Essex Farm is one of the most visited CWGC cemeteries in the world. It was here that John McCrae wrote in ‘Flanders Fields’, a poem that has become synonymous with remembrance.
The original medical units based here in 1915 dug rough shelters into the embankment which by 1917 had been replaced with concrete structures. We visit them to try to imagine the conditions what medical staff endured while undertaking their vital work. Thousands of wounded soldiers were treated here and many of them who never made it further are buried in Essex Farm Cemetery. By the signing of the Armistice, more than 1200 graves lie here. On of them is the 15-year-old lad Joe Strudwick, who like many others lied about his age. He became one of the youngest casualties commemorated by the CWGC in Belgium.
The cemetery is part of the so-called John McCrae Canal Site. This site includes the medical post and adjacent concrete remnants.
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