| Historical Information: |
Lesboeufs was attacked by the Guards Division on 15 September 1916
and captured by them on the 25th. It was lost on 24 March 1918 during the
great German offensive, after a stubborn resistance by part of the 63rd
Bn. Machine Gun Corps, and recaptured on 29 August by the 10th Bn. South
Wales Borderers. At the time of the Armistice, the cemetery consisted of
only 40 graves (now Plot I), mainly those of officers and men of the 2nd
Grenadier Guards who died on 25 September 1916, but it was very greatly
increased when graves were brought in from the battlefields and small
cemeteries round Lesboeufs. There are now 3,136 casualties of the First
World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 1,643 of the burials
are unidentified but there are special memorials to 83 soldiers known or
believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names
of five casualties buried in Ginchy A.D.S. Cemetery, whose graves were
destroyed by shell fire, and three officers of the 2nd Bn. Coldstream
Guards, killed in action on 26 September 1916 and known to have been
buried together by the roadside near Lesboefs, whose grave could not later
be located. The cemetery was designed by Sir Herbert Baker.
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