Soltau, Niedersachsen
Becklingen War Cemetery is 13 kilometres south east of Soltau on the west side of the road from Hamburg to Hannover.
From Hannover travel north in the direction of Hamburg on the Autoroute No.7 for 80 kilometres until the junction with Soltau Sud, this is in fact the junction of the A7 with the B3 Hannover to Hamburg road.
On leaving the A7 at Soltau Sud follow the B3 in the direction of Celle and Bergen. The cemetery is on the right hand side of the road, 7 kilometres from the motorway junction.
The site of Becklingen War Cemetery was chosen for the position on a hillside overlooking Luneburg Heath, where Field-Marshall Montgomery accepted the German surrender from Admiral Doenitz on 4 May 1945.
Burials were brought into the cemetery from isolated sites in the countryside, small German cemeteries and prisoner of war camps cemeteries, including the Fallingbostel cemetery, within a radius of about 80 kilometres. Most of those buried in the cemetery died during the last two months of the war.
Becklingen War Cemetery contains 2,374 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War, 97 of them unidentified. There are also 27 war graves of other nationalities, many of them Polish.
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