Monday Monuments and Memorials – Vimy Ridge Grave Markers and Memorials, Vimy and Ottawa

Celtic cross erected by 15th Battalion near Vimy Ridge

Memorial cross for four members of 12th Canadian Infantry Brigade

Original grave marker of Lt Norman Howard Pawley

April 9 -12 marks the 103^nd anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, part of the Battle of Arras. On a snowy Easter Monday in 1917, the four divisions of the Canadian Corps fought together for the first (and only) time. Training and tactics won the ridge, but at the cost of about 3,600 Canadian lives.

Visitors to Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries along the Western Front today see neat rows of grave stones in well-groomed garden settings, a stark contrast to the original graves. Those killed were usually buried close to where they fell, in graves marked simple wooden crosses. The three crosses pictured here are from Vimy Ridge, placed to mark a grave or to honour the dead from a particular regiment.

Monday Monuments and Memorials – Sun Quarry Cemetery, Chérisy, France

Sun Quarry Cemetery designed by G H Goldsmith,1928

Sun Quarry Cemetery, Row A.

Critcher, Jones, Towns, Ledgerwood, Thomson – Plot 1, Row A, Graves 4 to 8

Every soldier tells a story. Some stories end the same way.

Sun Quarry Cemetery is 1.5 km SE of the village of Chérisy (near Arras) on the NE side of D38, the road to Hendecourt-lès-Cagnicourt. Of 191 WW1 burials, eight unidentified, 161 are Canadian. According to Commonwealth War Grave Commission records, the cemetery was made by the fighting units and most of those buried there were killed between 26 Aug and 28 Sep 1918. In other words, they are buried close to where they fell.

Five headstones in Row A mark the graves of five men from the 15^th Battalion of the Canadian Infantry who died on 30 Aug 1918.