Buttes New British Cemetery

Many of the men buried in the cemetery died as a result of the conditions in the trenches located in the Polygon Wood Sector of the Ypres Salient during the winter of 1917 to 1918. After the war, a number of the dead interred in the area were brought to a location eight kilometres to the east of Ieper and re-buried in what was named Buttes New British Cemetery. The cemetery is located in the northeastern corner of Polygon Wood.[http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/166200 Buttes New British Cemetery (New Zealand) Memorial], Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). Retrieved 18 September 2014

The name is derived from an old butte, used as a rifle range by the Belgian Army prior to the war, which is on the western side of the cemetery. A memorial to the Australian 5th Division is located on top of the butte; this memorial was constructed with the assistance of German prisoners-of-war.Gray, 2010, pp. 170–171 Polygon Wood Cemetery is nearby.[http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/55100 Polygon Wood Cemetery], Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Retrieved 18 September 2014

Buttes New British Cemetery contains the remains of 2,108 Allied soldiers, the majority of whom are unknown. Over half of the burials are British; 564 are soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force, 162 soldiers of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force and five were from Canada. There are also 30 burials of unknown nationality. Most of the dead were killed during 1917, but some date from fighting in the area in 1914, 1916 and 1918. A memorial service is held every year at the cemetery on Anzac Day, 25 April.Gray, 2010, pp. 170–171

Bodies continue to be occasionally discovered in the area and are often interred at the cemetery; five Australian soldiers whose remains were found in 2006 by a drainlayer were buried in October 2007 in a ceremony attended by the Governor-General of Australia, Michael Jeffery and the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark.Gray, 2010, p. 174

{{main|Buttes New British Cemetery (New Zealand) Memorial}}

The cemetery also includes the New Zealand Memorial to the Missing, designed by the English architect Charles Holden, in memory of 383 soldiers of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force killed in the period September 1917 to May 1918 and who have no known grave.McGibbon, 2001, p. 25

File:Buttes new british cemetery 01.jpg|Back side of Buttes New British Cemetery

File:Buttes new british cemetery 02.jpg|View of Buttes New British cemetery, including the New Zealand Memorial to the Missing.

File:5th Australian monument memorial plaque.jpg|Plaque on the 5th Australian monument memorial, next to Buttes New British Cemetery.

CWGC - Stone of Remembrance.jpg|The Stone of Remembrance

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• {{cite book|last=Gray|first=John H.|title=From the Uttermost Ends of the Earth: The New Zealand Division on the Western Front 1916–1918|year=2010|publisher=Wilson Scott Publishing|location=Christchurch|isbn=9781877427305}}
• {{cite book|last=McGibbon|first=Ian|author-link=Ian McGibbon|title=New Zealand Battlefields and Memorials of the Western Front|year=2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Auckland|isbn=0-19-558444-9}}

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{{commonscat|Buttes New British Cemetery, Polygon Wood|Buttes New British Cemetery}}

• {{cite book |title=The Story of the Fifth Australian Division, Being an Authoritative Account of the Division's Doings in Egypt, France and Belgium |last=Ellis |first=A. D. |year=1920 |publisher=Hodder and Stoughton |location=London |edition=1st |url=https://archive.org/details/storyoffifthaust00ellirich |access-date=18 September 2014 |oclc=12016875}}

Category:Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in Belgium

Category:Cemeteries and memorials in West Flanders

Category:World War I cemeteries in Belgium

Category:Ypres Salient

Category:Funerary and memory sites of the First World War (Western Front)