In Memory of
ALFRED HOWARD LOVELL
Private
11648
10th Bn., Gloucestershire Regiment
who died on
Tuesday, 2nd May 1916. Age 30.
| Additional Information: |
Died of pneumonia Husband of Margaret E.
Lovell, of High St., Wickwar, Glos. |
Commemorative Information
| Cemetery: |
LONGUENESSE (ST. OMER) SOUVENIR CEMETERY, Pas
de Calais, France |
Grave Reference/
Panel Number: |
III. B. 10.
|
| Location: |
St. Omer is a large town 45 kilometres
south-east of Calais. Longuenesse is a commune on the southern outskirts
of St. Omer. Longuenesse (St Omer) Souvenir Cemetery is approximately 3
kilometres from St Omer to the left of the D928 Abbeville road. As you
leave St Omer towards Longuenesse drive up the hill for about 600 metres
and the cemetery is on your left. There is a large car park to the rear
of the cemetery.
|
| Historical Information: |
St. Omer became on the 13th October, 1914,
and remained until the end of March, 1916, the General Headquarters of
the British Expeditionary Force. Lord Roberts died there in November,
1914. It was a considerable hospital centre, more especially in 1918;
the 4th, 10th, 7th Canadian, 9th Canadian and New Zealand Stationary
Hospitals, the 7th, 58th (Scottish) and 59th (Northern) General
Hospitals, and the 17th, 18th and 1st and 2nd Australian Casualty
Clearing Stations were all, at some time during the war, quartered in
St. Omer. It was raided by aeroplanes in November, 1917, and May, 1918,
with serious loss of life. At Elnes, 11 kilometres to the South-West,
the 8th Casualty Clearing Station made a small cemetery in the summer of
1918; and the four graves from Elnes, with three others, were brought
into the Souvenir Cemetery after the Armistice. There are now over
3,000, 1914-18 and nearly 450, 1939-45 war casualties commemorated in
this site. Special Memorial headstones are erected to 23 men of the
Chinese Labour Corps whose graves could not be exactly located and an
airman of the Royal Air Force, buried at the time in Merckeghem
churchyard, whose grave is now lost. The British portion of the Cemetery
covers an area of about 5,541 square metres. |
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