Gordon Dump Cemetery, Somme, March 2015
"I must admit that it was the biggest fluke alive, and I did nothing"
2nd Lt. Donald Bell in his last letter to his mother, on winning the Victoria Cross.
"I must admit that it was the biggest fluke alive, and I did nothing"
2nd Lt. Donald Bell in his last letter to his mother, on winning the Victoria Cross.
Sausage Valley became the route through which passed troops and supplies going up to the line in the Pozières and Contalmaison sectors. Sausage Valley Cemetery, later known as Gordon Dump, was first established around the 10th July, and now contains the remains of 1675 men, most collected in from the surrounding fields after the armistice. Amongst them lies 2nd Lt. Donald Bell VC, 9th Bn. The Green Howards, in peacetime a professional footballer playing for Bradford (Park Avenue). He was killed on 10th July whilst single handedly attacking a German machine gun post on the edge of Contalmaison, reprising an action for which he had won the VC five days earlier. There is a memorial to him on the site of that post, now known as Bell's Redoubt.
Gordon Dump CWGC Cemetery is situated some distance along a dipping grass path from the secondary La Boiselle-Contalmaison road, and is now a place of peace and solitude, the silence broken only by the song of skylarks, and the occasional passing farm vehicle.
Gordon Dump CWGC Cemetery is situated some distance along a dipping grass path from the secondary La Boiselle-Contalmaison road, and is now a place of peace and solitude, the silence broken only by the song of skylarks, and the occasional passing farm vehicle.
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