Photos by Steve Arnold: on the map, in Google Earth (KML)

My Uncle, Mark (Maxie) Rothberg, was killed by the Germans while defending the British retreat. He was a driver in the Royal Engineers, aged 19. Among the rows of crosses in this picture, there is one Star of David, on Maxie's headstone. His dying words to his sergeant were "I am a Jew, please make sure I am buried as one". His body was never found and he is probably buried in the trench where he bled to death after being hit in the neck by shrapnel. On 31st May 2009, on the 69th anniversary of his death, my family and I visited his grave and held a Jewish memorial service. Later, we were taken by local historian, Rev. Wilfried Pauwels to the trench were he was killed and is probably buried in an unmarked grave.

Ploegsteert est en Hainaut Belgique

No easy hopes or lies Shall bring us to our goal, But iron sacrifice Of body, will, and soul. There is but one task for all - For each one life to give. Who stands if freedom fall? Who dies if England live?

Rudyard Kipling

It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred. Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared With piteous recognition in fixed eyes, Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless. And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, - By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

Wilfred Owen Manchester Regt

Thanks for this photograph. My uncle is one of the 55 buried here from the Second World War. Frederick Gardiner. He died in Dunkirk on 29th May 1940 protecting people against a wall. He was only 27. The grave is F6 but I have never seen it.

Belgium West-Vlaanderen Le Gheer ville de 7784 Comines-Warneton en Hainaut

ALl the soldiers here were from the 9th Brigade of the Third Division AIF.

Canada Farm Cemetery took its name from a farmhouse used as a dressing station during the 1917 Allied offensive on this front. Most of the burials are of men who died at the dressing station between June and October 1917. There are now 907 First World War burials in the cemetery. The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.

The cemetery was used continuously between 9 June 1915 and 5 August 1917, with the 62nd, 16th, 9th, 11th, 129th and 130th Field Ambulances successively having dressing stations close by. Throughout this period, the village was just within range of the German artillery and a collective grave in Plot 2, Row E, contains the remains of 37 men of the 3rd Bn Monmouthshire Regiment killed on parade on 29 December 1915 by a single shell fired from a naval gun in Houthulst Forest. The graves in Plot 3 run in order of date of death and show the successive occupations of Elverdinghe Chateau by the 38th (Welsh) Division, the Guards Division and units of the Royal Artillery. The cemetery contains 408 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 6 of which are unidentified, and three German war graves. The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.

The village of Reninghelst was in Allied hands from the autumn of 1914 to the end of the First World War. From March 1915, Commonwealth burials were made in the churchyard, the churchyard extension and the new military cemetery, but in April 1918, in the Battles of the Lys, a new cemetery was made by field ambulances and fighting units near the hamlet of Ouderdom, on the Poperinghe-Wytschaete road. It was called at first Ouderdom Military Cemetery, but later Grootebeek British Cemetery, from the stream (Grootebeek, or Groote Kemmelbeek) which runs beside it. It was used at intervals until the end of September 1915 and it absorbed a small Indian cemetery made on the spot in April 1915. The cemetery contains 109 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. One grave destroyed by shell fire is now represented by a special memorial, and another special memorial records the name of Pte J Lynn, VC, who was buried in Vlamertinghe Churchyard but whose grave was similarly destroyed. The two Second World War burials date from May 1940 and the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force ahead of the German advance. The cemetery was designed by W H Cowlishaw.