Mass grave discovered in Great War trench near Ypres

Archaeologists working at the Golf and Country Club De Palingbeek, south of Ypres, have identified a mass grave in a disused First World War trench. Human remains have been recovered from almost 100 separate locations along the feature, alongside personal effects and a bugle.

The find marks the third and final phase of excavations at the site, which sits on a heavily contested sector – ground later overwhelmed during the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917 – where German, British and French front lines once ran within a few hundred metres of one another.

Bert Heyvaert, site manager at the Monument Group, said the bodies appeared to have been 'dumped in a primitive manner' in a trench no longer in operational use – a pattern unusual in a structured archaeological project, and one that has led the team to classify the trench as a mass grave. Laboratory analysis will be needed to establish how many individuals are present.

The work follows an earlier phase in April 2025, when 22 sets of remains were exhumed during a ten-day project coordinated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC). The CWGC worked alongside the German Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the French Direction de la mémoire, de la culture et des archives, and the Flemish Agency for Immovable Heritage. An identity token belonging to a Bavarian tailor was among the finds; the dead are thought to be predominantly German, with French and Commonwealth soldiers likely to be present.

After recovery, remains pass to the Belgian Police and then to the Belgian War Heritage Institute. Once nationalities are established, they are released to the CWGC or the relevant national agency for reburial with military honours in Flanders.

Reporting draws on VRT NWS (13 May 2026) and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s account of the April 2025 recovery.