Artillery Wood Cemetery

This cemetery took its name from a wood that once stood a little way to the south-south-west. The wood was captured by the Guards Division on 31 July 1917, the first day of the Battle of Pilckem Ridge, which marked the opening of the Third Battle of Ypres. After the assault, the first Guards' dead were buried here.
By March 1918 the cemetery contained 141 burials. After the war it was enlarged by the addition of more than 1,150 graves collected from the battlefields or from smaller cemeteries in the area, including Boezinge Chateau Grounds Cemetery (where 19 British soldiers – mainly from the Guards Division – were buried). Today, there are 1,307 soldiers buried or commemorated at Artillery Wood, 506 of whom could not be identified.
Artillery Wood Cemetery contains the graves of two well-known war poets, both killed nearby on 31 July 1917: the Welsh poet Ellis Humphrey Evans, alias 'Hedd Wyn', and the Irish poet Francis Edward Ledwidge. You can find their grave locations by looking in the register in the bronze box near the entrance.

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