As the 2024 tour season end approaches it’s time to not only look back at what we did but also look forward to what 2025 holds. Tours to the ‘old front lines’ have been both busy and varied for Julian and Clive with a combination of familiar Battle Honours titles coupled with new partners and destinations.
One recent highlight for Julian was finally working alongside Jack Sheldon on one of the WFA National tours. The 1915 Artois battles were looked at this year, including Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge and Loos.
HRH The Princess Royal inaugurated a new cemetery at Loos, in September. It is only the second of its kind to be built since the end of the Second World War. Our tour visited Loos and the new burials the same week and saw how big the site was and how sympathetically it has been constructed, adjoining the original Loos British Cemetery. The old wartime tunnels have also been capped off with protective steel doors at the side of the cemetery.
Extensive research by CWGC teams confirms that potentially hundreds of soldiers who have remained missing since the First World War may be affected by infrastructure works in the region around Loos-en-Gohelle, including a major canal construction project, and a Hospital. To give newly discovered casualties the burial place they deserve, Loos British Cemetery has been extended.
The CWGC will be working closely with the Office National des Anciens Combattants et Victimes de guerre (ONAC-VG) and the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK) and will be the lead partner on this project. The scale of the newly laid out area gives us a hint of the burials that CWGC must be planning for, and it is in the hundreds. Julian has a Great Uncle (Eric Boiling) who is still listed as missing since the Battle of Loos, 1915 and of course wonders that perhaps Erics body may be found and identified at some stage.
