H.A.C. CEMETERY
On 6th September 2014 Stephen and I drove to the H.A.C. Cemetery, which is located about 800 metres south of Ecoust-St. Mein, which is a village between Arras, Cambrai and Bapaume.
According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website http://www.cwgc.org/, the village of Ecoust was captured by the 4th Australian and 7th Divisions on the 2nd April 1917. This cemetery was started to be used after this battle by the 7th Division. After the Armistice further graves were added to this cemetery for soldiers who had been buried on the battlefields of Bullecourt and Ecoust and other nearby burial grounds. There are now almost 2,000 soldiers buried or commemorated in this cemetery. Over half of these are unidentified.
There are two Coo-ees buried in this cemetery – Charles Arthur Finn, a blacksmith who joined the Coo-ees at Gilgandra, who was killed in action near Bapaume on the 7th April 1917, and Charles Alfred Hampson, a machinist who joined the Coo-ees at Lithgow, who was killed in action two weeks later at Ecoust-St. Mein on the 28th April 1917.
The photograph below shows Charles Finn’s headstone (centre) at the H.A.C. Cemetery.
H.A.C. Cemetery at Ecoust-St. Mein, France (Photograph: S. & H. Thompson, 6/9/2014)
A photograph of the headstones on Charles Finn’s and Charles Hampson’s graves will be placed on their individual blog entries, and form part of a Roll of Honour for the fallen Coo-ees on this blog.
1915 Coo-ee March 