The Western Front Memorials to the Dead:

49th (West Riding) Division, Essex Farm Cemetery, Boesinge & 62nd (West Riding) Divison, Havrincourt

49th (West Riding) Division emblem

62nd (West Riding) Division emblem

Following the Allied victory over the German Army on the Western Front which ended the fighting in the Great War, the survivors of the many regiments and divisions which had fought there turned their thoughts to how best they should remember their dead comrades, and their own achievements in battle. The officers and men of the 49^th (West Riding) Division, and the sister, Second Line Division, the 62^nd (West Riding) Division, were no different, and a committee for each was formed, which by 1920, had settled on designs and locations for their memorials.

The 49^th (West Riding) Division searched for a suitable site around the former battlefields at Boesinge, a short distance north of the embattled city of Ieper, better known to the troops who fought there by its French name, Ypres. Due to difficulties in negotiations for acquiring a site, the construction of the memorial for the ‘senior’ division was delayed, and the ‘junior’ 62^nd Division’s memorial was unveiled a full two years earlier. Eventually the Belgian Government granted the canal bank site to the 49^th Division Committee, where the memorial of the 49^th Division now stands, at no cost.

49th (West Riding) Division Memorial above Essex Farm Cemetery

The decision of where the memorial to the dead of the 62^nd Division would be sited was more straightforward, in terms of both the actual location, and the securing of the ground on which to build it. The village of Havrincourt was the obvious choice of location, as it was in and around this small village between the towns of Bapaume and Cambrai, that the ‘Pelican’ division found its fame, and won the fulsome praise of the Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig in their storming of the village. He said it was ‘a brilliant achievement, in which the troops concerned completed an advance of four and a half miles from their original front, overrunning two German systems of defence, and gaining possession of three villages. As a fact, their advance that day covered a distance further in actual mileage of any other of Sir Julian Byng’s Divisions – further, indeed, than any division of the British Army had advanced in one day under like conditions during the operations on the Western Front.’

Unveiling and Dedicating the 62nd (West Riding) Division Memorial at Havrincourt

The negotiations to secure a site were simplified by the Comte de Havrincourt, who gifted a plot of land, from the grounds of his chateau, on which to erect the memorial. Contained underground was a deep German bunker, dug and fortified to a depth of 30 feet, and the surviving concrete workings provided a robust foundation on which to build the raft on which the memorial stands.

62nd (West Riding) Division Memorial at Havrincourt

Work on the memorial at Havrincourt was completed in time to allow it to be unveiled by the French General Berthelot, who had commanded the French 5^e Division, with which, the 62^nd (West Riding) Division enjoyed a close association. The service, on Monday 5^th  June, 1922, was well attended by serving and retired officers and soldiers who had served with the Division during the Great War, but had now been subsumed into the surviving, reconstituted units of the recently raised Territorial Army, the replacement of the Territorial Force. The officiating chaplain was Colonel the Reverend Christopher Chavasse MC, who had ministered to the men of the 62^nd (West Riding) Division as a divisional chaplain. Colonel Chavasse had also been awarded the French Croix de Guerre for his war service, and is very well known as the twin brother of Captain Noel Chavasse, the Territorial Force Medical Officer who was the only man to receive a Victoria Cross and Bar during the Great War while serving with the Liverpool Scottish, the 1/10^th Battalion, the King’s (Liverpool) Regiment. Captain Noel Chavasse also received the Military Cross, like his twin brother, Christopher.

Maj-Gen Perceval addresses officers of his former command

Because the 49^th (West Riding) Division had encountered some bureaucratic difficulties in securing a suitable site for their memorial, the building of it was delayed, and the it was not until the summer of 1924 that the unveiling and dedication ceremony could take place.

The memorial is built in Belgian granite quarried at Soignies (Zinnik) and stands more than 15 metres high on a platform of granite slabs. The architects were from York, but the memorial was built by local Flemish craftsmen. Because the memorial is built on top of the embankment which runs parallel to the canal, which itself is the spoil from the canal cutting, the builders had to dig down to natural ground through the embankment, which was riddled with dug-outs and shell-holes that had been in-filled with debris, in order to find a stable base from which to build.

Parading to the 62nd (West Riding) Memorial unveiling

The parade being led by a local French band

It was reported that 2000 people attended the ceremony for the 49^th (West Riding) Division memorial’s dedication on Sunday June 22^nd 1924, and it is thought that 200 of that number were surviving members of the wartime division. The officiating officers were Major General Perceval, the commander of the division for much of the war, and the Burgemeesters of Ieper and Boesinge. Also in attendance was Captain George Sanders VC MC, who had been awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions as a Leeds Rifles Corporal over two days at the Schwaben Redoubt, near Thiepval, on the Somme at the opening of the 1916 British and French offensive. He was almost immediately promoted sergeant and was subsequently commissioned in the 1/6^th Battalion, the West Yorkshire Regiment, with which he was wounded and captured in the desperate fighting of the 1918 German Spring offensive. For his bravery in this fighting, when he was reportedly last seen atop of a bunker, wounded in the right arm, but continuing to fire his revolver with his left hand, he was awarded a Military Cross. At the time, and in the confusion, Captain Sanders was reported to have been killed, but some months later, his father back in Leeds received a postcard from his son confirming that he was still alive and was recovering from his wounds. Captain Sanders VC MC was also present at the dedication ceremony for the Leeds Rifles Memorial outside the then Leeds Parish Church, now Leeds Minster.

Captain George Sanders VC MC (holding the order of service) at the unveiling of the 49th (West Riding) Division memorial

There was much publicity surrounding the unveiling of the 49^th (West Riding) Division memorial, and the people of Ieper and Boezinge did much to make those attending welcome. Although some had attended as a day trip, others made a battlefield tour of it, and were treated to wonderful hospitality by the local people.

At first sight, both memorials are strikingly similar in their appearance. Both are tall obelisks, rising from narrow, square plinths on top of a multi-tiered base, all mounted on a raft of stone slabs. Access to the memorials is markedly different. The Memorial at Essex Farm Cemetery, that to the 49^th (West Riding) Division stands sentinel on its elevated position on the canal bank above the cemetery where so many of it’s men now lie buried, whereas the memorial at Havrincourt stands at the roadside on the periphery of the rebuilt village, on the edge of the grounds of Havrincourt Chateau. Both memorials record, around their bases, the dates during which the respective divisions were deployed to the Western Front, and the names of the major actions and engagements each was involved in. The memorial at Havrincourt includes three small pillars at the corners of the memorial base, and on these pillars is engraved the emblem of the 62^nd (West Riding) Division, the Pelican. It is interesting to note that it was said that pelican would only put both feet on the ground when the work was done and the war was brought to a successful conclusion.

49th (West Riding) Division above Essex Farm Cemetery, Boezinge