Funeral Service Times August 2017 June 2019 | Page 32

32 CEMETERIES AROUND THE WORLD
be more potent advocates of peace upon
Earth through the years to come, than this
massed multitude of silent witnesses to the
desolation of war.”
The cemetery has several notable graves
and memorials, including the grave of
Private James Peter Robertson, a Canadian
awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery in
rushing a machine gun emplacement and
rescuing two men from under heavy fire.
He was killed saving the second of these
men on 6 November 1917.
There are two Australian recipients of
the Victoria Cross buried in the cemetery
who are Captain Clarence Smith Jeffries,
and Sergeant Lewis McGee. Jeffries led an
assault party and rushed one of the strong
points at the First Battle of Passchendaele
on 12 October 1917, capturing four machine
guns and 35 prisoners, before running his
company forward again. He was planning
another attack when he was killed by an
enemy gunner. On the same day, McGee,
who had earned his decoration eight days
earlier at Broodseinde, was killed charging
an enemy pillbox in
JUNE 2019
the same battle.
Also at Tyne Cot, behind the Cross of
Sacrifice which was constructed on top of
an old German pillbox in the middle of the
cemetery, there are four German graves,
buried alongside Commonwealth graves.
These graves are of men that were treated
here after the battle, when the pillbox
underneath the main cross was used as a
dressing station for wounded men.
The stone wall
surrounding the
cemetery makes-up
the Tyne Cot Memorial
to the Missing, one of
several Commonwealth
War Graves
Commission Memorials
to the Missing along
the Western Front.
The UK missing lost in
the Ypres Salient are
commemorated at the
Menin Gate memorial
to the missing in
Ypres and the Tyne
Cot Memorial. Upon completion of the
Menin Gate, builders discovered it was not
large enough to contain all the names as
originally planned.
The builders selected an arbitrary cut-off
date of 15 August 1917 and the names of the
UK missing after this date were inscribed
on the Tyne Cot memorial instead. The New
Zealand contingent of the Commonwealth
War Graves Commission declined to have
its missing soldiers names listed on the
main memorials, choosing instead to have
names listed on its own memorials near the
appropriate battles, Tyne Cot was chosen
as one of these locations.
Unlike the other New Zealand memorials
to its missing, the Tyne Cot New Zealand
memorial to the missing is integrated within
the larger Tyne Cot memorial, forming a
central apse in the main memorial wall. The
inscription reads: "Here are recorded the
names of officers and men of New Zealand
who fell in the Battle of Broodseinde and
the First Battle of Passchendaele October
1917 and whose graves are known only unto
God.”
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