Hooge Crater Cemetery is located in an area of the Ypres Salient that witnessed large amounts of fighting throughout the duration of the First World War. The cemetery was begun late in 1917 and by the end of the war contained less than 80 burials. Following the Armistice scattered graves and cemeteries were concentrated into this cemetery from the areas of Zillebeke, Zantvoorde and Gheluvelt. The result was that large numbers of those exhumed and buried here are unidentified, the total number of burials being just under 6,000 with only 40% of those with known identities. All of the ten known Dublin Fusiliers burials in this cemetery are members of the 1st Battalion and all were killed within a few days of each other between 29 September and 2 October 1918 (The marker on the grave of Private James Paisley from Dublin shows the incorrect year of death as 1917). One can follow the way in which the cemetery took shape following the war and the order in which exhumations and re-burials took place. Seven of the Dublin Fusiliers here were found in the same area and at a similar time and are buried in Plot 17. Three of these are buried side by side in Row C of this plot, Private James Murphy the son of a Dublin Metropolitan Policeman from Dundrum who had served on the Western Front from December 1915, George Horsom from Waterford and Edward Nugent from Lancashire a pre-war regular soldier who had served at V Beach on the first day of the Gallipoli landings and was later demoted to Private by Field General Court Martial.

The neat lines of burials in Hooge Crater Cemetery

The grave of Private William Crosby

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Cemetery Location