Location: Villers-Bretonneux is a village 16 kilometres east of Amiens on the straight main road to St Quentin. The Cemetery is about 2 kilometres north of the village on the east side of the road to Fouilloy.
Historical Information:Villers-Bretonneux became famous in 1918, when the German advance on Amiens ended in the capture of the village by their tanks and infantry on 23 April. On the following day, the 4th and 5th Australian Divisions, with units of the 8th and 18th Divisions, recaptured the whole of the village and on 8 August 1918, the 2nd and 5th Australian Divisions advanced from its eastern outskirts in the Battle of Amiens. Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery was made after the Armistice when graves were brought in from other burial grounds in the area and from the battlefields.
Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery contains the graves of 2,142 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 609 of the burials are unidentified. Within the cemetery stands the VILLERS-BRETONNEUX MEMORIAL, the Australian national memorial erected to commemorate all Australian soldiers who fought in France and Belgium during the First World War, to their dead, and especially to those of the dead whose graves are not known. The 10,700 Australian servicemen actually named on the memorial died in the battlefields of the Somme, Arras, the German advance of 1918 and the Advance to Victory. The memorial was unveiled by King George VI in July 1938. Both cemetery and memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens.
[Photos courtesy of Jean Crankshaw]
SAPPER JOHN MUNDAY, ROYAL ENGINEERS
Portrait
J. Munday
ROYAL ENGINEERS
8TH AUGUST 1918 AGE 32
REST IN PEACE
Further Information
John Munday was a Sapper with 80th Field Coy., Royal Engineers and was 32 years of age when he died on 8th August 1918. He was the husband of Amelia Grace Munday, of 135, Stamshaw Rd., North End, Portsmouth. His name also appears on the Guildhall Square Cenotaph in Portsmouth, alongside his brother M.G. Munday of the Somerset Light Infantry who died on 6th November 1918, aged 28, and is also named on the Karachi 1914-1918 War Memorial.
John enlisted on 24 November 1915 and his attestation date is 17 October 1916 at Chatham. His Company had just moved to new billets near Heilly, north of the brickworks at Vaux-sur Somme. He was wounded on 7th August and died the following day.
[Information supplied by Jean Crankshaw, Granddaughter of J.Munday, and the CWGC website]