Historical Information
Thelus village, which stands on the Vimy Ridge, was captured by the Canadian Corps on the 9th April, 1917, and it remained in British hands until the end of the War. The commune contains Battle Memorials of the 1st Canadian Division and (at Les Tilleuls) the Canadian Artillery.
Bois-Carre British Cemetery was begun by units of the 1st Canadian Division in April 1917, and used until the following June. These 61 graves are in Plot I (a Canadian soldier, accidentally killed in 1919, was also buried in Plot I, Row F). The cemetery was greatly enlarged after the Armistice by the concentration of graves from the surrounding battlefields and from following burial grounds:-
BUMBLE TRENCH CEMETERY, VIMY, (CC 186*) on the road from Vimy to Lens before the railway crossing. Here were buried, in May-August, 1917, nineteen Canadian soldiers and five from the United Kingdom.
CANADIAN GRAVE (CD 27*) NEUVILLE-ST. VAAST, 1,828 metres West of Petit-Vimy, in which 48 Canadian soldiers who fell on the 9th April, 1917, were buried; almost all belonged to the 54th and 102nd Battalions.
VIMY STATION CEMETERY, where 17 Canadian soldiers were buried in April and May, 1917.
*The numerous groups of graves made about this time by the Canadian Corps Burial Officer were, as a rule, not named but serially lettered and numbered.
During the 1939-40 War the cemetery was used in April, 1940, by No.8 Casualty Clearing Station.
There are now over 500, 1914-18 and a small number of 1939-45 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, nearly 60 from the 1914-18 War are unidentified and special memorials are erected to one soldier from the United Kingdom and one from Canada known to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names of ten Canadian soldiers and three from the United Kingdom, buried in smaller cemeteries, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.
The cemetery covers an area of 1,898 square metres and is enclosed by a brick wall.
