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updated: May 28, 2003
PERONNE COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION
Péronne Communal Cemetery Extension
It changed hands for the last time on 1 September 1918, when it was taken by the 2nd Australian Division The cemetery extension was begun by the 48th (South Midland) Division in March 1917, used by the Germans in 1918, and resumed by Australian units in September 1918. At the Armistice it contained 177 graves, now in Plots I and II. It was then enlarged when graves were brought in from the battlefields north and east of Peronne and from certain small cemeteries in the area. There are now 1,579 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the extension. 220 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to seven casualties known or believed to be buried among them, and ten buried in other cemeteries whose graves could not be found. The extension also contains five Second World War burials and 97 German war graves. The adjoining communal cemetery contains the grave of one airman of the First World War, killed in August 1914. The extension was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield.