Gommecourt Wood New Cemetery in Foncquevillers, Nord-Pas-de-Calais

About

Get directions Foncquevillers, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France

Coordinates: 50.14316, 2.63919
Cemetery ID:

Members have Contributed

About these numbers These percentages indicate the number of Find a Grave memorials that have a grave photo or GPS coordinates. We don't know the total number of burials in a cemetery, so we cannot calculate a percentage of those with memorials, photos or GPS coordinates.

Photos

Foncquevillers is a village about 18 kilometres south-west of Arras on the D3. Gommecourt Wood New Cemetery is situated a little way south-east along the D6. A CWGC signpost indicating the road is situated at the junction near the post office in Foncquevillers and the Cemetery is on the right hand side of the road just before arriving at Gommecourt.

Foncquevillers was in British hands in 1915 and 1916. On the July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, Gommecourt Wood, which was basically a hinge at the extreme left of the line, was attacked by the 46th (North Midland) Division, and the Southern part of the village by the 56th (London) Division. The attack met with temporary success, but could not be sustained; Gommecourt remained a salient in the German line until the February 27, 1917, when it was evacuated. It was never retaken by the Germans; at the end of their offensive of March, 1918, it was just within the British lines. It was later "adopted" by the County Borough of Wolverhampton.

Gommecourt Wood New Cemetery was made after the Armistice by the concentration of graves from several smaller burial grounds and from the battlefields of July 1916, March 1917, and March, April and August, 1918. There are now nearly 750 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, nearly two-thirds are unidentified and special memorials are erected to ten soldiers from the United Kingdom, known or believed to be buried among them. The cemetery covers an area of 2690 square metres and is enclosed by a rubble wall.