Cement House Cemetery, West-Vlaanderen

Langemark has given its name to the Battles of 21-24 October 1914 and 16-18 August 1917. The village was in German hands from April 1915 to August 1917 and from April to September 1918. Commonwealth, French and Belgian forces have in turn defended and attacked it. "Cement House" was the military name given to a fortified farm building on the Langemark-Boesinghe (now Boezinge) road. The original Cement House Cemetery (now Plot I, an irregular group of 231 graves) was begun here at the end of August 1917 and used by the 4th and 17th Division burial officers, by field ambulances and by units in the line until April 1918. In the years immediately following the Armistice, most of Plots II - XV were added when Commonwealth graves were brought in from the battlefields and small burial grounds around Langemark and Poelkapelle, mostly dating from the Autumn of 1917. There are 3,592 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the cemetery, 2,425 of the burials are unidentified. Of the 22 Second World War burials in the cemetery, five are unidentified.