Rifleman Frederick Alley

Rifleman Frederick Alley DOD 13Dec17 Age unknown

Killed in Action

3 NZ Rifle Brigade, 3 Battalion

Grave Plot II, C.22

The site of the current cemetery was until the Third Battle of Ypres in no man’s land. On July 31, 1917, the 15th (Scottish) Division captured the Lost Corner and Freiberg with the 55th (West Lancashire) Division on their left flank. The cemetery was started the next month by the 15th and 16th (Irish) Division, under the name ‘New Cemetery, Frezenberg’. A few weeks later, however, a British plane crashed near the current ‘Cross of Sacrifice’, which earned the cemetery its current name, Aeroplane Cemetery. The cemetery was used by combat units until March 1918.

The cemetery includes the graves of 15 men who served with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.

Plots II to VIII, and part of Plot I, were formed after the Armistice when graves were brought in from small burial grounds and the surrounding battlefields. There are now 1,105 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 636 of the burials are unidentified but special memorials commemorate eight casualties known or believed to be buried among them.Read more