Guards CWGC Cemetery at Les Bouefs on the Somme
Lesboeufs was attacked by the Guards Division on 15 September 1916 and captured by them on the 25th. It was lost on 24 March 1918 during the great German offensive, after a stubborn resistance by part of the 63rd Bn. Machine Gun Corps, and recaptured on 29 August by the 10th Bn. South Wales Borderers. At the time of the Armistice, the cemetery consisted of only 40 graves (now Plot I), mainly those of officers and men of the 2nd Grenadier Guards who died on 25 September 1916, but it was very greatly increased when graves were brought in from the battlefields and small cemeteries round Lesboeufs. There are now 3,137 casualties of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 1,644 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 83 soldiers known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names of five casualties buried in Ginchy Cemetery, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire, and three officers of the 2nd Bn. Coldstream Guards, killed in action on 26 September 1916 and known to have been buried together by the roadside near Lesboefs, whose grave could not later be located. The cemetery was designed by Sir Herbert Baker.
Size: 5194px × 3710px
Location: Guards Cemetery, Lesboeufs, Somme France
Photo credit: © Niall Ferguson / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 1, 1914-18, 1916, bouefs, cemetery, cross, cwgc, france, graves, great, guards, les, military, remembrance, sacrifice, somme, war, world
