In Memory of

WILLIAM ALFORD

Private
24045
16th Bn., Welsh Regiment
who died on
Friday, 31st March 1916.


Commemorative Information

Cemetery: GUARDS CEMETERY, WINDY CORNER, CUINCHY, Pas de Calais, France
Grave Reference/Panel Number: III. O. II.
Location: Cuinchy is a village about 7 kms east of the town of Bethune and north of the N41 which runs between Bethune and La Bassee. About 1 km north-west of the village are cross roads known as Windy Corner, and Guards Cemetery is a little west of these cross roads.
Historical Information: A little west of Windy Corner was a house used as Battalion Headquarters and Dressing Station. The cemetery grew up beside this house. The original cemetery is now Plots I and II and Rows A to S of Plot III. It was begun by the 2nd Division in January, 1915, and used extensively by the 4th (Guards) Brigade in and after February. It was closed at the end of May, 1916, when it contained 681 graves. After the Armistice it was increased by the concentration of 2,720 graves from the neighbouring battlefields and small cemeteries, and in particular from the battlefields of Neuve-Chapelle, the Aubers Ridge and Festubert. There are now nearly 3,500, 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, over 2,000 are unidentified and special memorials are erected to 36 soldiers from the United Kingdom known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials are erected to six soldiers buried in Indian Village North Cemetery, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire, and to five Indian soldiers originally buried in the Guards Cemetery but afterwards cremated. The cemetery covers an area of 10,151 square metres and is enclosed on the road side by a rubble wall and on the other sides by a low curb. The smaller graveyards from which graves were concentrated into this cemetery included the following:- BALUCHI ROAD CEMETERY, NEUVE-CHAPELLE, on the road from Pont-Logy to the "Moated Grange". It contained the graves of fifteen soldiers from the United Kingdom who fell in the winter of 1914-15. EDWARD ROAD CEMETERY No. 3, RICHEBOURG-L'AVOUE, on the South side of the Rue des Berceaux, near another "Windy Corner" (Plot I only, containing the graves of five men of the 1st East Surreys who fell in October 1914). INDIAN VILLAGE NORTH CEMETERY, FESTUBERT, near the intersection of "Prince's Road" and the front line of early 1915. It contained the graves of fifteen soldiers from the United Kingdom who fell in May and July 1915. LORGIES COMMUNAL CEMETERY, containing two British graves of October 1918. PONT-FIXE SOUTH CEMETERY, CUINCHY, on the West side of "Harley Street" (the road going South from Windy Corner), a little South of the Canal. This was a row of graves stretching Westward behind houses, and containing the bodies of 42 soldiers from the United Kingdom who fell in 1915.