are marked ‘Known unto God’ or ‘A Soldier of the Great War’ – the standard way of marking the grave of someone whose name was not known. Essex Farm was used as an advanced dressing station between April 1915 and August 1917. Being based near to the front line trenches, the station gave first aid care to the wounded before casualties were transferred to a Casualty Clearing Station. To begin with the dressing station was just a series of dugouts cut into the western side spoil-bank of the Ypres Canal that runs behind Essex Farm Cemetery. However, it eventually gained more permanent concrete shelters that remain to this day. Near to this concrete building is a memorial to Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae who wrote the poem “In Flanders Field the poppies blow” on May 3rd 1915. McCrae was a Canadian doctor who worked at Essex Farm. He wrote the poem after the death of a colleague called Lieutenant Alex Helmer who was killed as a result of a direct hit by an artillery shell. McCrae was moved by the last words in Helmer’s diary, which read that he believed that the action in and around Essex Farm had died down slightly and that, as a resu
