These regions are home to the many sites that bear the scars of two world wars. The sites commemorate the selfless sacrifice of those who took part and now, thanks to the regional Remembrance Trails, you can discover them at your leisure along local cycling and hiking routes. Each route develops a specific theme and is accompanied by an illustrated guide. Consult the guide on your mobile (or download it) to discover the human side of these conflicts and learn about the region and its history in an original and compelling way.
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«My Dearest Mother,
I shall call this place from which I am now writing "The Smoky Cellar of the Forester's House… ».
And so began a letter dated 31 October 1918 to the mother of Second Lieutenant Wilfred Owen, member of the Manchester Regiment. It was indeed in the cellar of this house in the forest of Bois-l'Évêque that Wilfred Owen took shelter along with the other officers of his company. On 4 November his company was ordered to cross the canal which ran through the village of Ors. On the opposite bank were entrenched units of the rapidly withdrawing German Army.
Born in Oswestry in Shropshire in 1893, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was working in Bordeaux as an English teacher when the Great War broke out. He enlisted in October 1915 and, after training, was sent to the front in the Somme in January 1917 but was severely shocked and concussed by an explosion. Owen was evacuated to Craiglockhart hospital in Scotland where he met fellow officer Siegfried Sassoon, a decorated war hero and author of a defiant pacifist declaration. Becoming friends, Sassoon nurtured Owen's poetic genius. It was during his convalescence in Scotland that Owen composed some of his most important works, such as Anthem for Doomed Youth, Dulce et Decorum est, Futility and Strange Meeting.
In late August 1918 Owen returned to the front and took part in the Hundred Days Offensive, which would result in victory for the Allies. The letter written in the shelter of the Forester's House in Ors would be his last.
Officially opened in 2011, the Wilfred Owen Forester's House is the work of British visual artist Simon Patterson in collaboration with architect Jean-Christophe Denise. By transforming this humble abode into art, Simon Patterson aimed not only to highlight the poetic force of Owen's work but also to demonstrate the continuing relevance of art as remembrance of the horror of war. A circular access ramp has been added to the front of the forester's house but the 'smoky cellar' remains almost as Owen described it in his final letter to his mother and retains its somewhat humid atmosphere.
Photos credits: Jacky Duminy / Rémi Vimont / Rémi Vimont
By the autumn of 1918 the Allied Armies had advanced into the territory held by the German Army since 1914 and were moving towards the Belgian border. The town of Cambrai was liberated on 9 October and Lille, eight days later. As they withdrew, the Germans set up positions to detain the advancing Allies. At Ors, after having destroyed the bridges and the locks, the German soldiers entrenched themselves in La Motte Farm on the opposite bank of the Sambre–Oise Canal. The British attacked the German position in the morning of 4 November 1918. Situated one hundred yards from the canal is the military cemetery which contains the graves of the forty soldiers who fell that day. It was enlarged after the Armistice to take in the victims of other battles in the sector during October and November 1918. Today the cemetery holds 107 graves.
Photos credits: Édouard Roose / Édouard Roose
The operation planned for 4 November 1918 to the east of Ors had its risks. In order to cross the Sambre–Oise Canal the British had to install a floating bridge under fire from the German machine-guns positioned on the opposite bank. Despite the misgivings of Colonel Marshall, who had surveyed the terrain prior to the attack, the operation was maintained. On 4 November, at 05:45 hours, the 2nd battalion of the Manchester Regiment and the 16th battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers went into action. Accompanying them were the men of the Royal Engineers whose task was to assemble, on the canal, the sections of the prefabricated floating bridge. The operation had barely started before it was over. Hopelessly exposed, and despite some successful but isolated crossings, many of the attackers fell to the enemy's guns. Among them was Wilfred Owen. German resistance at La Motte Farm was finally overcome by the Dorset Regiment and the Lancashire Fusiliers who succeeded in crossing the canal to the south of Ors and also to the north, at Landrecies.
Photos credits: Collection Jean-Pierre Lambrè
In 1991 the Western Front Association was given permission by the Town Council to erect a commemorative plaque on the bridge over the canal. The plaque pays tribute to the war poet who spoke for a generation and who was, many think, one of the greatest British poets of the twentieth century: Wilfred Owen. An enthusiastic collaboration between the Wilfred Owen Association and Ors Council soon located the forester's house described by the poet in his final letter to his mother.
Photos credits: Édouard Roose
Ors was occupied early in the war, on 26 August 1914, and suffered greatly under the German yoke until its liberation on 1 November 1918. The occupiers demanded heavy financial contributions and repeatedly requisitioned goods from the villagers, in particular farm produce, cattle and any materials that could be used in the war effort. In October 1918 the British began to shell the village and the centre was severely damaged. Ors was awarded the Croix de Guerre on 9 May 1926. In May 1940 the village found itself in the path of General Rommel's tanks and was heroically defended by a handful of French soldiers. After the war Ors remembered these brave men by naming certain roads after them, such as place du Maréchal des Logis Sourice, rue du Capitaine d’Arche, rue du Lieutenant Hudault and pont du Capitaine Dombey.
Photos credits: Collection Jean-Pierre Lambrè / Édouard Roose
In Ors Communal Cemetery the entrance to the military extension is easy to find thanks to the great white cross. This cross bears the sword of Saint George which points toward the ground in mourning. Nearly all the soldiers laid to rest in the cemetery were killed in fighting along the canal on 4 November 1918. Among these was the soldier poet Wilfred Owen whose grave is the third one of the final row. Owen family history relates that Susan Owen received the terrible telegram announcing the death of her son on 11 November 1918 as the bells of Great Britain rang out to mark the Armistice.
Engraved on his gravestone is an epitaph that his mother chose from his poem The End. The lines were slightly modified to send out a message of hope:
'Shall life renew these bodies? Of a truth
All death will he annul'
Another remarkable feature of the cemetery is the lone grave on the far right. It is the last resting place of Colonel James Marshall who, after surveying the terrain prior to the attack, warned that any crossing would be very difficult. Wounded numerous times during the war, he too made his last stand on 4 November 1918. Colonel Marshall showed great bravery during the operation and for that he was awarded the posthumous Victoria Cross, the highest military honour of the British Army. And the Victoria Cross is also engraved on his headstone, in place of the Christian cross.
Between the graves of Marshall and Owen is that of another recipient of the Victoria Cross, Second Lieutenant James Kirk, who valiantly tried to protect the construction of the floating bridge on the canal by firing his machine-gun from a makeshift raft.
Every year on 4 November the inhabitants of Ors congregate on the cemetery to pay tribute to the poet soldier Wilfred Owen and his comrades who died in the battles on the canal.
In his lifetime Owen published only four poems. It was after the war, championed by the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Edmund Blunden, that Owen's genius would finally gain the recognition it deserved. Thereafter Owen's name was synonymous with ‘war poetry’, the body of work produced by the soldiers who turned to poetry to describe their experiences in the Great War. On 11 November 1985 Great Britain paid tribute to her war poets with the placing of a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, where also can be found the British tomb of The Unknown Warrior. The commemorative plaque bears the names of sixteen great poets including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves and Rupert Brooke.
Photos credits: Édouard Roose / Édouard Roose / Édouard Roose / Édouard Roose
When Owen's company reached the Forester's House it stood on a barren expanse, not a single tree had been left standing. The Germans started exploiting the forests in the occupied territories as early as December 1914. Timber was in high demand in the combat zones for revetting, strengthening and repairing the trenches. Thus, like the nearby Mormal Forest, Bois-l'Évêque Forest was gradually cut down by forced civilian labour and Russian prisoners of war. The small Ermitage Chapel situated near the Forester's House would be destroyed in the shelling of 1918 and later rebuilt on its original foundations and dedicated to Our Lady of Good Help.
Photos credits: Collection Jean-Pierre Lambrè