adanaC Military Cemetery (the name was formed by reversing the letters of “Canada”) is located near the village of Courcelette in the Somme. It’s what’s known as a “concentration cemetery” - such cemeteries were created after the armistice when the former battlefields were cleared of the debris of battle in the 1920’s. Thousands of small cemeteries and isolated battlefield burials littered the French and Belgian countryside; the decision was made to concentrate all the isolated graves and many of the smaller cemeteries into existing sites or to create new cemeteries where the graves could be better tended. adanaC was created by bringing wartime burials, mostly from the Canadian battlefields of 1916, in from the surrounding area. The cemetery is situated on a Canadian battle site. Looking south from the cemetery, the grain fields of today were once war-torn terrain over which Canadian units attempted to take the infamous regina Trench positions on 8 october 1916. among those buried at adanaC are soldiers who were killed within a few hundred meters of the cemetery. Today there are now 3,187 Commonwealth burials and commemorations from the great War in adanaC. More than half of the burials are unidentified with special memorials commemorating thirteen casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Wartime burials were often hurried and sometimes the fighting continued over ground where By John goheen THE PIPER
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