Ranville War Cemetery

Ranville War Cemetery
Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Ranville War Cemetery
Used for those deceased 1944
Established 1944
Location near Ranville, Calvados, France
Total burials 2,560
Unknown burials 2
Burials by nation

Britain: 2,151
Canada: 76
Australia: 1
New Zealand: 1
Belgium: 1
France: 5
Poland: 1
Unknown Allied: 1
German: 322

Unknown: 1
Burials by war
Statistics source: WWII Battlefields

The Ranville War Cemetery is a Second World War cemetery containing predominantly British soldiers killed during the early stages of the Battle of Normandy. It is located in and named after Ranville in the Calvados department, east of Caen in lower Normandy. A large proportion of those interred were members of the British 6th Airborne Division.

Location

Ranville is north-east of Caen.

Liberation

Grave of Lt. Den Brotheridge

The village of Ranville was the first to be liberated by elements of the British 6th Airborne Division on the morning of 6 June 1944 (D-Day) when the nearby bridge (Pegasus Bridge) was attacked and captured. The cemetery contains the grave of Lieutenant Den Brotheridge - considered to be the first Allied death on D-Day.[1]

The churchyard was immediately used to accommodate battlefield dead. Following the end of the war, the war cemetery was created which gathered burials from locations including Amfreville, Colleville-sur-Colombelles, Houlgate, Orne and Villers-sur-Mer.

Architecture

Contained within the cemetery is a Cross of Sacrifice, a piece of architecture typical of memorials designed by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. As is typical of war cemeteries in France, the grounds are beautifully landscaped and immaculately kept. The final interments were made in 1946.

See also

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ranville War Cemetery.

Film

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, April 01, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.