Point-Du-Jour Military Cemetery, Athies

Athies was captured by the 9th (Scottish) Division, which included the South African Brigade, on 9 April 1917. It remained in Allied hands until the end of the war. Point-Du-Jour was a house on the road from St. Laurent-Blangy to Gavrelle and by 1917 it had become a German redoubt, captured by the 34th Division on 9 April. Two cemeteries were made on the right of the road from St. Laurent-Blangy to Point-du-Jour, No. 1 Cemetery becoming the present Point-Du-Jour Military Cemetery. It was used from April to November 1917, and again in May 1918, and contained at the Armistice 82 graves (now part of Plot I). It was then enlarged when graves were brought in from the battlefields and small cemeteries north, east and south of Arras. There are now 794 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 401 of the burials are unidentified but special memorials commemorate 22 casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names of six casualties buried in other cemeteries, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire. There are also three Second World War burials and six French war graves. The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.