The British military cemetery at Tyne Cot, located near Passchendaele, about ten minutes by car from the center of Ypres.
Galerie photos
Joskevermeuleb16 at Dutch Wikipedia, CC BY 2.0 BE, via Wikimedia Commons
History
Tyne Cot was a fortified position of the German army during the First World War. It was a barn known as Tyne Cottage, located near a level crossing on the road between Passchendaele and Broodseinde.
The position was taken by the Australian 3rd Division during the Battle of Passchendaele in October 1917. The village of Passchendaele was recaptured by the Germans in April 1918 and retaken by the Belgian army in September 1918.
Features
Tyne Cot Cemetery was designed by Sir Herbert Baker and contains 11,952 graves of Commonwealth soldiers. This is the largest number of graves in any Commonwealth cemetery on the continent.
The Tyne Cot Memorial, also designed by Sir Herbert Baker and sculpted by Ferdinand Victor Blundstone, is a 4.25 m high and over 150 m long semicircular flint wall. It pays tribute to the 35,000 Commonwealth soldiers who went missing in the Ypres Salient after August 15, 1917, and whose graves are unknown.
Also worth seeing…
Don’t hesitate to take the 3 km walk, dotted with information panels, which connects the Passchendaele 1917 Memorial Museum to Tyne Cot Cemetery.
