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Somme – Lonsdale Cemetery, Authille

Lance Corporal William Barnard, who died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916, is buried in Lonsdale Cemetery, Authuille, Somme, France; 1,542 people are buried or commemorated there, 726 of whom have been identified.  Authuille is a village 5 kilometres north of the town of Albert on the D151 road to Grandcourt; the cemetery is 1 kilometre east of the village.

Lonsdale Cemetery, designed by Sir Herbert Baker, is on the site of the point where the 32nd Division (which included the 1st Dorsets and the 11th (Lonsdale) Battalion of the Border Regiment) attacked the German line and stormed the Leipzig Salient, but were compelled to retire later in the day. In the spring of 1917, after the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, V Corps cleared these battlefields and made a number of new cemeteries, including Lonsdale No 1 and No 2.  Lonsdale Cemetery No 1 (the present Lonsdale Cemetery) contained originally 96 graves (now in Plot I), the great majority of which were those of officers and men of the 1st Dorsets and the 11th Borders.  It was enlarged after the Armistice when graves, almost all of 1916, were brought in from the surrounding battlefields and from other small burial grounds.  The Commonwealth War Grave records reveal that Private Barnard was reburied at Lonsdale in 1920, having previously been at Danzig Alley Mametz Cemetery.

Lonsdale Cemetery
Lonsdale Cemetery, © The War Graves Photographic Project.