Above a shallow grave

One of the missing of the Somme, Lieutenant Cyril Winterbotham was killed on 27 August 1916 near Ovillers, France when his battalion was ordered to attack a German trench at a few minutes past 7:00 pm. Although the German position was taken, at least fifteen men from the unit were killed. Nine of them, including Winterbotham, were buried by their fellow soldiers two days later in the German trench.

Winterbotham’s widowed mother received news of her son’s death in a letter written by the battalion’s chaplain. Reverend George Helm wrote, “It may be some consolation to know that I buried him early this morning in the German trench he did so much to win, both by his example beforehand and of his actual leadership on the day … he was the British Officer at his best.”*

At the time of the burial, a wooden cross was erected that named the dead and the six men who remained missing. Shortly before his death, Cyril Winterbotham had written about these wooden crosses, often fashioned out of packing crates or salvaged wood, that marked the graves of thousands upon thousands of soldiers hastily buried by their comrades in arms. Winterbotham’s poem “The Cross of Wood” was published in his hometown paper the day before he died.**

The Cross of Wood

from Lives of the
First World War

God be with you and us who go our way
And leave you dead upon the ground you won.
For you at last the long fatigue is done,
The hard march ended; you have rest to-day.

You were our friends; with you we watched the dawn
Gleam through the rain of the long winter night,
With you we laboured till the morning light
Broke on the village, shell-destroyed and torn.

Not now for you the glorious return
To steep Stroud valleys, to the Severn leas
By Tewkesbury and Gloucester, or the trees
Of Cheltenham under high Cotswold stern.

For you no medals such as others wear—
A cross of bronze for those approved brave—
To you is given, above a shallow grave,
The Wooden Cross that marks you resting there.

Rest you content; more honourable far
Than all the Orders is the Cross of Wood,
The symbol of self-sacrifice that stood
Bearing the God whose brethren you are.
—Cyril Winterbotham

Over two years after her her son's death, in March of 1918 Winterbotham’s mother received a letter from a local man serving with the Army Service Corps who had visited her son’s grave. Corporal Thomas Woolhouse wrote, “Yesterday I went again to the spot where your son lies. His comrades and I shall have to try and get something to grow other than roses as the soil is very chalky.... but I believe that I shall be moving on in a day or so. The cross is firm and stands about 4ft 6in out of the ground, by itself, close to the trench.”*

Undated photo Cheltenham Cemetery

After the war, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission began the work of identifying and reburying the dead. The original wooden cross grave markers were offered to the families of the fallen soldiers, and in 1925 the Winterbotham wooden cross was returned to Cheltenham and erected in the cemetery.* It joined numerous others, as the people of Cheltenham had raised funds to have as many crosses of local men returned as possible. A “Soldiers’ Corner” was established in the Cheltenham, Gloucestershire cemetery, where the wooden crosses were mounted on specially constructed oak rails. A historian notes, “By 1927 there were 200 wooden crosses in place and a year later the number had risen to 230 crosses. The crosses were not reported on after 1928.”*** Today, only twenty-two crosses remain, but they have been researched, restored, and preserved. 

Despite the wooden cross marker, Cyril Winterbotham’s body, along with those of ten others from his unit, was never recovered due to continued heavy artillery shelling on the battlefield. Winterbotham’s name is listed on the Thiepval monument (Pier 5B), though a replica of his original wooden cross can be visited at Cheltenham cemetery. 

Those wishing more information on the original wooden crosses of the Great War can find a wealth of information at Returned from the Front, a project dedicated to establishing an online resource and database that provides information on the locations of currently existing returned crosses, as well as stories surrounding the people whose graves they marked.
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* This information and many other details on Cyril Winterbotham and Cheltenham in the First World War can be found in Neela Mann’s The story of Cheltenham’s Official WW1 Memorial Painting.
** The poem was first published untitled and unsigned in the July 1916 issue of the 5th Gloucester Gazette: A chronicle, serious and humorous, of the Battalion while serving with the British Expeditionary Force. The poem appeared in August 1916 in the Cheltenham Chronicle the day before Winterbotham was killed.
*** This and other information can be found in Cheltenham Cemetery Great War Crosses, which recounts the history of the crosses, as well as recent efforts to restore and preserve the crosses remaining and to research the stories of the men whose graves they marked.