ROCLINCOURT MILITARY CEMETERY
Pas De Calais
France
GPS Coordinates - Latitude: 50.32469, Longitude: 2.78525
Location Information
Roclincourt is a village a little to the east of the road from Arras to Lens. Take the N17 from Arras until the junction of this road and the D60 (first CWGC sign here). Travel along the D60 into Roclincourt village, for approximately one kilometre, to a right turn (direction St Nicholas). Take this road for approximately 175 metres to a lane on the right. Roclincourt Military cemetery lies 100 metres away at the foot of this lane.
Historical Information
The French troops who held this front before March 1916 made a military cemetery (now removed), on the south-west side of which the present Commonwealth cemetery was made. It was begun by the 51st (Highland) and 34th Divisions in April 1917, and contains many graves of 9 April, the first day of the Battles of Arras. It continued in use, as a front-line cemetery, until October 1918 and after the Armistice graves, mostly from the battlefield north of Roclincourt, were brought into Plot IV, Row F.
Originally, the cemetery contained a wooden memorial erected by the 22nd Royal Fusiliers to one officer and 27 N.C.O.'s and men who fell in action at Oppy in April and May 1917.
Roclincourt Military Cemetery contains 916 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 32 of them unidentified. There are also four German war graves.
Total Burials: 920.
Commonwealth Identified Casualties: United Kingdom 754, Canada 130. Total 884.
Commonwealth Unidentified Casualties: United Kingdom 29, Canada 3. Total 32.
Other Nationalities: Germany 4.
The cemetery was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.
Cemetery images in gallery below © Werner Van Caneghem
Shot at Dawn
393923 Rifleman, Harry Williams, 1/9th Bn. Royal Fusiliers (Queen Victoria's Rifles), executed for desertion, 28th December 1917. Plot II. F. 4. Son of Mrs. Isabella Hitchcock, of 122, Colville Road, Acton, London. A volunteer who had enlisted in 1915, he was already subject to a suspended sentence of 15 years’ imprisonment when in November 1917 he fell out from his company & refused orders — when a German attack was in progress. Sick with fear, he would not move: cowardice might have been a more appropriate charge. (Putkowski,pp 224-225)
Picture © Geerhard Joos
The 4 images below were taken in September 1967 - ©CWGC
Image above © Werner Van Caneghem
Image © Werner Van Caneghem
The RAMC officer, attached to the 12th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment (92nd Brigade, 31st Division), bandaging the face wound of a man of his battalion in the line in the Arleux sector, near Roclincourt, 9 January 1918. © IWM (Q 11545)
Images in this gallery © Geerhard Joos
An officer York and Lancaster Regiment, probably 2/4th Battalion part of 187th Brigade, feeds a puppy outside a reinforced dugout in a trench near Roclincourt, on the 62nd Division front between Oppy and Gavrelle, 13 January, 1918. © IWM (Q 8439)
A wiring party of the 12th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, 31st Division, passing along a communication trench near Roclincourt, January 1918. © IWM (Q 10611)
