Heestert Military Cemetery

Heestert Military Cemetery is a British military cemetery with casualties from the First World War, located in the Belgian village of Heestert in the Zwevegem municipality. The cemetery was designed by William Harrison Cowlishaw and is located between the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw Assumption Church and the village cemetery. It is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. There are 184 graves and a Cross of Sacrifice.

Heestert
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Used for those deceased 1918
Established1919
Location50°46′52.6″N 3°24′41.8″E
near 
Heestert, Zwevegem, West Flanders, Belgium
Designed byWilliam Harrison Cowlishaw
Total burials184
Unknowns
65
Burials by nation
Burials by war
Statistics source: CWGC and ww1cemeteries

History

Heestert was held by the Germans from the start of the war. It was only taken by the British at the end of October 1918; almost all of the graves are of those who died in the period 21-25 October 1918. The cemetery was built around February 1919 by local farmers. They brought the British and German victims from the battlefield and their farms here to bury them under instruction from the mayor . The cemetery was reorganized in 1920, with the German graves being moved to the south parts of each row. Later that year three more British graves were transferred here from the cemetery at Moen.

184 victims are buried, including 127 Britons (of which 26 could not be identified) and 57 Germans (of which 39 could not be identified). Special memorials were set up for 8 Britons who were known or believed to be buried in the cemetery but whose actual plot was lost or destroyed.

This cemetery was protected as a monument in 2009.[1]

Distinguished soldiers
  • Arthur Keith Harding, captain in the Queen's Own (Royal West Kent Regiment). and Thistle Robinson, lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers and son of Richard Atkinson Robinson), were awarded the Military Cross (MC).
  • Corporals JG Young and Harry Shortman Peter Burridge and Privates F. Byrne , T. Grindle , FJ Boulton , TW Gelder , Harry Richard Foulger and Abraham Barker received the Military Medal (MM).
gollark: I'm pretty sure that (assuming the probability of each person at the gathering having COVID-19 is independent and just equal to the fraction of the population which us infected, which is not true but important to simplify) the number of people at the gathering who have it follows the binomial distribution.
gollark: =tex 1 - \left ( 1 - \frac{P_{covid}}{P} \right ) ^{N_{gathering}}
gollark: =tex 1 - \left 1 - \frac{P{covid}}{P} \right ^{N{gathering}}
gollark: =tex 1 - \left1 - \frac{P{covid}}{P}\right^{N{gathering}}
gollark: =tex 1 - (1 - \frac{P_{covid}}{P})^{N_{gathering}}

References
  1. https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/81077
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.