Graveyard McCudden and Little

[Jos]

Hello all,

Last week I went to Wavans to visit the graves of McCudden and Little at the Wavans British Cemetery.
For anyone interested I'll post several pictures of my visit.

Jos

Part 1.

[Jos]

Part 2.

[Jos]

Part 3.

[Jos]

Part 4.

The cemetery is small. There are 43 Commonwealth graves.
Twelve of them were from the RAF. In the back is one German grave.










McCudden is the first one from the right.

[Jos]

Part 5.

McCudden.

[Jos]

Part 6 (the last one).


Little.

[Enthusiast]

So is he actually buried there or is it just one of those memorial headstones that military graveyards sometimes put up?

Interesting pics, all the same man.

[Dolphin]

Thanks for posting the pics, I would like to go and see the cemetary myself some time.

[Gregvan]

Hi Jos,

Thanks so much for posting those. I also was fascinated to see Mike O'Connor visit this little graveyard and talk about McCudden's funeral in the recent BBC documentary on McCudden and Mannock.

Enthusiast, yes, they're both actually buried there. Ironic that two of Britain's greatest aces of WWI lie in such a small cemetery.

"Fly on dear boy, from this dark world of strife..."

[stevedrew]

I visited Wavans to pay my respects to R A Little, and also visited McCudden's grave. It is an incredibly small cemetary, considering some of those Commonwealth cemetaries with countless graves.

The cemetary lies on a tiny country road, and is surrounded by farmland on three sides. It is in pristine condition. If you tended your loved one's grave every day, it could not be better cared for than those I visited in France (I also visited Pernes cemetary to pay my respects to R S Dallas).

I was quite surprised to see the German interred there,
Otto Wolter
1MG.KJ.R.83
10.9.18

from what I can make out on his headstone. I was pleasantly surprised that it, too, was in perfect condition (and not desecrated in any way). I tried unsuccessfully here and on the Great War Forum to find out more about this chap (1 Machine Gun Btn is about all I got. Just wondering why he is buried in a British Cemetary [not that I begrudge his Resting In Peace there]). I also couldnt help noticing his headstone is different from the rest (perhaps fittingly) in that the top of his headstone is two straight lines, meeting in a point, not curved like the British (you can see it in Part 6 of the photos above...it's the last grave on the right against the wall). It seems to made of a different "type" of stone, or perhaps from a different quarry. Maybe this is the "standard German headstone" from the German equivalent of the Commonwealth Graves Commission.

Getting directions also proved a bit difficult (the sign in your post is a recent addition - perhaps due to the many asking directions there with the recent show on McCudden) with my schoolboy French asking for the big cemetary of the British soldiers from the Great War. (It's not big at all as you can all see - 44 souls rest there).

Thank you Jos, for allowing me to pay my respects again to the great airmen.