Whitby High School
Battlefields Tour 22nd-25th March 2009
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Whitby High SchoolBattlefields Tour 22nd-25th March 2009 |
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10th Battalion (attached to the 14th Battalion) Royal Welsh Fusiliers
Died 22 April 1918
On our battlefield visits we try to visit the graves or memorials of ancestors of the students who are on the trip. One of our visits was to trace the location of Second Lieutenant Joseph Huxley, great-great uncle of Peter Hyndeman (Year 11) and Matthew Hyndeman (Year 10). After consulting the cemetery index and plan, Peter found his ancestor's resting place to the rear of the village graveyard, where there was a small Commonwealth war grave cemetery attached.
Bouzincourt was in the area of the Somme battlefields to the west of Albert.
Joseph came from the small Welsh village of Holt on the River Dee around 7 miles south of Chester. He lived in Lilac House, a small terraced house facing the village green and cross, and his name is on the local war memorial, also situated on the green opposite his house. Second Lieutenant Joseph Huxley - Commonwealth War Graves Commission Record
Bouzincourt Communal Cemetery & Extension
Bouzincourt was used as a field ambulance station from early in 1916 to February 1917, when the Allied line went forward from the Ancre. It was in German hands for a few days in the spring of 1918. Bouzincourt Communal Cemetery was used for burials from March to July 1916 and again from April to June 1918; it contains 33 Commonwealth burials of the First World War.
The adjoining cemetery extension was begun in May 1916 and used until February 1917. In the early part of July 1916, it was used not only for burials from the field ambulances but also for the interment of many soldiers killed in action and brought back from the line.
The extension was reopened from the end of March 1918 until the following September and used largely by the 38th (Welsh) Division.
In 1919, 20 graves were brought into Plot II, Row A from the immediate neighbourhood of Bouzincourt and 108 more were brought into Plots I, III and IV in 1924-25 from the various Somme battlefields and from the following Churchyard:- Framerville Churchyard contained the graves of two Australian soldiers who fell in August, 1918. (The village was captured by the 2nd Australian Division on the 9th August.) They were at the South end of the Churchyard, which was later closed to burials and made into a public square.
The extension now contains 589 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War. 108 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to casualties known or believed to be buried among them. The extension was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.
