RIDGE WOOD MILITARY CEMETERY

(CWGC Ref 5/55)

VOORMEZEELE is a village and commune in the Province of West Flanders, 3 km South of Ypres, between the roads to Messines and Kemmel. Ridge Wood was the name given to a wood standing on high ground between the Kemmel road and Dickebusch Lake; and the Military Cemetery stands outside the South-West corner of the Wood. There is a regular bus service from Ypres to Kemmel.

The cemetery lies in a hollow, on the Western side of the Ridge, and the position was chosen for a "front-line cemetery" as early as May, 1915. The first graves belonged to the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles, and similar groups were made by the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st Canadian Battalions and the 9th Durham Light Infantry at the times when they occupied this sector. The Battles of the Lys, in the spring of 1918, brought the British front back on to the Ridge, and it was not till July that the Wood was finally cleared by the 6th and 33rd Divisions. There are few burials from these last battles in the cemetery , and the graves of some French Divisions which fought with our own in April and May have been removed.

Ridge Wood Military Cemetery covers an area of 3,746 m². It contains the graves of 292 soldiers from Canada, 260 from the United Kingdom, including five unidentified and two whose graves cannot be found, 44 from Australia, 3 from New Zealand, and 20 whose unit in our forces is not known; and two German prisoners are buried in it. The boundary is marked by a brick wall. It lies between open fields and the Wood, and it commands views of Dickebusch, Vlamertinghe, and Mount Kemmel.

The Register records particulars of 594 British and Dominion burials.