Memories of Dernancourt

Reminiscences of Bob Booker, the son of a CWGC Gardener

My father was a war graves gardener based at Dernancourt during the late fifties and the early sixties, Dad was almost too young for WW2. But couldn’t be called up anyway as he was in a reserved occupation working in a factory on war equipment which he had been doing since leaving school. He was called up immediately after the war when he was both old enough, and the reserved occupations ended. He then served in Malaya during the Malayan campaign. After his national service he never returned to the factory but went into gardening. As a gardener he replied to a War Graves advert for gardeners. He was offered a job, and so we moved from Cornwall to Dernancourt in France in 1959 and we lived as a family on the other side of the railway bridge from the cemetery with just one farm house between us and the railway line. We also went to school in Dernancourt village. The posts which supported a chain link fence along the length of our back garden at Dernancourt were old British narrow gauge rails which had been used for moving war supplies somewhere and after the war had been recycled into fence posts.

As children in the late autumn and winter we used to follow the furrows after the plough looking for the scrap which was brought to the surface. In one particular field we would always find cutlery and kitchen type paraphernalia. On one occasion Dad helped a local farmer to widen a gateway just past the cemetery. It was a mutual task in that they needed top soil for levelling some ground in the cemetery. Whilst doing this they uncovered a listening post which had been buried for the past forty years. Some time ago I read a book of eye witness accounts which include one written about two soldiers who made their way to where the field canteen had been. This was after the German advance and after the allies had retreated from Dernancourt leaving their supplies behind. Whilst the Germans were in Dernancourt village they made their way at night along the side of the railway line up past the listening post to the remains of the canteen to retrieved what ever supplies they could find and carry. Of all the eye witness accounts which I used to read this was the most vivid. I had known the area so well and could follow accurately every move they made.

I remember once, after heavy rain a small amount of land slipped away from the railway embankment and a well rotted crate of German stick grenades slid down and opened it self up on the grass verge just by the railway bridge. The grenades just lay there at the side of the road where they had tumbled for weeks possibly months before they were cleared away. We just got used to them being there. On the other side of the bridge a small area was used by the farmers for stacking the unexploded shells which they unearthed whilst ploughing. These would gradually accumulate during the season as they dropped them off on their way back from the fields at the end of the day. In the spring these were collected for disposal by the authorities and the grenades must have stayed where they lay until they were removed at the same time as the shells. There were still a lot of horses in use in the early sixties; I remember a farmer who had a wooden box fitted to the back of his horse drawn plough, and if he unearthed a shell he would pop it into the box in front of the plough handles and carry on ploughing with the shell just in front of him.

During his 14 years as a War Graves Gardener we also lived in Albert, St. Pol-sur-Ternoise and also Ypres in Belgium where dad worked at the Menin Gate and the Ypres Reservoir Cemetery.