Headstones in the CWGC Heilly Station Cemetery, Mericourt-l'Abbe, north-east of Amiens, Somme, France.
The unique memorial in the centre belongs to Lance Corporal JP O'Neill who died in a grenade accident. His friends paid a local stonemason to erect a marble column above his grave against all regulations. "The cemetery was begun in May 1916 and was used by the three medical units until April 1917. From March to May 1918, it was used by Australian units, and in the early autumn for further hospital burials when the 20th Casualty Clearing Station was there briefly in August and September 1918. The last burial was made in May 1919. There are now 2,890 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. Only 12 of the burials are unidentified and special memorials are erected to 21 casualties whose graves in the cemetery could not be exactly located. The cemetery also contains 83 German graves. The burials in this cemetery were carried out under extreme pressure and many of the graves are either too close together to be marked individually, or they contain multiple burials. Some headstones carry as many as three sets of casualty details, and in these cases, regimental badges have had to be omitted. Instead, these badges, 117 in all, have been carved on a cloister wall on the north side of the cemetery." CWGC
Size: 3624px × 2415px
Location: Mericourt-l'Abbe, Somme, France
Photo credit: © Maurice Savage / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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