Heilly Station

When I'm in France I try to visit some of the places that were home to Casualty Clearing Stations and hospitals during the Great War. They are now quiet retreats, and off the route normally taken by visitors to the battlefields, giving no hint of what toil and drama took place there. One of my favourites [if that's the right word] is Heilly Station, situated at Mericourt-l'Abbe, just north of the River Somme, and about 6 miles south-west of Albert. In July 1916, during the first days of the Battle of the Somme, the CCSs at Heilly were closest to the battlefield, but the last on the route taken by ambulance trains on their journey taking casualties back to hospital. They admitted thousands of men during those first few days, but the shortage of trains meant that no casualties could be evacuated for more than 72 hours. During that time, the death toll at Heilly was so great, that to save both time and space, men were often buried on top of each other, three to a grave. As there was so little room on each headstone for three names, the regimental badges of the soldiers had to be omitted, and instead the insignia of 117 separate units are incorporated into a cloister and screen wall at one end of the cemetery.

Heilly today seems a hauntingly sad place, in countryside that looks untouched by tragedy. But life goes on, and when I was there last year, the station-master was proud to tell us that his station is on the present day route of the TGV [Train Grand Vitesse] and also sees the Orient Express go through twice a week [once each way], although neither actually stop there. No more casualties in or out of Heilly Station! He also said that field walking constantly turns up mementoes of those wartime days.

So here is Heilly today, the station; the site of the casualty clearing stations, and the military cemetery, the last resting place of 2,890 Commonwealth soldiers, and 83 Germans.
Just click on the photos to enlarge them

Heilly Station today - some of the smaller buildings were there during the Great War

And the view behind the station towards the fields that were home to three casualty clearing stations in 1916

Those vast expanses of land, so peaceful now, and giving no hint of a desperate former life

At the end of the site is the British cemetery

This is one of the many single graves containing three burials, but no room for regimental badges

And the cloister wall, with some of the 117 badges which couldn't be included on the headstones

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