Located just outside the village of Beaumont Hamel this cemetery contains the grave of just one Royal Dublin Fusilier, Private Michael Harvey. The village of Beaumont Hamel saw much fighting during the Battle of the Somme and was captured by the British in November 1916. Both the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers took part in the attack on the area around this village on the first day of the Battle of the Somme and this cemetery lies close to where the German front line trenches were at that time. Looking south from the cemetery the cluster of trees marking Hawthorn Crater, created minutes before the advance on 1 July 1916, is clearly visible and and the ground to the right of this is what the 1st Battalion advanced across on that day. It was in this advance that Private Harvey was killed.
The entrance to Beaumont Hamel British Cemetery
Harvey from Carndonagh on the Inishowen peninsula in County Donegal had emigrated to Lanarkshire, Scotland prior to the war where he enlisted in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. He had served in Gallipoli with the 1st Battalion from November 1915 and moved with them to the Western Front where he was killed in action in on the first day of the Somme. The cemetery was not established until after the British capture of the village in November 1916 and therefore Harvey’s remains would have been interred here a number of months after his death.
A view of Hawthorn Crater with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cross of Sacrifice of Beaumont Hamel British Cemetery visible in the lower right of the photograph.
The explosion of Hawthorn Mine on 1 July 1916 (IWM Q754)
The grave of Private Michael Harvey
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