Euston Road Cemetery, Colincamps

Colincamps is a village 11 kilometres north of Albert.

Colincamps and "Euston", a road junction a little east of the village, were within the Allied lines before the Somme offensive of July 1916. The Cemetery is situated on a lane, along which troops would have marched up to the trenches from Colincamps.

The Cemetery was started as a front line burial ground, during and after the unsuccessful attack on Serre on 1 July, when 139 men, nearly all of the 31st Division, were buried - men who were shelled in the British trenches, who died of wounds before being evacuated to the rear, or whose bodies were recovered at night from the British side of No Man's Land.

After the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line in March 1917 the Cemetery was scarcely used. It was briefly in German hands towards the end of March 1918, when it marked the limit of the German advance, but the line was held and pushed forward by the New Zealand Division allowing the Cemetery to be used again for burials in April and May 1918.

The Cemetery is particularly associated with three dates and engagements; the attack on Serre on 1 July 1916; the capture of Beaumont-Hamel on 13 November 1916; and the German attack on the 3rd New Zealand (Rifle) Brigade trenches before Colincamps on 5 April 1918.

The whole of Plot I, except five graves in the last row, represents the original cemetery of 501 graves. After the Armistice, more than 750 graves were brought in from small cemeteries in the neighbouring communes and the battlefields.

The Cemetery now contains 1,293 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the First World War, including the grave of Richard Ormerod (Grave Ref. I. A. 24.), of the East Lancashire Regiment, who was killed during the Accrington Pals unsuccesful attack on Serre on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

15173 CORPORAL / R. ORMEROD / EAST LANCASHIRE REGIMENT / 1ST/2ND JULY 1916. AGE 23 / THE MEMORY OF THE JUST / IS BLESSED

BELIEVED TO BE BURIED / IN THIS CEMETERY / 12/525 SERJEANT / JOHN WILLIAM STREETS / YORK & LANCASTER REGT. / 1ST JULY 1916. AGE 31 / I FELL: BUT YIELDED NOT / MY ENGLISH SOUL / THAT LIVES OUT HERE / BENEATH THE BATTLE'S ROLL (Grave Ref. Special Memorial A. 6.) "Eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. William Streets, of 16, Portland St., Whitwell, Derbyshire. Published two books, one dealing with "Coal Mining," and War Poems, "The Undying Splendour," (May, 1917)." Commonwealth War Graves Commission Debt of Honour Register