Harrogate (Stonefall) Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery

Harrogate (Stonefall)
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Used for those deceased 1943–1947
Location 53°59′10″N 1°29′42″W / 53.9862°N 1.4950°W / 53.9862; -1.4950
near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England
Total burials 1017 (including special memorials)
Unknown burials 1
Burials by war
Statistics source: Cemetery Details. Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Harrogate (Stonefall) Cemetery is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) burial ground for the dead of World War I and World War II located on the outskirts of Harrogate in North Yorkshire, England.

The cemetery grounds are located next to the main municipal cemetery and crematorium for the district.[1]

Foundation

This area of Yorkshire had many RAF bases during World War II. In particular, No 6 RCAF Bomber Group had headquarters at Allerton Park in nearby Knaresborough.[2]

An area of the municipal cemetery was set aside for use as a war cemetery at the start of the war and received burials, mostly from after July 1943, mostly airmen, mostly Canadians, until after the end of the war.[2] Burials are from northern airfields and the military wing of the now demolished Harrogate General Hospital in Starbeck.[2]

Within the cemetery, there are burials of or memorials to 23 World War I troops which are dispersed across the municipal part of the cemetery.[2]

Notable graves

Cross of Sacrifice, Harrogate Military Cemetery

Many of the burials are from aircrews killed in training or on the ground or who died later in the local hospital. Amongst the burials in the cemetery are three (all Canadians) of the seven crew of a Lancaster bomber that crashed on Helmsley Moor on the morning of 17 May 1944.[3] Five burials (all serving in the RCAF, but two were from the United States) in adjoining plots are of the crew of Halifax bomber EB203, which crashed into a railway bridge in Bishop Monkton on 15 April 1944.[4]

Crash of Wellington BK387

Wellington BK387 crashed near Oakworth, Yorkshire on the night of 2 January 1944. The main force of Bomber Command was once again out in strength that night and 383 aircraft were on their way to Berlin. 27 Lancasters were not to return to their bases in England, most were lost in the Berlin area, some seven and half percent of the attacking bombers missing. Eighty two houses were destroyed and thirty six people were killed. Just another night for the crews of bomber command. The Operational Training Unit (O.T.U.) was based at Ossington eight miles north-west of Newark and it was from bases like these, flying the Vickers Wellington, that all operational crew passed through on their way to squadron service.

At 20.00 hours, Wellington BK387 lifted off from the Ossington runway on what should have been just another training flight of four hours duration. Many local people around Oakworth will tell stories of what they saw and heard on that fateful night when the pilot, Flight Sergeant Ernest Glass, brought the aircraft down through low cloud and subsequently crashed into the hillside at Tewitt Hall wood. Six young lives were lost in an instant. The crew of BK387 were all from Canada. If they had completed their training they would have joined one of the 16 Canadian Bomber Squadrons in Yorkshire. By the time the war ended, these squadrons had flown some 40,822 sorties, had lost 814 aircraft and more than 3,500 aircrew were killed or missing. The total Bomber Command losses were a staggering 55,000 men. The remains of the aircraft were cleared away and little remains today at the site of the crash except for the burnt and broken trees which tell their own story. The crew were all buried at Stonefall Cemetery, Harrogate, near Leeds, England along with many of their fellow countrymen, all of whom paid the supreme sacrifice. All are buried on section C, row H, graves 11 to 16.[5]

The cause of this crash is unclear. The Canadian crewed Wellington BK387 was on a night training exercise when the aircraft descended through cloud and crashed into farmland, 2 January 1944. One witness account suggests Warrant Officer Glass was trying to land the plane in the fields. This same account quotes the landlord of the nearby Grouse Inn, who says he had gone to his outside toilet and, with the door open (after all the customers had gone home for the night...) "he sat there frightened out of his skin as he could see the plane heading straight for his loo". Fortunately for him at least, the Wellington crashed just beyond the pub.[6]

The crew of BK387 were:

All crewmen were killed in the crash.[5]

Special memorials

A plaque in the cemetery records the names of 12 servicemen of World War II who were cremated rather than being buried here.[8]

A special memorial commemorates six World War I troops whose graves are in local churchyards around Yorkshire and cannot be maintained by the Commission.[2] The actual grave of one of those commemorated, Edgar Audsley, has since been destroyed as part of development works on the site of South Ossett Baptist Burial Ground.[9]

References

  1. ↑ Commonwealth War Graves Commission The Work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in the United Kingdom leaflet ISA22, p2, published May 2005, accessed 12 January 2008
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Commonwealth War Graves Commission, accessed 12 January 2008
  3. ↑ Allenby.info, accessed 12 January 2008
  4. ↑ Allenby.info: EB203, accessed 12 January 2007
  5. 1 2 http://www.oakworthvillage.com/personal-accounts.html
  6. ↑ "Wellington BK387, near Oakworth, Yorkshire.". aircrashsites.co.uk. 27 September 2009. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  7. ↑ "Glass, Ernest Israel". CWGC. Retrieved 21 December 2015.
  8. ↑ WW1Cemeteries.com, accessed 12 January 2008
  9. ↑ The Campaign for War Grave Commemorations, accessed 12 January 2007

External links

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