Roland's poem "Violets" refers to Plugstreet Wood (in Flemish "Ploegsteert Bos"). This wood, at the south end of the Ypres Salient, has been the site of fierce fighting at the start of the war in Flanders Fields. Today several Commonwealth War Cemeteries and the Ploegsteert Memorial To The Missing are still surrounding the wood. Roland however was killed in the build-up to the Battle of the Somme in Louvencourt, about 100 km south of Ploegsteert. From January to May 1916, Lt-Col. Winston Churchill served at Plugstreet Wood as Commanding Officer of the Sixth Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers. In 1963 the village of Ploegsteert was transferred from Flanders to Wallonia as a result of Belgium's language area law.

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