Durrington Cemetery on the Salisbury Plain UK

• Durrington Cemetery, by the side of the noisy A345, faces east overlooking a river valley, half way between Larkhill and Bulford Camp.  Isolated from the village and village church, the cemetery stands on the eastern edge of the Salisbury Plain army training grounds. 

• It appears to have begun as the village cemetery with 19th century civilians being buried close to solid iron gates.   

• Though not a dedicated Commonwealth Graves site, having no Stone of Remembrance or Sword of Sacrifice, the World War 1 military graves are tended, by the Commonwealth Graves Commission, with the same care as those of the battle fields of France.   

• A large white Portland Stone cuboid commemorates the dead of both world wars. 

• A red granite obelisk names and remembers ‘the men of the First Training Batt. Australian Imperial Forces who died on active service at Larkhill’. 

• The south west corner of the cemetery, to the right of the entrance, contains about two hundred graves from World War 1, mainly from 1917 to 1918.  Whilst there are some British and Canadian headstones the majority are Australians, with battalions in the 1st, 10th and 11th Brigades being most obvious.

• Six members of the 42nd Battalion AIF lie here.

• Perhaps the most poignant of these is Private Shepherdson, who was over 50 when he enlisted.

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