A few hundred yards north of the 38th Welsh Division Memorial, Flatiron Copse Cemetery is situated alongside the road at the north eastern edge of Mametz Wood.
Panoramic shots on entering the cemetery (above & below),…
…Mametz Wood in the background.
Looking south west on entering the cemetery. Note the headstones on the far left along the cemetery wall,…
…special memorials to thirty six men ‘known’ or ‘believed’ to be buried among the unidentified burials in this cemetery.
Stone of Remembrance, Cross of Sacrifice, and Mametz Wood.
Two Queen’s officers of 24th Bn. London Regiment, both recipients of the Military Cross, lie alongside a Welsh Second Lieutenant.
Allow me to introduce you to Lance Corporal Edward Dwyer V.C. (front right), photographed at a public reception held for him in Kingston-upon-Thames in July 1916.
We had come here to visit his grave.
He would live to enjoy his fame for sixteen months before he was killed in action near Guillemont on 3rd September 1916.
Edward Dwyer now lies in Plot III, third headstone from the left in the row above.
Of the just over 1500 burials in the cemetery, 420 are unidentified. You can find the cemetery plan, by kind permission of the CWGC, here.
The cemetery was begun when an advanced dressing station was set up here on 14th July 1916, as the British advanced to capture the Bazentin Ridge, and was used until April 1917…
…by which time the tide of war had moved east.
Stone of Remembrance (above & below).
Unidentified Royal Scots graves.
A couple of men were buried here in August 1918, and more than 1100 were brought in after the war from the surrounding battlefields or from small battlefield cemeteries, unsurprisingly nearly all men killed during the summer months of the Battle of the Somme.
Cross of Sacrifice. The cemeteries are no respecters of rank. The second headstone from the camera, between two Privates,…
…is a Lieutenant Colonel from the Queen’s. During the fighting on 15th September for High Wood*, the 19th Bn. London Regiment was in the second wave of the attack, and despite the successful capture of the wood later in the day, confusion reigned during much of the morning. Their newly promoted Comanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel A. P. Hamilton, organised a party of men to rush the German trenches but was killed, along with all the men who went with him. A rifleman of the 18th Bn. London Regiment (London Irish Rifles), unaware that Hamilton had been promoted to command 19th Bn. London Regiment, later mentioned finding the bodies of their C.O., Major J. R. Trinder and “Major Hamilton, our second in-command” as well as their company commander, Major P. A. C. Maginn. “We dug their graves at the cross roads where the trenches commence, and placed three little wooden crosses to mark the resting place of these three men who, by their courage and devotion, had done so much to inspire confidence in we the men of the regiment.” All three men now rest in Flatiron Copse Cemetery, although no longer together.
*we shall be visiting High Wood soon.
Looking back down the cemetery towards the entrance…
…the modern Flatiron Copse beyond on the other side of the road. Beneath the trees to the left of the photo…
…you can see more special memorials along the cemetery boundary near the entrance.
They remember nine British soldiers who were killed in action in 1916 and buried in Mametz Wood Cemetery, but whose graves were destroyed in later battles.
It’s interesting how, in the report below, Corporal Dwyer gets the headline despite the article actually having nothing specifically to do with him. Although Sergeant Philip Griggs appears to have made it to a dressing station, his body was later lost, his name now inscribed among the 72,000 names on the Thiepval Memorial.