Larch Wood (Railway Cutting) Cemetery

Foundation

Commonwealth soldiers first established this cemetery in April 1915, and burials continued there until April 1918, by which point the shifting Western Front had left the area behind. The majority of those interred here died while defending nearby Hill 60. Following the Armistice, the cemetery was expanded by bringing in remains from the surrounding battlefields, as well as from smaller local burial grounds such as Brussels General, Ghistelles Churchyard, Oudenburg Churchyard, and Wervik Communal.

Additional Commonwealth dead were also moved here from former German war cemeteries, including America Cross Roads, Kortemark, Eernegem, Groenenberg, Handzaame, Ichtegem, Leffinghe, Marckhove, Tenbrielen Communal, Tourhout No 2, Vladsloo, Warneton Sud-et-Bas, Wijnendaele, and Zantvoorde. Eighty-six graves are designated as special memorials. These mark individuals either recorded as buried here but with no proof found by the CWGC (headstones read "Believed to be buried in this cemetery") or known to be interred here but whose exact plot was lost or destroyed by later combat (headstones read "Known to be buried in this cemetery").

Unless a family chose a personal message, each of these stones bears the inscription "Their Glory Shall Not Be Blotted Out" at the base, a line suggested by Rudyard Kipling. The cemetery was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, the architect behind both the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London, and the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme in France.