Lance Corporal Christopher Burns

Lance Corporal Christopher Burns, 1st/4th ( Territorial ) Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers. He was killed in action in Belgium on 26th October 1917 during the Third Battle of Ypres and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Flanders, Belgium.  He had been born in Berwick and had enlisted in Alnwick. The incessant shelling had destroyed the fragile Flanders drainage systems and turned the ground into a desolate quagmire as can be seen from the photographs. The colour photo shows the impressive Memorial raised to commemorate the 50th ( Northumbrian ) Division of which the Battalion was part until July 1918 when it was reduced to cadre and assigned to lines of communication duties. It was erected near the village of Wieltje in the Ypres Salient where nearby on 26th April 1915 the Division had fought its first action of the War only days after landing on the Continent.