‘Tyne Cottage’ is little more than a small house in 1917. The Germans are building the Flandern I position near it. Barbed wire bars passage to camouflaged bunkers there. They are covered with branches and nets or, like Tyne Cottage, are inside a dwelling.
Tyne Cot Cemetery and the Cross of Sacrifice
Persistent artillery blasts the camouflage to pieces in late 1917. Where Tyne Cot Cemetery is laid out, only five bunkers stand out in the landscape. The largest serves as a medical dressing station. On-site burial of fallen soldiers is the start of the cemetery. Symbolically, after the war, the “Cross of Sacrifice” is placed on the bunker. Two bunkers are incorporated into the pavilions at the back; two others remain between the graves.
The info panels of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission provide more interpretation on the construction of this cemetery.
