Caterpillar Valley (New Zealand) Memorial

 

The New Zealand Memorial is situated on a terrace in Caterpillar Valley Cemetery, which lies a short distance west of Longueval, a village approximately 13 kilometres east of Albert and 10 kilometres south of Bapaume, on the south side of the road to Contalmaison. The Cemetery stands on the crest of Longueval Ridge and its rear wall lies on the approximate site of the main German trench position, which was captured on 14 July 1916.

Caterpillar Valley was the name given by the army to the long valley - over a mile from the site of the Cemetery - which rises eastwards, past "Caterpillar Wood", to the high ground at Guillemont.

This area was lost in the German advance of March 1918 and recovered by the 38th (Welsh) Division on 28 August 1918, when a little cemetery was made containing 25 graves. After the Armistice, this cemetery was hugely increased when the graves of more than 5,500 officers and men were brought in from other small cemeteries, and the battlefields of the Somme.

The New Zealand Memorial, commemorates more than 1,200 officers and men of the New Zealand Division, who died in the Battles of the Somme in 1916 and whose graves are not known.

ORMROD E.

(Ernest Ormrod, of the Otago Regiment, New Zealand Expeditionary Force, died 16 September 1916)