New cemetery for British WWI soldiers to be built in northern France

A new cemetery for the freshly discovered remains of British soldiers who died in World War I is under construction in northern France, with the graves expected to be ready in 2024.

A funeral for a British soldier killed in World War I at the military cemetery in Loos-en-Gohelle, northern France, on 14 March 2014. A new cemetery is being built at the site to house remains that continue to be discovered. © AFP - DENIS CHARLET

The new Commonwealth military cemetery, the first in France in more than a decade, will house more than 1,000 British soldiers who fought in World War I.

Financed by the UK and Canada, it will be located next to an existing British facility in the village of Loos-en-Gohelle, near the city of Lens.

Bones are regularly found in the fields of north-eastern France, where hundreds of thousands of soldiers died during the trench warfare of 1914-1918.

Ongoing excavation work for a new canal in the area is expected to lead to the discovery of hundreds of new remains.

We have laid the first stones at the new Extension of Loos British Cemetery.

Find out more about the project here: https://t.co/csiBJCIm2X pic.twitter.com/4N21fm6yYv

— CommonwealthWarGraves (@CWGC) May 4, 2023

There are some "100,000 soldiers underneath the grounds of the battlefields of France who have still got to be found", the head of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), Claire Horton, said on 4 May.

"Every time they put a digger in the ground, they find somebody," she added, saying that an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 men died around the area of the cemetery.

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The 3,000 CWGC-maintained cemeteries in France are almost full, with the last new facility opened in 2011.

The new graves in Loos-en-Gohelle are expected to be inaugurated at the end of 2024 in a ceremony attended by members of the British royal family.