Béthune Town Cemetery

On October 10, 1914, the French army withdraws to Arras. General Foch has agreed with the English Marshal that the British army will defend Béthune. This will last four years.

The first British soldier is buried in this cemetery on October 14 of the same year, the memorial day of the Battle of Hastings - Hastings has a twinning association with Béthune. Most of the graves are of soldiers who died in the British field hospitals in schools in the city. An initial section on the right side is allocated to the British authorities, but it soon proves inadequate. The cemetery fills up during the course of the war. The inscriptions on the graves added in chronological order provide a picture of the scale of the battles in the area (Festubert, Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée...), and of the extent of the British colonial Empire. In the last graves rest 26 soldiers and officers of the Manchester Regiment, killed by one aircraft bomb on December 22, 1917, on Boulevard Kitchener.

This cemetery designed by Edwin Lutyens collects the graves of 2,923 British, 122 French, and 87 German soldiers.

Rudy Wuyts