The
Dunkirk Memorial stands at the entrance to the British War Graves
Section of Dunkirk Town Cemetery, which lies at the south-eastern
corner of the town of Dunkirk, immediately south of the canal
and on the road to Veurne (Furnes) in Belgium.
Dunkirk
witnessed the landing of the British Expeditionary Force in
September and October 1914. Throughout the First World War it
was a seaplane base and later an American Naval Air Service
base. The town was also a French hospital centre and the 8th
Canadian Stationary Hospital was there from November 1918 to
April 1919. Although an estimated 7,500 shells and bombs fell
on the town during the war, ship building and other port activities
continued. During the Second World War, Dunkirk was the scene
of the historic evacuation of the British Expeditioary Force
from France in May 1940. DUNKIRK TOWN CEMETERY contains 450
Commonwealth burials of the First World War, ten of them unidentified.
The graves are situated in Plots 1 to 3 in the public part of
the cemetery to the right of the main entrance, and in Plots
4 and 5 of the Commonwealth War Graves section adjacent to the
Dunkirk Memorial. Of the 800 Second World War burials, more
than 200 are unidentified and special memorials are erected
to 58 soldiers known to be buried among them. These graves are
in Plots 1 and 2 of the section by the Dunkirk Memorial. There
are also Czech, Norwegian and Polish war graves within the Commonwealth
section, and war graves of other nationalities will be found
elsewhere within the cemetery. The DUNKIRK MEMORIAL stands a
the entrance to the Commonwealth War Graves section of Dunkirk
Town Cemetery. It commemorates more than 4,500 casualties of
the British Expeditionary Force who died in the campaign of
1939-40 and who have no known grave. The memorial was designed
by Philip Hepworth. The engraved glass panel depicting the evacuation
was by John Hutton.
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