Etaples Cemetery, France.

Etaples cemetery contains 10,773 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, the earliest dating from May 1915. 35 of these burials are unidentified.

After the war, a number of graves were brought into the cemetery from other French burial grounds. Of the 119 Second World War burials, 38 are unidentified. Etaples Military Cemetery also contains 658 German burials and a few war graves of other nationalities.

Etaples is a town about 27 kilometres south of Boulogne. The Military Cemetery is to the north of the town, on the west side of the road to Boulogne.

During the First World War, the area around Etaples was the scene of immense concentrations of Commonwealth reinforcement camps and hospitals. It was remote from attack, except from aircraft, and accessible by railway from both the northern or the southern battlefields.

In 1917, 100,000 troops were 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.

In September 1919, ten months after the Armistice, three hospitals and the Q.M.A.A.C. convalescent depot remained.

Designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Étaples Military Cemetery is the largest CWGC cemetery in France, and contains the remains of soldiers from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Germany. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission has only published the number of Commonwealth and German dead buried in Étaples, although its records for the cemetery note that it contains 'a few war graves of other nationalities'.

"In Etaples the hilltops which mark out the horizon to the south have a magnificent and calm nature. A few clouds slowly came to rest there. It was a grand and wonderful sight."

Victor Hugo