The Commonwealth section of the Faubourg d'Amiens Cemetery was begun in March
1916, behind the French military cemetery established earlier. It continued to
be used by field ambulances and fighting units until November 1918. The cemetery
was enlarged after the Armistice when graves were brought in from the
battlefields and from two smaller cemeteries in the vicinity. The cemetery
contains 2,650 Commonwealth burials of the First World War. There are 10
Commonwealth burials of the Second World War. In addition, there are 30 war
graves of other nationalities, most of them German. The graves in the French
military cemetery were removed after the war to other burial grounds and the
land they had occupied was used for the construction of the Arras Memorial and
Arras Flying Services Memorial. The Arras Memorial commemorates almost 35,000
servicemen from the United Kingdom, South Africa and New Zealand who died in the
Arras sector between the spring of 1916 and 7 August 1918, the eve of the
Advance to Victory, and have no known grave. The most conspicuous events of this
period were the Arras offensive of April-May 1917, and the German attack in the
spring of 1918. Canadian and Australian servicemen killed in these operations
are commemorated by memorials at Vimy and Villers-Bretonneux. A separate
memorial remembers those killed in the Battle of Cambrai in 1917. The Arras
Flying Services Memorial commemorates more than 1,000 airmen of the Royal Naval
Air Service, the Royal Flying Corps, and the Royal Air Force, either by
attachment from other arms of the forces of the Commonwealth or by original
enlistment, who were killed on the whole Western Front and who have no known
grave. |