April 1917
War diary for 24th Battalion London Regiment (The Queens) records that on September 5 1918 they were in the Moislains area. CWGC burial records give a location at Lieramont where he was intially buried and probably killed. The photographs below were taken by me at Lieramont on 20 June 2015.
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CWGC records show that BLACKMAN, Pte A W, 738045, 24th Bn London Regt. Died 5th Sep 1918 Buried in plot III. I. 19 in Peronne Communal Cemetery Extension.
Peronne was taken by the German on 24 September 1914. On 18 March 1917, the 40th and 48th Divisions captured the town, but it was recovered by the Germans on the 23rd March 1918. It changed hands for the last time on 1 September 1918, when it was taken by the 2nd Australian Division
The cemetery extension was begun by the 48th (South Midland) Division in March 1917, used by the Germans in 1918, and resumed by Australian units in September 1918. At the Armistice it contained 177 graves, now in Plots I and II. It was then enlarged when graves were brought in from the battlefields north and east of Peronne and from the following small cemeteries in the area.
There are now 1,595 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the extension. 224 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to seven casualties known or believed to be buried among them, and ten buried in other cemeteries whose graves could not be found. The extension also contains five Second World War burials. There are 97 German war graves, 68 being unidentified.
The adjoining communal cemetery contains the grave of one airman of the First World War, killed in August 1914.
We visited the cemetery 20th June 2015 and put a poppy cross on his grave and took the following photos of the headstone and cemetery.
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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.