ECOIVRES MILITARY CEMETERY
Mont-St. Eloi
Pas de Calais
France
General Directions: Mont St Eloi is a village in the Department of the Pas-de-Calais, 8 kilometres north-west of Arras. Ecoivres is a hamlet lying at the foot of the hill, to the south-west and about 1.5 kilometres from Mont St Eloi. The Cemetery is on the D49 road.
This cemetery is really the extension of the communal cemetery, where the French army had buried over 1000 men. The 46th (North Midland) Division took over the extension with this part of the line in March 1916, and their graves are in Rows A to F of Plot I. Successive divisions used the French military tramway to bring their dead in from the front line trenches and, from the first row to the last, burials were made almost exactly in the order of date of death. The attack of the 25th Division on Vimy Ridge in May 1916 is recalled in Plots I and II. The 47th (London) Division burials (July to October 1916) are in Plot III, Rows A to H, and Canadian graves are an overwhelming majority in the rest of the cemetery, Plots V and VI containing the graves of men killed in the capture of Vimy Ridge in April 1917 After the Armistice, the graves of eight men of the 51st (Highland) Division were brought in to Plot VIII, Row A, from nearby Bray Military Cemetery.
Shot at Dawn:
Lance Corporal J Holland, 10th Bn. Cheshire Regiment, executed for cowardice on 30/05/16, plot 2. E. 17.
Private E Perry 22nd Bn. Canadian Expeditionary Force, executed for desertion on 11/04/1917, plot 6. C. 7.
Private D Sinizki, 52nd Bn. Canadian Expeditionary Force, executed for cowardice on 09/10/1917, plot 6. K. 19.
Private M. R. Richmond, 1/6 Gordon Highlanders, executed for desertion on 26/05/1918, plot 5. L. 8.
Casualty Details: UK 888, Canada 830, Australia 2, South Africa 4, Germany 4, France 787, Total Burials: 2515
5158 Rifleman
Robert (Bob) William Pedley
17th Bn. (Stepney & Poplar Rifles) London Regiment.
14/09/1916, aged 18.
Plot III. G. I.
Rifleman Bob Pedley was killed when his unit, the Stepney and Poplar Rifles (17th Bn. the London Rifle Brigade) attacked High Wood during the later phases of the Battle of the Somme, in 1916.Most of this Battalion were wiped out by German machine gun fire.
An uncle I never knew and a brother my late father scarcely knew, Bob Pedley was one of 11 children of the East End family of William and Charlotte Pedley.
Picture courtesy of his nephew, Graham Pedley
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