CWGC Cemetery: PERONNE COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION

Visiting Information

Wheelchair access with some difficulty. For further information regarding wheelchair access, please contact our Enquiries Section on telephone number 01628 507200.

Local Information

From Bapaume take the N17 to Peronne. On entering Peronne, turn right towards the hospital. On reaching the hospital, which will be on the right, take the small road opposite and the communal cemetery is at the end of this road on the left. The extension is on the south-west side of the cemetery.

Historical Information

Peronne was taken by the German on 24 September 1914. On 18 March 1917, the 40th and 48th Divisions captured the town, but it was recovered by the Germans on the 23rd March 1918. It changed hands for the last time on 1 September 1918, when it was taken by the 2nd Australian Division The cemetery extension was begun by the 48th (South Midland) Division in March 1917, used by the Germans in 1918, and resumed by Australian units in September 1918. At the Armistice it contained 177 graves, now in Plots I and II. It was then enlarged when graves were brought in from the battlefields north and east of Peronne and from certain small cemeteries in the area. There are now 1,579 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the extension. 220 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to seven casualties known or believed to be buried among them, and ten buried in other cemeteries whose graves could not be found. The extension also contains five Second World War burials. There are 97 German war graves, 68 being unidentified. The adjoining communal cemetery contains the grave of one airman of the First World War, killed in August 1914. The extension was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.