During the Great War, the area around the small fishing port of Etaples was the scene of immense concentrations of Commonwealth reinforcement camps and hospitals. At first, it was remote from attack, except from aircraft. Accessible by railway from both the northern or the southern battlefields. The railways, and the hospital, key targets during the Final German Offensive in 1918. By the end of the Great War, thousands of casualties buried at Etaples Military Cemetery.
Etaples Military Cemetery Plot L
Etaples Military Cemetery Plot LXVI
At its peak, 100,000 troops housed with Commonwealth army training and reinforcement camps and an extensive complex of hospitals. Then, in 1917, 100,000 troops camped among the sand dunes and the hospitals, which included eleven general, one stationary, four Red Cross hospitals and a convalescent depot, could deal with 22,000 wounded or sick. Finally, in September 1919, 10 months after the Armistice, three hospitals and the Q.M.A.A.C. convalescent depot remained.
Plot XXIX
The cemetery the final resting place of 20 women, including nurses, army auxiliaries and civilian volunteers of the YMCA and Scottish Church Huts organisations. So many killed in air raids or by disease. By the latter part of the war, more than 2,500 women were serving at the Étaples base. Hailing from many parts of the British Empire as well as France and America, they included ambulance drivers, nurses, members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment and those employed by the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps as bakers, clerks, telephonists and gardeners.
Plot LXVIII
At first, in its early years, the cemetery visible as the train from Boulogne to Paris passed close by. Sir Fabian Ware, the founder of the Imperial War Graves Commission, ensured that trains would linger for a minute or so to allow passengers a glimpse.
Etaples Military Cemetery Plot LXVI
Hospitals stationed again at Etaples during the Second World War. The cemetery used for burials from January 1940 until the evacuation at the end of May 1940. Finally, after the war, a number of graves brought into the cemetery from other French burial grounds, of the 119 Second World War burials, 38 unidentified.
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