Grevillers (New Zealand) Memorial

Pas de Calais

Location Information:

Grevillers (New Zealand) Memorial is situated in Grevillers British Cemetery.

Grevillers is a village in the Department of the Pas-de-Calais, 3 kilometres west of Bapaume.

From Bapaume take the RD929 in the direction of Amiens, turn immediately right onto the RD7, where a signpost indicates the direction of the cemetery. After 500 metres turn left at junction onto RD29, where a signpost again indicates the cemetery, which is on the right after a further 50 metres.

Historical Information:

The Memorial commemorates almost 450 officers and men of the New Zealand Division who died in the defensive fighting in the area from March to August 1918, and in the Advance to Victory between 8 August and 11 November 1918, and who have no known grave.

This is one of seven memorials in France and Belgium to those New Zealand soldiers who died on the Western Front and whose graves are not known. The memorials are all in cemeteries chosen as appropriate to the fighting in which the men died.

The village of Grevillers was occupied by Commonwealth troops on 14 March 1917 and in April and May, the 3rd, 29th and 3rd Australian Casualty Clearing Stations were posted nearby. They began the cemetery and continued to use it until March 1918, when Grevillers was lost to the German during their great advance. On the following 24 August, the New Zealand Division recaptured Grevillers and in September, the 34th, 49th and 56th Casualty Clearing Stations came to the village and used the cemetery again. After the Armistice, 200 graves were brought in from the battlefields to the south of the village, and 40 from an adjoining cemetery made during the German occupation, which no longer exists.

There are now 2,106 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in Grevillers British Cemetery. 189 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 18 casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names of two casualties, buried in Avesnes-les-Bapaume German Cemetery, whose graves could not be found. The cemetery also contains the graves of seven Second World War airmen, and 18 French war graves.

The cemetery and memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.