CWGC Cemetery: FLATIRON COPSE CEMETERY, MAMETZ

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Local Information

Flatiron Copse Cemetery is on the right hand side of D929, Amiens-Albert-Bapaume, 10 kilometres east of Albert. From Albert take the right turn at Y junction (102nd Infantry Brigade Memorial). It is located in the D20 just south-west of Bazentin-le-Petit. From the D929 turn south (signposted Bazentin) and on reaching the D20 T-junction turn right: the cemetery is green-signposted immediately.

Historical Information

Flatiron Copse was the name given by the army to a small plantation a little to the east of Mametz Wood. The ground was taken by the 3rd and 7th Divisions on 14 July 1916 and an advanced dressing station was established at the copse. The cemetery was begun later that month and it remained in use until April 1917. Two further burials were made in August 1918 and after the Armistice, more than 1,100 graves were brought in from smaller cemeteries and from the neighbouring battlefields. Almost all the concentrated graves are those of men who died in the summer and autumn of 1916. There are now 1,572 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 420 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to 36 casualties known or believed to be buried among them, and nine buried in Mametz Wood Cemetery whose graves were destroyed by shell fire. The cemetery was designed by Sir Herbert Baker.