RE Grave, Railway Wood
| RE Grave, Railway Wood | |
|---|---|
| Commonwealth War Graves Commission | |
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| Used for those deceased November 1915 – August 1917 | |
| Established | 1915 |
| Location |
50°51′08″N 2°56′13″E / 50.85222°N 2.93694°E near Ieper, West Flanders, Belgium |
| Designed by | A J H Holden |
| Total burials | 12 |
| Unknown burials | 0 |
| Burials by nation | |
| Burials by war | |
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World War I: 12
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| Statistics source: CWGC | |
RE Grave, Railway Wood is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) memorial and war grave located in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front. It is located on the Bellewaerde Ridge near Zillebeke, about 4 kilometres east of Ypres, and a little north of Hooge. The area of the Cambridge Road sector, halfway in between Wieltje and Hooge, was the site of intensive underground fighting in the First World War. The Liverpool Scottish Memorial, Railway Wood is located nearby.
The Royal Engineers grave at Railway Wood marks the site where twelve soldiers (eight Royal Engineers of the 177th Tunnelling Company and four attached infantrymen) were killed between November 1915 and August 1917 whilst tunnelling under the hill near Hooge during the defence of Ypres. The men were trapped underground and their bodies not recovered, and after the war, the memorial was erected on the hill.
The site is unusual for being both a cemetery and a memorial. Because the bodies remain underground, the cemetery has no individual gravestones, and the names of the twelve men who died are inscribed on the Cross of Sacrifice instead. The inscription across three sides of the Cross of Sacrifice reads: Beneath this spot lie the bodies of an officer, three NCOs and eight men of or attached to the / 177th Tunnelling Company Royal Engineers / who were killed in action underground during the defence of Ypres between November 1915 and August 1917.
The grounds were assigned to the United Kingdom in perpetuity by King Albert I of Belgium in recognition of the sacrifices made by the British Empire in the defence and liberation of Belgium during the war and are administrated as a war cemetery by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
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