Ypres-Ieper WW1 Battlefield, 1914-1918, Belgium. Tyne Cot CWGC Cemetery,Passchendaele,Flanders, Belgium. February 2014
A private memorial to WG ( Bill ) Booty of the Royal Sussex Regiment who died on 14 November 1917. His body has never been found. He was the son of James William and Lucy Booty, of 3, Sutton Court Drive, Rochford, Essex.
Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC ) cemetery just below the ridge near Passchendaele to the east of Ypres is the largest CWGC cemetery in the world in terms of the 11,956 burials and 34947 names inscribed on the memorial walls of those soldiers who died and have no known grave, their remains still lie under the mud of Flanders Fields. The total number of buried and missing at Tyne Cot, as of February 2014, is 46,903 men.
'Tyne Cot' or 'Tyne Cottage' was the name given by the Northumberland Fusiliers to a barn which stood near the level crossing on the Passchendaele-Broodseinde road. The barn, which had become the centre of five or six German blockhouses, or pill-boxes, was captured by the 3rd Australian Division on 4 October 1917, in the advance on Passchendaele.
One of these pill-boxes was unusually large and was used as an advanced dressing station after its capture. From 6 October to the end of March 1918, 343 graves were made, on two sides of it, by the 50th (Northumbrian) and 33rd Divisions, and by two Canadian units. The cemetery was in German hands again from 13 April to 28 September, when it was finally recaptured, with Passchendaele, by the Belgian Army.
It is now the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world in terms of burials. At the suggestion of King George V, who visited the cemetery in 1922, the Cross of Sacrifice was placed on the original large pill-box. There are three other pill-boxes in the cemetery.
There are now 11,956 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in Tyne Cot Cemetery. 8,369 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to more