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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Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Hill was already an important place of pilgrimage before the start of the First World War. As early as the seventeenth century a painter from Ablain-Saint-Nazaire erected an oratory on the hill in gratitude to the Virgin Mary who he believed had healed him at the shrine of Loreto in Italy. The painter's oratory was destroyed in the Revolution. A chapel was built on the site to replace it but this too was destroyed, in the shelling of 1914 and 1915.
On 5 October 1914, German troops established themselves on Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Hill. Its dominating position 165 metres above sea level gave the possessor a clear tactical advantage. Along with Vimy Ridge, Lorette Hill provided the Germans with an unhindered view of the region of Arras and this enabled them to control the entire coal basin. The village of Souchez, also occupied and fortified by the German Army, constituted the low position of this stranglehold over the coalfields. From October 1914 till the end of 1915, Lorette Hill was the scene of numerous clashes between French and German soldiers. Casualties during this period were probably as high as 100,000.
Today Lorette Hill is home to the largest of the French military cemeteries. More than 40,000 French soldiers were buried there, including 22,000 unknown soldiers in eight ossuaries. The dead were brought to Lorette from more than 150 cemeteries close to the front in Artois, Flanders, Yser and on the Belgian coast. A Romano-Byzantine basilica was erected in the grounds in 1921. It was designed by the Lille architect Louis-Marie Cordonnier, as was the lantern tower which stands opposite. The light atop the tower represents the eternal flame.
Photos credits: P. Frutier / Archives Départementales du Pas-de-Calais
Captured in October 1914, the village of Souchez remained in German hands for nearly a year until it was retaken by the French on 25 September 1915. By the end of the war the village had been reduced to ruins.
The huge task of clearing up the rubble began in 1919. Only 66% of the civil population had returned by November 1921 and these were housed in temporary shelters. War damage compensation paid for the rebuilding of Souchez. The village also received aid from the London district of Kensington. Works to rebuild the church, which is home to some handsome stained-glass windows, began in 1928. A war memorial was raised on the edge of the main square, near the Town Hall, in memory of the men of Souchez who were killed in the fighting. It also displays the names of the civilians who were killed in 1914 and 1915, including one who had been shot by the occupiers. Uncovered during the reconstruction, the plinth of the old sandstone cross is one of the few pre-1914 relics still visible in the village. It stands on the corner of rue Pasteur and rue Curie.
Photos credits: Collection Alain Jacques
This monument was unveiled in May 1937. It pays tribute to the commander of the 77th Alpine Division who was mortally wounded by shrapnel on 10 May 1915 somewhere between Carency and Cabaret Rouge.
General Barbot was very popular with his men and was known affectionately as the "Saviour of Arras" because of the stiff resistance he showed the German Army in the outskirts of the city in October 1914. His grave on Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Hill is marked with a white cross, just like those of his men.
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Cabaret Rouge is one of the largest British military cemeteries in the region. It covers more than two hectares and contains 7,645 graves from the First World War. The cemetery takes its name from a small cafe, built of red brick and tiles that once stood nearby. The cafe was completely destroyed in the fighting of 1915. The British started using the cemetery when they relieved the French troops in the sector in March 1916. At the end of the war the cemetery was enlarged to accommodate the graves of 7,000 British soldiers who fell in the Battle of Arras. More than half of the soldiers buried in the cemetery have never been identified. British architect Sir Frank Higginson designed the cemetery. The graves at the entrance encircle the War Stone and a Great Cross stands at the other end of cemetery. In May 2000 the remains of an unknown Canadian soldier were exhumed and handed over to the Canadian authorities. His remains were finally laid to rest at the foot of the National War Memorial in Confederation Square, Ottawa.
Photos credits: P. Frutier / E. Roose
This memorial in the Canadian National Vimy Memorial Park is a reminder that, prior to the Canadians' capture of the ridge in April 1917, other soldiers had also succeeded in reaching that strategic position. On 9 May 1915, while the 10th French Army was launching its major offensive in Artois, the men of the Moroccan Division set out from the sector of Berthonval Farm and broke through enemy lines to reach the summit of Vimy Ridge (Hill 140). A lack of reinforcements, however, soon obliged them to withdraw under heavy fire. In the following three days, the Moroccan Division lost 4,207 men. Built at the instigation of the Division's veterans, the memorial was unveiled in 1925.
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In January 1917 Canadian command received orders to take Vimy Ridge. A few weeks later four Canadian divisions were positioned along a line that ran from the village of Écurie in the north to Souchez. The offensive was carefully planned and rigorously rehearsed. The attack started on the morning of 9 April 1917 with a period of heavy preliminary shelling. It went almost completely to plan for the soldiers of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Divisions and they reached their goals in the middle of the afternoon. At the northern end of the ridge, known as Hill 145 or "The Pimple", the 4th Division encountered much stiffer resistance and this prevented them from achieving their objective before nightfall. The Pimple was eventually captured on 12 April through the deployment of massive reinforcements. It marked the end of fighting on Vimy Ridge. In the period 9–14 April 1917, the Canadians lost 10,600 men who were either killed or wounded in the fighting leading up to their victory. The capture of Vimy Ridge marked a turning point in the history of the Canadian nation.
Today the Vimy Ridge National Historic Site of Canada comprises more than 100 hectares of pine and maple woodland that was replanted after the war. France granted the site to Canada in perpetuity in 1922. The park continues to show the scars of the war. Some of the trenches have been preserved and made safe for the public. They show how close the Canadian and German front lines really were. Part of Grange Tunnel is also open to the public for guided tours given by Canadian students. An interpretation centre tells the story of the battle and provides educational information.
The most impressive part of the park is undoubtedly the immense memorial erected on Hill 145 in honour of the 60,000 Canadians who gave their lives in the Great War. The site also provides a spectacular view of the coal basin. The twin pylons are 35 metres high, took eleven years to build and required 11,000 tonnes of concrete and 5,500 tonnes of stone. Designed by Walter Seymour Allward, a sculptor from Toronto, the memorial includes a number of sculptures, the most famous being that of a woman representing the Canadian nation weeping for her lost sons. The names of 11,285 Canadian soldiers killed in France during the First World War whose bodies were never found are inscribed on the base of the memorial.
Photos credits: P. Frutier / Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) / S. Dhote / S. Dhote
Situated halfway between the villages of Neuville-Saint-Vaast and Thélus, the British cemetery at Zivy is unusual in that it lies in a crater created by an exploding mine. There are only two British cemeteries of this type, the other being nearby Lichfield Crater. Zivy Crater contains the remains of fifty-three soldiers of whom five have not been identified. Almost all of them belonged to the Canadian Army and lost their lives in the attack on Vimy Ridge on 9 April 1917. There are no tombstones in the cemetery; instead, the names of the interred soldiers are displayed on plaques affixed to the peripheral wall.
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Occupied by the Germans in October 1914 and liberated in January 1915, the village of Neuville-Saint-Vaast was a key component of the invader's defences. Heavily fortified, it blocked access to the strategic position of Vimy Ridge. In May 1915 the village found itself at the centre of the French offensive to break through the front line north of Arras. On 9 May the attacking French soldiers met with some very stiff resistance in the centre of the village. Fighting raged for four weeks. On 9 June 1915 the village finally came under the full control of the French Army. In 1917 Neuville-Saint-Vaast was used as a base by Canadian troops during preparations to capture Vimy Ridge. By the end of the fighting the village was little more than a field of rubble, albeit one where thousands of soldiers had lost their lives.
The village of Neuville-Saint-Vaast was completely rebuilt after the war. The central square of the village, where the war memorial stands, is named after the famous author Roland Dorgelès who wrote Wooden Crosses. Nearby, the facade of the new council offices displays two inscriptions that evoke the fighting and the commendation awarded to the village. Like the council offices, the church was also rebuilt after the war but in a neo-Gothic style. Dedicated to Saint Lawrence, it was opened in June 1925 by Mgr. Julien, Bishop of Arras. Some of the stained-glass windows evoke the Great War and one of them shows Lorette Cemetery. Many ex-voto and commemorative plaques are displayed inside the church. The church is made of reinforced concrete, and the inventor of this construction technique, François Hennebique, actually came from the village. He was born at No. 64, rue du Canada on 25 April 1842.
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This German military cemetery covers more than seven hectares and is the largest in France. It contains the remains of 44,833 German soldiers, of whom 8,040 were laid to rest in an ossuary. The cemetery was built at the end of the Great War under the supervision of the French authorities. It is a concentration cemetery, that is to say, the remains of German soldiers originally buried in more than one hundred villages across the department of Pas-de-Calais were exhumed and reburied there. The cemetery was designed and developed by the German war graves commission, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK), an association created in 1919 by German war veterans. Today the VDK has many young members who carry out maintenance and other works in the cemetery in a spirit of reconciliation "above the graves". Like all the German military cemeteries, Maison Blanche blends into its surroundings by retaining the natural relief of the terrain. Much of the land is given over to trees to evoke the forest of German mythology that watched over the warrior dead. Each cross marks the graves of four men. The tombstones mark the graves of soldiers belonging to the Jewish faith. In the centre of the cemetery stands a monument inscribed with the words Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden (I had a comrade), quoted from a poem by Ludwig Uhland.
The plain lying in the direction of the village of Écurie, now given over to agriculture, was the scene of fierce fighting in 1915. It contained a vast network of trenches known appropriately as "The Labyrinth".
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Built in 1928, the home comprised sixteen houses for disabled war veterans who were, for the most part, employed in looking after the military cemeteries in the area. Part of the home was reserved for families who could stay there while they attended to the graves of their loved ones. Situated on rue du 11 novembre (Armistice Day Street), each of the houses comprising the home bears the name of a general who commanded troops in the region of Artois: Barbot, Joffre, Foch, Pétain, Mangin, and so on.
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Unveiled in 1932, the Torch for Peace depicts a hand thrusting out of the ruins to hold aloft a flame. It symbolizes the rebirth of the village after the destruction of the First World War. A similar message appears on the village's coat of arms as: "9 mai – Resurgam – 1915" (9 May – I shall rise again – 1915). A concrete arch once adjoined the Torch to mark the entrance of the home.
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The French National War Cemetery at La Targette opened in 1919. Its size reflects the great number of soldiers who were killed in the sector. The cemetery covers more than four hectares and contains the graves of 12,210 French soldiers, of whom 11,443 fell in the First World War. Two ossuaries contain the remains of 3,882 men. Its layout of regimentally aligned white crosses is very different to that of the small British cemetery adjoining it. La Targette British Cemetery was first used by the British in April 1917 and contains 641 graves of which three date from the Second World War.
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The vast military cemetery in the hamlet of Écoivres is unusual because it contains both British and French soldiers. It was originally a plot of the village cemetery which had been set aside for the remains of 787 French soldiers killed in the fighting of 1915, mostly on the front between Souchez and Neuville-Saint-Vaast. The British relieved the French in the region of Artois in February 1916 and they too used the cemetery for burying their dead. By 1917 most of the troops in the sector were Canadians involved in preparations for the assault on Vimy Ridge. The Great Cross of Sacrifice, a characteristic element of British cemeteries, bears on its front face the sword of Saint George pointing downward as a sign of mourning. A Stone of Remembrance bearing the inscription "their name liveth for evermore" also stands on the site (only cemeteries containing more than 400 graves were awarded this privilege by the British authorities).
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The village of Mont-Saint-Éloi is known above all for the ruins of its eighteenth century abbey. The abbey was attacked during the French Revolution and only the towers were left standing. The front line never moved close enough to the village for it to endure the devastating shelling that characterized the Great War. As a result, the village retains much of the white limestone buildings it had before the war. The towers of the old abbey were useful observation posts and, because of this, the target of much German shelling which greatly damaged them. Throughout the war the village was occupied by troops, first the French (1914–1915) and then the British (1916–1918). In 1917 much of the occupying troops were Canadian. A British aerodrome was built on the outskirts of the village.
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Carency is often associated with the landmine warfare that marked the first few months of 1915. Making little progress in the capture of the village, the French Army decided in December 1914 to engage in a veritable underground war in the hope that it would push the Germans back. They started tunnelling across the front line to place powerful explosive mines under the enemy's positions. This turned into a war of attrition with both armies using mines to devastating effect. The village was eventually recaptured, albeit in ruins, from the Germans on 9 May 1915 during a vast French offensive.
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Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, lying at the foot of Lorette Hill, was occupied early in the war, in October 1914. The Germans fortified and successfully defended the village until it was permanently retaken by the French Army in May 1915.
In the aftermath of the war Ablain-Saint-Nazaire was little more than a field of rubble but reconstruction was swift and complete by 1924. The new church and the new town hall are enduring examples of the reconstruction works which, for the most part, were financed by German reparations.
Ablain-Saint-Nazaire's old church was severely damaged in the shelling of 1914 and 1915. In the aftermath of the war it was decided to preserve the church as it was, as a reminder. Today it is a protected historic monument. The original Gothic church was built in the sixteenth century by the architect who also designed Arras town hall, Jacques Caron. The ruins clearly show the layout of the church. In former times it comprised three aisles and an imposing thirty-four metre high tower. Even before the end of the war documents and photographs of the ruined church were being published.
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In the autumn of 1914 neither of the warring parties had the advantage over the other and this stalemate resulted in a continuous line of defence being established from the Vosges to the North Sea.
During this ‘Race to the sea’ the German Army set up positions on every piece of high ground that bordered its newly conquered territory. One of these was Aubers Ridge. Its dominant position gave the Germans a major strategic advantage, not the least because of Fromelles Church.
From the top of its bell-tower, their lookouts had an uninterrupted view of Lys Plain from the hills of Flanders to the Pas-de-Calais coal basin. Consequently, the church soon became a target for Allied artillery and by the spring of 1916 it lay in ruins. When peace returned it was rebuilt on the same foundations but in the Neo-Romanesque style. It was consecrated in 1924.
Photos credits: Collection Jean-Marie Bailleul
As the conflict changed from a war of movement into one of position, the armies began to install fortifications to defend their lines. In 1915 the pioneer battalions of the German Army began to erect concrete bunkers along the front. They were placed in echelon and designed for a variety of purposes.
Dozens of these positions are still visible today in the area around Weppes. One of these is the Abbiette Bunker which stood about 1,000 yards behind the front line. It was a command post. The middle parados bears an inscription indicating that it was built by the 13th Bavarian Pioneers, a battalion of the 6th German Division. The bunker features a wide firing step that allowed riflemen to shoot over the top of the bunker. History notes that from March 1915 to September 1916 a corporal named Adolf Hitler, a dispatch rider for the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, carried messages between the bunker and the German command at Wavrin. He would return to Abbiette in 1940.
Photos credits: Collection Jean-Marie Bailleul / Jean-Marie Bailleul
Erected in October 1922, this memorial is dedicated to Captain Paul Adrian Kennedy who was lost in action on 9 May 1915 during the Battle of Aubers Ridge. Wounded by a solitary sniper as his company advanced through the German lines in the Rouges Bancs sector near Fromelles, Captain Kennedy told his men to leave him to his fate, which they did, and he was never seen again. After the war his mother Lady E. A. Wilbraham, who had lost three of her four sons in the war, purchased a plot of land at the spot where Paul was last seen and had a memorial erected there. The original Christ of the memorial was later transferred to the chancel of Fromelles Church where it can be seen today.
Photos credits: Collection C. Heddy – Kennedy
The Fromelles offensive was launched on 19 July 1916 to draw German soldiers away from the Battle of the Somme, which had been raging since 1 July. For the Australians, it was not only their first battle on the Western Front of the Great War, but also one of their bloodiest.
Preliminary shelling started at 11 a.m. and targeted a portion of the German front that was two and a half miles wide. At 6 p.m. the order was given for the 5th Australian Division and the 61st British Division to attack. Their objective was to take a salient position known as the Sugar Loaf that lay opposite the hamlet of Rouges Bancs on the outskirts of Fromelles. Heavy rain in the days running up to the attack meant the terrain was sodden. The initial bombardment failed to destroy the German machine guns and, inevitably, the successive waves of soldiers who advanced through the mud succumbed to their fire (some of the concrete bunkers that sheltered those guns can be seen in the grounds of the Memorial Park today). Australian soldiers on the northern flank of the attack succeeded in crossing the German front line but were unable to hold out against the ferocious counter-attack. The following day at around 9 a.m. the operation was halted. No ground had been gained. Casualties in the Battle of Fromelles were colossal. The 61st British Division lost 1,500 men while more than 5,500 Australians were either killed, wounded or missing. On the German side, over 1,600 Bavarians were put out of action.
In the next three days, despite no official truce being proclaimed, Australian soldiers went out into no man’s land to succour their wounded comrades. The bravery and humanity of their gesture is remembered in the memorial that stands in the centre of the park. It was unveiled in July 1998 and dedicated to the ‘cobbers’ of the Great War. A replica of Peter Corlett’s statue can be seen in the gardens of Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance.
Photos credits: National Collection of the Australian War Memorial / National Collection of the Australian War Memorial / A.S. Flament
The attacks launched by the British in the sector prior to the Battle of Fromelles were brief but intense. They featured a number of individual exploits that were rewarded with the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military distinction, and this is reflected in the cemetery’s name: V.C. Corner.
Of all the war cemeteries in France, this is the only one to be exclusively Australian. It comprises two mass graves marked with a white cross and these contain the remains of 410 unidentified Australian soldiers found on the battlefield at Fromelles at the end of the war. A memorial wall facing the entrance to the site bears the names of the 1,299 Australians who were reported missing in action after the Battle of Fromelles on 19–20 July 1916. Recently, in 2009, the remains of some of these men were found in Pheasant Wood and have since been identified.
Photos credits: A.S. Flament
Designed by Sir Herbert Baker, this cemetery is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful remembrance sites of the Western Front. As its name indicates, it adjoined an aid post situated in a place called Le Trou (The Hole), near Fleurbaix, on the British Army’s support line of trenches. It contains the graves of 351 British soldiers who died in various battles in the sector: Le Maisnil (October 1914), the Battle of Aubers Ridge (9–10 May 1915), the Battle of Loos (25 September–14 October 1915) and the Battle of Fromelles (19–20 July 1916). Only 149 of the men buried in Le Trou have been identified.
Photos credits: A.S. Flament
The entrance to Rue-Petillon Cemetery in Fleurbaix is marked by a triple arch which opens on to a beautifully gardened graveyard where the bodies of 1,500 soldiers from across the British Empire rest in peace. Some Germans are buried there too. As with the nearby Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery, Rue Pétillon was situated on the British support line and adjoined an aid post; however this one was installed in the ruins of a house that soldiers jokingly called ‘Eaton Hall’ after the country home of the Duke of Westminster. The graves of thirty Australian soldiers killed in a German raid on 15 July 1916 are easily identifiable because they stand so close together.
Photos credits: O. Delory
In 2007 and 2008, following independent research by French and Australian historians, the Australian government surveyed a plot of land on the edge of a wood known to the Germans fighting in the Great War as Pheasant Wood. Sampling indicated the presence of five mass graves which had been dug by the Germans in the aftermath of the Battle of Fromelles.
In 2009 the bodies were carefully exhumed and DNA samples were taken to identify them. In total 250 bodies were recovered. After careful study by a team including archaeologists, anthropologists, medical experts and military historians, the bodies were finally laid to rest in the new Pheasant Wood Military Cemetery.
Using samples taken during the excavations, scientists are currently attempting to identify the bodies and their programme of research is expected to continue into 2014. The process involves comparing anthropomorphic data with administrative information relating to soldiers reported missing after the battle. Australian and British families who lost an ancestor during the fighting are also DNA tested to aid identification.
Photos credits: Image courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission / Collection Jean-Marie Bailleul
Standing close to the church, on a rise facing the Western Front, a Cross of Sacrifice overlooks the many gravestones in the hexagonal cemetery of Pheasant Wood. Every single one of the 250 bodies found in the recently discovered mass graves was reburied with full honours by representatives of the British and Australian Armies. Pheasant Wood Cemetery is the first cemetery to be built by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission since the 1960s. It was officially opened on 19 July 2010 in the presence of British, Australian and French dignitaries. To date ninety-four soldiers have been identified. As identification proceeds, the gravestones bearing the inscription ‘Known unto God’ will be gradually replaced with ones engraved with the personal details of the soldiers.
Photos credits: G. Funk / E. Roose
Overlooking the new military cemetery, the museum describes the fascinating work that was required to excavate and identify the bodies discovered in Pheasant Wood ninety-two years after the Battle of Fromelles. It tells the story of the battle and the lives of some of the soldiers who fought in it. In addition to the objects collected by a club of local historians, some of the artefacts on display were found in the mass graves and are currently on loan from the Australian Government.
Photos credits: Collection Martial Delebarre
«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.
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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.
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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.
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The fortified perimeter of Maubeuge comprised thirteen forts and other military works. These were built on high ground and even today they dominate the landscape.
Taking up his appointment in 1912 as governor, General Fournier quickly identified weaknesses in the layout of the forts and had installed trenches, posts, thorn bushes and barbed wire. His actions led the ranks to christen him ‘Général Fil de Fer’ (General Wire).
Placed in Belgium on the high ground to the northeast of Maubeuge, the German guns started shelling French positions to the east of the fortified town on 29 August 1914. These included the forts of Boussois and Cerfontaine and the works of Bersillies, La Salmagne and Rocq. The French soldiers manning these positions were stunned by the density of the bombardment and the massive destruction it wrought. The centre of Maubeuge was also damaged.
On 31 August, French soldiers observed for the first time a 420 mm shell case in the area around Sarts Fort. This discovery left the defenders of Maubeuge in no doubt about the superior fire power of the German Army.
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Leveau Fort was built between 1882 and 1884. Its purpose was to strengthen the fortified town of Maubeuge. It was also a key position in a much wider defensive system designed by General Raymond Adolphe Séré de Rivières to protect France’s border with Belgium.
The fort’s raised features, known as ‘cavaliers’, are about thirty feet higher than the ramparts and were used as platforms for the heavy artillery. Underneath were the barracks. Ditches with scarp and counterscarp encased in stone surround the fort and their purpose was to hinder attacking forces. Two caponiers connected to the fort provided flanking fire on the ditches. The entrance and the gorge of the fort are flanked on either side by casemates.
The site saw action during the siege of the fortified town of Maubeuge. In the summer of 1914, after crushing the Belgian defence at Liège and Namur, the German Army advanced on Paris as prescribed by the Schlieffen Plan. Coming up against Maubeuge, the Germans encircled the fortifications and on 29 August 1914 they proceeded to shell the forts and works of the defensive perimeter. Their objective was to neutralize all the French defences in the sector that had the potential to disrupt the advance of the Kaiser’s troops into France.
On 7 September 1914 Leveau Fort came under fire. Despite the thickness of its walls, the fort was no test for the German shells, especially the 420s from the heavy siege gun known as ‘Big Bertha’. On the same day the garrison was evacuated. According to various sources between 80 to 100 were killed and the building was seriously damaged, in particular the original entrance bridge which has now been replaced with a replica.
Since 1993 the charity Sauvegarde du Leveau Fort has been restoring the site and the result is remarkable. The fort is now home to a museum which, through a marvellous collection of artefacts, tells the story of the Siege of Maubeuge and the German occupation of the district of Avesnes during the Great War.
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To facilitate the movement of troops and equipment within the fortified town, the French Army set up a network of strategically-placed tracks between the forts and other military positions. These tracks were concealed from the besieger’s view. Most of them were based on existing byroads. The War Department paid subsidies to the district authorities to keep them maintained.
In the fortified town of Maubeuge, strategic track 14 linked Leveau Fort to Sarts Fort and then continued through Mairieux, Elesmes and Assevent to its destination at Cerfontaine Fort. Today this strategic track is the secondary road D136.
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Six intermediate works were built between 1891 and 1895 to improve the defensive perimeter of the strong point of Maubeuge. These infantry positions were intended to strengthen the spaces between the forts and protect the batteries deployed at Bersillies, La Salmagne, Ferrière-la- Petite, Gréveaux, Feignies and Héron-Fontaine.
The intermediate work at La Salmagne came under heavy shelling from 31 August to 1 September.
At midday on 1 September General Fournier launched an attack along an 8 km front between Vieux-Reng and Jeumont to destroy the enemy’s artillery. He deployed his forces from Boussois Fort and the works at La Salmagne and Le Fagné. This attack was the only offensive of any size to be executed by the French and it failed at 250 yards from the enemy guns under a hail of machine-gun fire.
In late September the Germans blew up the caponiers in the ditches and carried off the barbed-wire entanglements to use them at the front.
In 1935 the fort was once again utilized in France’s border defence. The bunkers were demolished to make way for a small artillery work comprising two concrete combat blocks 150 yards apart. They were linked thirty metres below the surface by a tunnel which also gave access to the soldiers quarters including kitchen, dormitories and sick room.
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In 1914 this field battery was mounted with six 90 mm guns. It covered the terrain that extended from Le Fagné Farm to La Salmagne Farm.
Around the battery the army placed stone markers and these are still visible today. Such marking indicated that the surrounding land was subject to restrictions depending on the distance from the stone:
Thus the terrain around military works within a radius of up to 974 metres would always be clear for action. However these restrictions considerably hindered the development of farming in the vicinity.
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Two thousand men were killed in the Battle of Maubeuge, as many French as German. They were initially buried in temporary, sometimes mass, graves and in the cemeteries near where they fell. Many of the soldiers dug out of the ruins of the forts were also interred locally, as were those who died in the hospital of the fortified town.
Under orders from the Kaiser himself, the governor of Maubeuge Karl Ritter Von Martini organized the construction of a war cemetery at Assevent in honour of the ‘immortal dead’. In March 1916 he ordered the mayors concerned to transfer the dead buried in their towns and villages to the new cemetery. Jules Walrand, mayor of Maubeuge, was given the task of dividing up the cost of the transfers among the various districts.
It was inaugurated on 20 October 1916 in the presence of the mayors of the participating towns and villages, Father Wattiez and Jules Walrand, the latter receiving the keys to the site.
Assevent French National Cemetery is the final resting place for 1,140 French soldiers (487 in ossuary), 399 Germans (342 in ossuary), as well as 260 Russians (200 in ossuary), 12 Romanians, 7 Britons, and 1 Belgian.
The Russians among the war dead were prisoners brought over from the Eastern Front to carry out the heavy, exhausting work of maintaining the roads, cutting down trees, and building German defensive works on the Hindenburg Line.
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After nine days of intensive shelling which succeeded in destroying the works that made up the defensive perimeter of the fortified town of Maubeuge, General Fournier offered surrender on 7 September 1914 and this took effect the following morning at 8 o’clock.
At 2 p.m. on 8 September General Fournier, accompanied by Captain Grenier and Lieutenant-colonel Duchesne, went to Porte de Mons to meet General Von Zwehl, commander of the besieging forces. In accordance with military custom General Fournier offered his sword to the victorious commander but, in recognition of the Frenchman’s fine defence of the garrison, Von Zwehl refused it.
Subsequently, 32,000 prisoners taken by the German troops at the end of the Battle of Maubeuge marched through the ancient Vauban gate. Those soldiers, who had so valiantly defended their fortified town, were now on the road to Germany and captivity. They would be prisoners for more than four long years.
In total 60,000 German soldiers were mobilized to take the fortified town of Maubeuge, the longest siege of the Great War. Consequently, it could be said that but for Maubeuge the German Army would have been much stronger on 5 September at the outset of the Battle of the Marne. As it was the British and French troops succeeded in halting the German push in the summer of 1914 and saved Paris from humiliation.
Today Porte de Mons, parts of which date from the seventeenth century, bears a plaque commemorating General Fournier and the French forces who defended Maubeuge.
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In the seventeenth century the town of Maubeuge, a strategic point on the northern border of France, was comprehensively fortified by celebrated French engineer Vauban. Porte de Mons dates from this time (1682) and was, along with Porte de France and Porte de Bavay, one of three gates leading into the town when the Germans invested it in 1914.
A plaque above Porte de Mons commemorates those who defended the fortified town of Maubeuge against the besieging German Army in the summer of 1914. It bears the portrait of General Joseph Fournier, then governor of the town and superior commanding officer of the entire group of military works that comprised the strong point of Maubeuge.
In 1914 General Fournier took command of the French units manning the thirteen forts and works that comprised the defensive perimeter of Maubeuge, a system devised by General Séré de Rivières in the late nineteenth century to strengthen the northern and eastern borders of France. Conscious of the shortcomings in the system’s capacity to hold off an attack, Fournier quickly set about evacuating civilians, installing defensive obstacles, and reorganizing the garrison. In late August 1914 the German Army encircled Maubeuge and, on the twenty-ninth, started shelling. The town suffered a brutal and relentless pounding which it could not expect to sustain indefinitely and on 7 September, persuaded by the considerable destruction and loss of human life, General Fournier hoisted the white flag. The fortified town of Maubeuge officially surrendered on 8 September 1914 at 8 o’clock in the morning.
In recognition of the bravery of the French during the siege, General Von Zwehl, commanding officer of the German force that invested the town, refused Fournier’s sword when offered him. But the rumour of a premature surrender soon began to do the rounds. Eventually, a court martial recognized that the defence of Maubeuge had been properly conducted and General Joseph Fournier was acquitted in 1919.
Later on the day of the surrender, the vanquished of Maubeuge paraded for the last time before General Fournier as they marched out of the town through Porte de Mons towards the prison camps of Germany.
During the German occupation Porte de Mons was used as a prison for ordinary offenders. It is one of the few buildings in Maubeuge to have survived intact the violence of the Second World War.
Since the seventeenth century the fortified town of Maubeuge has had various buildings known as ‘casernes Joyeuse’ for quartering soldiers. They were named after Jean Arnaud De Joyeuse, marquis and officer to French kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV. The area of the town where the barracks once stood continues to bear his name.
Once the town had fallen to the Germans in 1914, a large part of the occupying army was quartered in the barracks. Political prisoners and civilians suspected of ‘acts of resistance’, such as sending information to the French Army or refusing to work or collaborate with the occupier, were held in the dungeons of ‘les Joyeuse’.
On the northeast side of the barracks, outside the ramparts, an area was set aside for the Kaiser’s forces to do military training, in particular close combat practice.
Maubeuge was also a major centre for artillery training. German officers went there for conferences and to study ballistics. Firing practice was held in the neighbouring town of Jeumont, in a quarry where dummy buildings were erected as targets.
In 1794 the balloon Entreprenant took to the skies above Maubeuge. Commanded by Captain Coutelle, its mission was to observe the enemy forces threatening the nascent French Republic. This event marked the start of aeronautics in Maubeuge.
In 1910, more than a century after the first flight of the Entreprenant, a military aerodrome was set up on the northeast side of the town and an airship hangar was built on the site which is now home to the Pierre Forest secondary school.
Before the Germans invested the town in September 1914, the last personnel of the French flying corps based in Maubeuge destroyed all their equipment to prevent it falling into enemy hands. Under the occupation the hangar was enlarged to accommodate zeppelins.
Zeppelins were stationed in Maubeuge until May 1916 and carried out bombing raids on French towns and other Allied targets, in particular the ports used by the British Army (Margate, Calais, Boulogne, etc.). They even travelled as far as London and Paris, sowing panic among the civilian populations of those great cities.
On the highest part of Falize Bastion the Germans installed anti-aircraft guns to cover the airbase. The remains of these defences from 1915 are still visible today.
After the Armistice, the French Army converted Maubeuge aerodrome into a depot for a new type of fighting vehicle: the tank. The hangar was dismantled by soldiers of the Reich during the Second World War.
The Arsenal is the last remaining building of the garrison barracks. It was built between 1678 and 1689 to store military equipment for the artillery corps of the French Army, and was used continuously up until 1914.
Situated on the banks of the river Sambre, the quays in front of the warehouse had always been an important factor in trade between the town and the outside world; but during the occupation they became crucial for bringing supplies into Maubeuge through the occupied zone. In that troubled time of shortages and crisis provisioning was an obsession everyone shared. Food was rare for the civilian population and prices rocketed. The authorities were obliged to issue ration cards, steadily reducing the quantities of bread and flour allocated per person. After lengthy negotiations with the occupier, Maubeuge Council secured permission to receive supplies from the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), a charity set up by the engineer and future American president Herbert Hoover. The goods supplied by the CRB improved the precarious existence of the people of Maubeuge even if they did fuel the expansion of the black market.
During the Battle of Maubeuge, in the summer of 1914, wounded soldiers were treated in the military hospital that once stood on Maubeuge’s Square Jourdan. Today the site is occupied by an apartment block. The hospital came through the shelling of the Great War unscathed but did not survive the destruction caused by the soldiers of the Reich in World War Two. The Chapel of the Black Sisters, a convent once part of the hospital, is all that remains of the original building.
After the surrender of the French troops in 1914, the occupying forces took over the hospital and converted it into a lazaretto for the wounded arriving directly from the front, in particular those who had been gassed or had contracted a contagious disease. Another treatment centre was set up in the Sous-le-Bois quarter of Maubeuge.
In 1916 a tramway was built to carry the increasing influx of wounded soldiers from the front directly to the hospital. At the end of the war, and despite the creation of other hospitals in Maubeuge, local figure Georges Dubut observed ‘the wounded are arriving at such a considerable rate the hospitals are overflowing and, in the rush, […] the church has been requisitioned and summarily converted.
All the patients were evacuated prior to the arrival of the British Army in November 1918.
An occupying administration was set up in the town immediately after the French surrender, on 9 September 1914. On 11 November the districts of Maubeuge North, Maubeuge South, Bavay and Solre-le-Château were consolidated into a governorate. To the south of Maubeuge a frontier was strictly enforced, and that severely limited movement to the staging posts which provided support to the units fighting at the front.
Maubeuge’s governor Major-General Karl Von Martini, who resided at Place Verte (on the site of the mutual insurance company), communicated the decisions of the Governor- General of Belgium through notices written in French and German. For the most part they were requisition orders, as well as restrictions and bylaws on a myriad of subjects.
On 12 July 1916, under the direction of Major-General Friedrich Von Buddenbrock, the occupied territory of Maubeuge and district became a staging post. Thenceforth the town came directly under the orders of the German 2nd Army and the latter’s administrative departments were transferred from Saint-Quentin to Maubeuge.
News was strictly controlled. La Gazette des Ardennes, a propaganda tool, was the only newspaper authorized for distribution in the territory. Civilians were forced to work for the occupier. Machines and goods in the factories and farms were inventoried and requisitioned to support the war effort.
The German Army in Maubeuge used Place d’Armes, a central square near today’s Place des Nations, as a venue for concerts and celebrations. Musicians from across the Rhine and propaganda agents from the culture ministry put on, for the most part, works by German composers. In particular, artists were brought in to celebrate the birthday of Kaiser Wilhelm II on 27 January.
On 6 November 1918, with the British advance progressively liberating the occupied territories, the German troops stationed in Maubeuge were given the order to move out. Before leaving they blew up the bridges leading into the town.
In the morning of 9 November, at around 9 o’clock, the British Army entered Maubeuge and were welcomed by an ecstatic population.
The official ceremony of liberation took place on 14 November 1918 in Place d’Armes. British general Sir Torquhil Matheson received a Flag of Honour as a mark of gratitude. Matheson was deeply touched by the gesture and subsequently commissioned a commemorative cup made in vermeil to symbolize the friendship and fraternity of two nations scarred by war. The cup was presented to the town of Maubeuge on 9 June 1919.
In October 1914 the front line stabilized and nearby Armentières, just 2 km distant, became a target for the fury of the German guns. Situated a good dozen miles south of Ypres, the main theatre of operations, Armentières gained the nickname ‘The Nursery’ because it was a quiet sector where newly-arrived soldiers of the British Imperial Army were sent to familiarize themselves with trench warfare.
Factories in the town continued to produce for another two years until the increasing shelling and the use of poison gas forced the inhabitants to gradually abandon the town. The remaining civilians were evacuated on 13 August 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres.
On 9 April 1918 the German Army launched Operation Georgette, also known as the Battle of the Lys, in an attempt to take control of the ports used by the British on the north coast of France. The Germans entered Armentières on 11 April. During their subsequent retreat on 2 October they destroyed everything in the town that could be of use to the Allies. They even blew up the belfry which, after four years of war, had come to symbolize the town’s resistance.
By the end of the war three-quarters of Armentières was in ruins: 4,800 houses had been totally destroyed, another 2,400 severely damaged, and all the churches and public buildings were rubble and dust.
Architect Louis-Marie Cordonnier was selected to supervise reconstruction. He drew up plans for the town hall, Saint Vedast Church and the covered market (today the cultural venue Le Vivat). These buildings border the town square, or Grand’ Place, where stands the war memorial. In choosing for his designs a regional approach, characterized by red brickwork and high gables, Cordonnier sparked a ‘Flemish Renaissance’ in Armentières. He had a similar influence in neighbouring Bailleul, Comines, Merville and Laventie.
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Modern town planning in France was bornin the reconstruction of the towns and cities destroyed in the war. A law passed in 1919 required all councils responsible for more than 10,000 inhabitants to draw up plans describing the layout, decoration and enlargement of their town with particular attention to be paid to main routes, water supply and the sewer system.
With the return of the townsfolk, who had had to leave their homes because of the fighting, reconstruction was not only urgent
it was also highly symbolic. People returned to Armentières at the rate of about 1,000 a month and were willing to invest their energy
in the revival of the town.
For private buildings the new town planning law required owners to adhere to the pre-war layout (if this had not been modified for the purpose of modernizing the town), but no such restrictions were placed on architectural style and owners were free to choose according to their taste. Heavily influenced by the traditional styles of the region, the architects who worked on the reconstruction of Rue de Lille showed immense creativity in the design of the houses and the result is striking. Red brick is perhaps a familiar construction material, but the shape of the gables, the stone ornamentation, the wrought iron work, and the door and window frames make each façade a unique creation.
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Born in 1877, Ernest Deceuninck was a sales representative based in La Chapelled’Armentières when war broke out. He soon left for occupied Lille and there he joined the resistance group known as the Comité Jacquet. Alongside Eugène Jacquet, Georges Maertens and Sylvère Verhulst, Deceuninck was one of the organizers of the group which helped Allied soldiers fallen behind enemy lines to
escape.
On 11 March 1915 British airman Lieutenant Mapplebeck was shot down near Lille. He avoided falling into the clutches of the Germans thanks to the Comité Jacquet. A few months later he again flew over Lille to drop pamphlets mocking the governor General Von
Heinrich. In the following days 200 members of the Comité Jacquet were exposed by an informer and arrested. On 21 September 1915 Jacquet, Maertens, Deceuninck and Verhulst were sentenced to death. They were executed three days later at dawn in the ditch surrounding Lille Citadel.
Deceuninck’s body was transferred, in accordance with his final wish, to Armentières on 22 March 1930 and reburied under the war memorial in the town cemetery. This memorial to Ernest Deceuninck was unveiled the following Armistice Day. On it, he is shown a few moments before being shot, his back to the wall, his chest bare, in proud defiance. At the entrance to Lille Citadel stands a memorial to the Lille Resistance which also pays tribute to the leaders of the Comité Jacquet. It shows them in a similar posture with, lying at their feet, the young Léon Trulin, another figure of the resistance in the occupied zone during WWI.
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This memorial stands in the courtyard of a building known locally as ‘La Goutte de Lait’ (The Drop of Milk). Situated on the site of the former townhouse belonging to the Mahieu family, who were the owners of several textile factories in Armentières in 1914, the current house was given to a child protection charity by Madame Mahieu whose two sons, depicted on the monument, were killed in World War I.
Born in 1887, Auguste Mahieu was posted to the 56th French Battalion of Light Infantry which was, from early 1916, given the job of defending Caures Wood in the Meuse. On 22 February, the
second day of the French offensive at Verdun, Auguste Mahieu was killed by a shell. Today his name can be seen in the
gallery of Douaumont Ossuary.
His brother Michel, born in 1891, was a flying enthusiast who, in 1911, made a name for himself by breaking the world altitude record with a passenger in a biplane. At the head of a squadron nicknamed ‘The Owls’, Captain Michel Mahieu was one of French aviation’s ‘flying aces’ during the Great War. He was shot in the Somme after crashing behind enemy lines in the night of 2 March 1918.
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Born in 1878 in Armentières, Maurice Debosque took over the family building business from his father in 1909. He was one of the first men to return to Armentières after the signing of the Armistice. Swiftly putting together a team of workers to clear up the rubble of the ruined town, he went on to organize the construction of numerous public buildings such as the town hall, Saint Vedast Church and the war memorial.
Given the sobriquet ‘Château Debosque’ (Debosque Castle), his home was a vast Anglo- Norman house built from brick and stone and old-style roofing tiles. The interiors were also a veritable exhibition of local craftsmanship. From 1972 to 2007 it housed the town library, and since then it has been used by various departments of the council.
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In recognition of the sacrifice soldiers made on the field of honour, the French state passed on 29 December 1915 a law giving those who ‘died for France’ the right to an individual and permanent grave in the many military cemeteries on its territory. The bodies of soldiers killed in action were not returned to their families immediately because their considerable number would have diverted logistical resources away from the very pressing need to supply the army with men and materials.
In response to the many clandestine exhumations, the French state agreed in 1920 to return the body of a soldier to his family
if the latter requested it. The mortal remains of approximately 250,000 soldiers were moved under the supervision of the Service de Restitution des Corps, a government department set up specifically for the purpose. Of the 1,085 soldiers of Armentières killed between 1914 and 1918, the bodies of 158 of them were thus transferred to a special military plot situated on the left side of the
cemetery. At the centre of the cemetery stands a war memorial dedicated to the victims of the First World War. Beneath it lie the remains of Ernest Deceuninck, a leading figure of the French resistance during the German occupation. His body was moved there from Lille in 1930.
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Founded in 1882, Gustave Eiffel School was originally a training college and the British Army made good use of its facilities during the Great War. In the spring of 1915 the school’s workshops were used to manufacture Pippin hand grenades, grenade launchers and periscope rifles. Night and day 300 civilians and about thirty British soldiers worked under the supervision of Captain Newton and the school’s instructors. The dormitories and classrooms were turned into a makeshift hospital, while the laboratories and the experiment rooms were used for medical tests. Maps for the general staff were produced in the technical drawing rooms.
Every month two to three hundred thousand rations were prepared in the school kitchens to feed the population of Armentières.
In August 1915 German shelling started to increase and by March 1916 the entire establishment had to be evacuated. Of the students who were called up, 122 were killed in the war. Others made a name for themselves, such as Charles Nungesser who became a hero of French aviation.
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When the British Army arrived in Armentières, in October 1914, a cemetery was established to take the patients from the nearby military hospital and various ambulance stations in the town who died from their war wounds. It was located beside a housing estate known as ‘Cité Bonjean’, whose construction had been funded in 1909 by distinguished local Judge Georges Bonjean to provide homes for workers in the town.
More than 2,100 British soldiers were buried in the Cité Bonjean Military Cemetery, alongside 500 German soldiers, most of whom were killed in the Battle of the Lys in the spring of 1918.
The site is also home to the Cité Bonjean New Zealand Memorial. This memorial bears a sculpted ferleaf and pays tribute to the forty-eight New Zealand officers and ordinary soldiers who fell in the sector of Armentières but have no known grave. It is one of seven memorials which pay tribute to the Kiwis who died on the Western Front, both in Belgium and in France.
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On 2 August 1914 the hospital in Armentières had roughly 1,300 patients and the medical staff comprised 3 doctors, 3 interns and 74 carers. One of the first things the British did upon arriving in the town was to set up gun batteries in the hospital’s kitchen garden because it was on the outskirts of town and not far from the front line. Subsequently, heavy German shelling led to the evacuation of the patients on 31 October 1914. After travelling by road to Nieppe train station, the sick were then transferred by train to Rouen, Tours, Bordeaux and finally Cadillac.
Its proximity to the war zone led to the total destruction of the hospital in 1918. Works to rebuild the establishment in the Flemish style began in 1921. Numerous dwellings were erected in a large woodland park and near to them were built common areas and facilities, such as the baths, the events hall, the workshops and even a small farm which provided food for the hospital. The establishment has provided hospital services since its founding in 1615 and, today, is called the Établissement Public de Santé Mentale (EPSM) Lille-Métropole.
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During the Great War many charities, most of them religious, opened their doors to soldiers who were in desperate need of support, providing kind words, games and prayer. In Armentières, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) ran two centres in 1915, one in the Gustave Eiffel School and the other at the hospital.
Most of the staff in these centres were volunteers. In 1917 one of the volunteers at the YMCA centre in the Eiffel School was Australian Franck Beaurepaire, a champion swimmer who had won six Olympic medals and broken fourteen world records, and who would be Melbourne’s mayor in 1940.
At the nearby crossroads with Boulevard Faidherbe, the YMCA also ran a hostel for the parents of grievously-wounded soldiers. This establishment continued its work into the 1920s, accommodating the families of soldiers who were buried in the sector of Armentières.
Rebuilt in the same period, Rue Sadi-Carnot is lined with several townhouses which belonged to industrialists operating in the town. Under the influence of architects such as Charles Bourgeois and Jean-Baptiste Maillard, these buildings display a mixture of art nouveau, art deco and regional styles to give the street a pleasantly eclectic feel.
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Nine-tenths of Béthune’s centre was reduced to rubble during the Great War, in particular almost 70,000 shells fell on the town in May 1918 alone. Béthune was a strategic point that the Germans had tried to take since the start of the war. The belfry survived the fighting, albeit severely cracked and its top section missing. It is the last remaining building of the medieval period, dating from 1388, and would have been completely flattened but for the protection of the houses that surrounded it. Initially the idea was to leave it as it was, as a reminder of German barbarity. Restoration works officially ended on 6 October 1929 with the inauguration of the new chimes. The tenor bell bears the inscription: ‘VIGILANT IS MY NAME. I replace Joyful who was destroyed by war, and from the top of this restored belfry, I ring for Peace and to the glory and the future of Béthune rebuilt.’
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Run by the Union des Femmes Françaises, an organization similar to the Women’s Institution, the boys’ school served as an auxiliary hospital with 50 beds in 8 August 1914. Heavy shelling forced its closure three months later. The hospital was recommissioned by the British Army on 6 October 1915. The pupils had to live alongside the wounded soldiers and were trained how to act in times of danger. Issued with electric torches, they would take shelter in the cellar and knew how to use a gas mask. The boys were eventually moved to Bruay-en-Artois in August 1916 and their former dormitories were used to billet British troops for the rest of the war.
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The 1,200-seat theatre opened its doors in 1912 and was much-appreciated by the British troops. Situated near the billets in the rear, it was within easy reach for the soldiers and often enjoyed a full house in the afternoon, except on Sundays when it was closed. Comedy and clownery dominated the theatre’s programme with a mixture of variety shows and revue; while over at the Petit Théâtre du Jeu de Paume, or ‘The Palladium’ as it was renamed by the Brits, a troupe called Les Francies were the regular performers. Designed by the architect Guillaume, the theatre came through the war relatively unscathed and required only renovation, which was entrusted to Paul Degez.
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In 1915 the Buckinghamshire Regiment took up quarters in the former girls’ school, as this extract relates: ‘The officers are staying in private homes nearby. The school is well equipped, the soldiers have the use of a kitchen and can take baths and showers. Many of Béthune’s womenfolk are doing cleaning for them and ironing their clothes.’ Other regiments passed through the school, such as the 17th Middlesex Regiment which was well-known for its football team.
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The hospital set up in this school started treating wounded Indian soldiers in November 1914. In September 1915 the 33rd Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) moved in.
Throughout the war the school suffered regular shelling which led to evacuations in May 1915 and June 1916. Of the facilities installed in the school were a well-equipped operating room, a laboratory of microbiology and an X-ray room. Many great names in the field of medicine did stints in the hospital. There were also dormitories for the wounded and comfortable washrooms which received up to 800 men per day. The students remained in the school and, from their sleeping quarters in the basement, could hear the wounded soldiers crying out in pain.
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On 10 October 1914 the French Army withdrew to Arras, leaving the British to defend Béthune, as had been agreed between General Foch and Field Marshal French. They stayed for four years.
The first British soldier was buried in the cemetery four days later on the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, Béthune’s twin town. Most of the graves belong to soldiers who died in the British ambulances installed in the various schools around the town. The first plot of land to the right was granted to the British authorities but was soon found to be too small.
The bottom of the cemetery filled as the war progressed. A careful study of the dates on the gravestones gives an idea of the losses
suffered during battles in the sector (Festubert, Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée…) and the extent of the British Empire at that time. The most recent graves are those of twenty-six officersof the Manchester Regiment who were killed by a single bomb dropped by a plane on 22 December 1917 on Boulevard Kitchener.
Designed by Edwin Lutyens, the cemetery contains the graves of 2,923 British soldiers, 122 French and 87 German.
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This monument, designed by architect René Deligny and sculptor Paul
Graf, commemorates France’s 73rd and 273rd Infantry Regiments and 6th Territorial Infantry Regiment. It shows Minerva, Roman goddess of
military strategy, standing on a pedestal and holding a flag with, at
her feet, the arms of the towns of Aire-sur-la-Lys, Hesdin and Béthune. The memorial was inaugurated on 28 May 1933 in the presence of Mayor Alexandre Ponnelle and former soldiers of the Béthune regiments that were disbanded after the Great War.
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Named sub-prefect on 12 January 1914, Adrien Bonnefoy-Sibour carried out his duties with courage and composure throughout the war. By 12 April 1918 the situation had deteriorated to such an extent that the order was given to evacuate Béthune, although the sub-prefect and fifty diehards remained. The town council moved to Berck-sur-Mer. On 28 December 1919 the sub-prefect received French president Raymond Poincaré who awarded Béthune the Legion of Honour and the Military Cross.
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Situated on the military training ground of the Champ de Mars (now the sports centre), Chambors Barracks were used as a recruiting station. Lafeuillade and Montmorency Barracks, as well as the schools in the town, were also requisitioned. The youngest recruits were assigned to the 273rd Infantry Regiment; the oldest to the 6th Territorial. Once recruited, the new soldiers marched in procession to the train station.
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On 18 September 1920 at 6.40 p.m. Béthune Council received a telegram from the British League of Help announcing that the people of Bristol would sponsor the town’s reconstruction. During the war many British soldiers were quartered in Béthune and developed fond memories of the town. Around 70,000 soldiers enlisted in Bristol and millions of weapons and munitions left her port bound for France. Despite the deep financial crisis in the English west-country town, subscriptions town, subscriptions collected from her inhabitants helped build the Bristol Housing Estate which opened on 24 March 1925. It was demolished in 1968.
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The general hospital treated both civilians and soldiers of various nationalities (British, French and German). Because of the continual
shelling, the wounded were sent to Saint-Omer and Berck-sur-Mer unless their condition meant that it was too dangerous to move
them. Those who remained were cared for by the doctors and Franciscan nuns. The hospital was evacuated in 1917 and remained closed until April 1919. Two buildings of the old hospital are still visible on Rue Boutleux. Saint Pry Chapel is more recent, dating from the post-war reconstruction.
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Montmorency Barracks stood on the site now occupied by the Sévigné School. They housed British soldiers during the Great War. Robert Graves of the Royal Welch Fusiliers describes in his famous account Goodbye to All That his return from Briques Farm near Cambrin:
We spent the night repairing damaged trenches. When morning came we were relieved by the Middlesex, and marched back to Béthune, where we dumped our spare kit at the Montmorency Barracks.
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Designed by Jacques Alleman and the sculptor Edgar Boutry, the war memorial was financed in part by public subscription. A Minerva of Peace, the scene shows a veiled woman (Liberty) draped in a robe of stone (Pain). A laurel wreath represents the triumph of military might. The palm leaves evoke the greatness of the soldiers who died for their nation.
It was unveiled on 11 November 1928. Mayor Alexandre Ponnelle’s speech during the unveiling ceremony was typical of its time: ‘Today, to remembrance, Béthune adds an even greater solemn tribute with the inauguration of a monument that must commemorate for all time and all future generations the generous
sacrifice of their elders... Oppressed nations will forever turn to France, which will remain for all eternity the guardian of justice and law.’ The nearby Hôtel de Baynast, no longer standing, housed British General Headquarters.
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Dedicated to Saint Vedast, this sixteenthcentury church was totally destroyed in the war.When works began to remove the rubble in 1919, the ruins were still smoking. Louis-Marie Cordonnier rebuilt the church between 1924 and 1927 in a neo-Gothic style with Byzantine and art deco influences. Furnishings were financed by subscriptions organized by Archpriest Pruvost. Of note, there is a plaque commemorating civilians in the chancel, and a memorial to the British Empire in the north transept. The crypt of the Charitables Chapel was still in use during the FirstWorldWar.
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After rejecting the proposals of regionalist architect Louis-Marie Cordonnier, the Council launched in 1926 a competition to design a newTown Hall on the town square around the belfry. They received eleven submissions. Architect Jacques Alleman was selected, despite not having won the competition, and amid the ensuing controversy it was finally decided to use the site where the old Town Hall stood before the war. The plot was smaller than the one previously envisaged. Jacques Alleman applied the same architectural approach to the rest of the square. On the façade, on either side of the town’s arms, he decided to depict the Legion of Honour and the Military Cross which had been awarded to the town by President Raymond Poincarré on 28 December 1919 in recognition of its sacrifices and martyrdom.The inauguration was held on 7 April 1929. Mayor Alexandre Ponnelle was very enthusiastic about the rebirth of the town and spoke proudly of ‘a great and beautiful building’. Listed as a historic monument in 2002, the Town Hall is one of the most beautiful art deco monuments in the region.
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The reconstruction of Béthune fell within the scope of Cornudet’s law which required all towns of over 10,000 inhabitants to draw up plans for future development, improvement or extension. The solution proposed by the architect Mulart was simple: facilitate circulation in the town by enlarging or opening new roads without erasing its Medieval layout. It was a combination of tradition and modernity. The main square, or Grand’ Place, was given special
attention. Numerous architects, each with their own personal touch, gave the square an eclectic style. Combining new materials and surprising decorative elements, the square is like an open-air theatre. Red brick and stepped gables evoke regional traditions; while the simple and refined bulk of the buildings and the numerous geometric motifs speak in the language of art deco.
It is hard to imagine that, during the First World War, the square was teeming with soldiers from every corner of the British Empire: Scotland, Canada, India, Australia... Béthune was very much a British town. Café du Globe was a favourite place for soldiers to relax and unwind.
Soldiers often took photos of themselves in front of the shops and cafés, among the ruins or carrying out security checks. King George V came several times to Béthune to review his troops or see for himself the damaged caused by the shelling.
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The name of Neuve-Chapelle is today engraved alongside those of other battles on the impressive memorial erected to the memory of the 4,847 soldiers of the Indian Corps of the British Army who were lost in action. Designed by the architect Sir Herbert Baker, the memorial was unveiled on 7 October 1927. Circular in shape, it is closed on one side by a wall with ornamental apertures and sculptures depicting the insignia of the Indian Army; and on the other side by a solid wall bearing the names of the soldiers lost in action. A column bearing the names of the battles is flanked by two tigers and surmounted by an imperial lotus leaf, the imperial crown and the Star of India. It also bears the words ‘God is one, His is the victory’ in English, Arabic, Hindi and Gurmukhi. A large remembrance ceremony takes place at the memorial every year in November.
In early October 1914 the war reached the area between Béthune and Armentières. Neuve-Chapelle soon became embroiled in the fighting because it was a strategic point at the intersection between Béthune/ Armentières road and La Bassée/Estaires road. On 28 October 1914 the British Army deployed its Indian Corps but was unable to wrest the village from Germans hands. On 10 March 1915 the intentions of the 1st British Army were to retake the village, gain Aubers ridges and open the road to Lille. The attack extended from the site of the Indian Memorial to a point three kilometres to the north. The British deployed 340 guns and two army corps, about 40,000 men. After thirtyfive minutes of preliminary shelling the Indian Corps attacked the trenches opposite the memorial. The 4th British Corps attacked to the north. The village centre was taken at around 10 a.m.
German reinforcements and various pockets of resistance prevented the British Army from securing its initial gains. Bloody attacks and counter-attacks took place over the following three days. A strip of land about 800 yards deep was eventually taken at the cost of huge losses, almost 13,000 British soldiers and as many German.
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In 1924 Portugal decided to create a military cemetery at the heart of the sector held by the Portuguese from 1917 until the German offensive of 9 April 1918. It contains the graves of 1,831 Portuguese soldiers who died on theWestern Front. A remembrance ceremony is held there every year in April.
In February 1917 the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps (PEC), with General Tamagnini at its head, disembarked at Brest to support the Allied effort. Comprising roughly 55,000 men divided into two infantry divisions, the PEC set out for Marthes in Northern France where its soldiers were to be trained in military techniques specific to trench warfare, and especially in the use of gas masks. The British Army provided them with weapons and helmets and integrated them into the sector under its control. By April 1917 the first of the Portuguese units had moved up the line in Neuve-Chapelle, a relatively quiet sector since the fierce battles of 1914 and 1915. Upon their arrival they found a damaged statue of Christ which they subsequently erected in their position in the hope that it would protect them. The sector gradually extended towards Fauquissart. Headquarters were set up in Laventie, La Gorgue, Lestrem and Saint- Venant. On 8 April, the 2nd Portuguese Division
learned it was to be relieved the following day. But at 4 o’clock the next morning the Germans began heavy shelling in preparation for their ‘spring offensive’. The intention was to cut the British front in two and make a lunge for Calais. The attack focused on a stretch between Givenchy and Bois-Grenier which was held by the Portuguese and some tired British divisions. The 6th German Army breached the front and stamped out pockets of resistance. Many Portuguese soldiers were captured or fled. Only the 55th British Division succeeded in stopping the Germans, at Givenchy.
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The German Army occupied the sector around Piètre soon after war broke out. From an observation post installed in some tall poplars, its lookouts watched the British lines in the area of Fauquissart Church. Conditions were typical of the front line in the Netherlands.
The flat, damp ground was riven with numerous ditches and often marshy. Water seepage prevented the soldiers from digging deep trenches so, to protect themselves, they raised high parapets using bags of earth. The Germans were quick to erect concrete bunkers. One of these, a half-buried shelter near Laies River, is still
standing. It comprises a staircase which leads to a corridor connecting three chambers. Various apertures at ground level suggest that a pump was used to drain water out of the trenches and into the river.
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With the Battle of the Somme raging since 1 July 1916, General Haig ordered a diversionary attack on Aubers Ridge in the sector of Fromelles. At 6 p.m. on 19 July 1916 the 61st British Division and the 5th Australian Division, the former depleted and the latter inexperienced, attacked.
The diversion was unsuccessful. However the Australians briefly took the German front line. Losses were horrific. Exactly 1,557 British soldiers and almost as many Germans were killed or wounded. At the end of their first tour of duty on the Western Front Australian casualties totalled 5,533. A commemorative plaque on Laventie Town Hall pays tribute to the 61st Division which billeted there.
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Benefitting from the Russian defection, Germany launched several major offensives in the spring of 1918 in an attempt to breach the front and seal victory. One of these, Operation Georgette, began on 9 April 1918 between Givenchy and Bois-Grenier and culminated in the Battle of the Lys. The 6th German Army, using a combination of massive shelling, poison gas and, at strategic points, the elite soldiers of its Sturmtruppen (storm-troops), succeeded in breaching the Allied front. The 40th British Division was driven out of Fleurbaix and the 2nd Portuguese Division, from Laventie. By evening the Germans had crossed the Lys at Bac-Saint-Maur. During the following day the scope of the attack increased. The towns of Armentières, Merville and Bailleul fell to the invader. But the battle ground to a halt in late April on the edge of Nieppe Forest. The German Army established several military cemeteries,in particular in Laventie and Sailly-sur-la-Lys, to bury its soldiers who died in the fighting of April and the summer of 1918. After the war the 1,978 graves from the small temporary cemeteries set up by the German Army in the sector were concentrated on a single site in Laventie. Some of the crosses bear up to four names. Today the cemetery is maintained by the German war graves commission, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge.
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For the four years of the war, the entrance to the communication trenches which led to the British front lines was situated near Rue du Bacquerot, about half a mile from the site of the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle. A nearby farm was used as an aid post to treat the wounded exiting the trenches. Soldiers who could be treated and moved were evacuated to the Casualty Clearing Stations in Estaires and Merville. Those of the wounded who died at the aid post were buried in the adjoining cemetery. Indian soldiers killed in the first two years of the war were buried in a special plot.
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Many soldiers from the Royal Sussex Regiment were buried in this cemetery subsequent to the Battle of Boar’s Head on 30 June 1916. The battle took its name from the German salient, situated near Rue du Bois and the Indian Memorial, which resulted from the Battle of Festubert in 1915. The operation of 30 June 1916 was a diversionary attack prior to the Battle of the Somme. The 39th Division’s objective was to take the German front lines. After several hours of fierce fighting, the attack withdrew. Losses were heavy, more than 1,000 men. Most of the wounded passed through the aid post set up in the farm next to the cemetery.
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In 1914 Richebourg was in fact two separate villages: Richebourg-l’Avoué, cleft by the front, and Richebourg-Saint-Vaast which was behind Allied lines. In the hamlets furthest from the front, such as Bout del Ville, local families lived alongside the soldiers and suffered greatly from the violence of the war. After the Armistice the villagers, returning to discover a ravaged landscape, pooled their efforts to rebuild what they had lost. A war memorial depicting a fallen soldier commemorates the ninety-seven men of Richebourg who were killed in the war. On the wall of the church facing the cemetery hangs a mutilated statue of Christ, a poignant reminder of the destruction.
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In 1917 and 1918 the Allies established a line of resistance consisting of fortified points and defensive works which linked La Couture with the villages situated in the back area. Portuguese troops under the command of Colonel Bento Roma held the position during the Battle ofthe Lys on 9 April 1918. To commemorate
their achievement the Portuguese government decided to erect a memorial in La Couture and this was unveiled on 10 November 1928. Portuguese sculptor Teixeira Lopes used stone and bronze to depict an allegory of the Nation holding the sword of Nuiv’Alwarez,
hero of Portuguese independence. By her side a Portuguese soldier strikes down Death in the setting of a ruined Gothic cathedral.
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More than 13,000 British soldiers killed at the front between Givenchy and Neuve-Chapelle in 1914 and 1915 have no known grave. Le Touret Memorial, designed by the architect Truelove and unveiled on 22 March 1930, pays tribute to them. A long gallery leads to an internal courtyard where the names of the soldiers are displayed. The Battle of La Brassée, which ran from 10 October to 2 November 1914, brought a halt to the race to the sea and marked the start of the war of position. The other battles were the result of large localized operations to breach the front and played a diversionary role for the French operations in Artois in 1915. Many
soldiers died in the fighting in Neuve-Chapelle, Givenchy, Aubers, Festubert and Cuinchy. From October 1914 to March 1915 the village of Neuve-Chapelle was the site of numerous bloody engagements. In December 1914 and June 1915 Givenchy was the scene of horrific fighting between the British and Germans, each in turn the aggressor. Major attacks took place in Cuinchy in February 1915. On 9 May the British opened the Battle of Aubers across two sectors. In the southern zone, situated along Rue du Bois in Richebourg, the soldiers of the 2nd Munster, whose minister was renowned for giving absolution on the eve of the attack, suffered heavy losses. Fighting in the northern sector took place
between Fromelles and Fleurbaix. Shortly afterwards, British and Canadian troops endured huge losses to take a section of the front during the Battle of Festubert (15–25 May 1915). The sector was relatively quiet in 1916 and 1917.
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The memorial to the 55th West Lancashire Division was unveiled on 15 May 1921 in the presence of the Lord Mayor of Liverpool and Field Marshal Joffre. The rose symbolizes the county of Lancashire.
War veterans were the driving force behind the project to commemorate the resistance of the West Lancashire in Givenchy during the German offensive of 9 April 1918. Throughout the war the village was the scene of fierce fighting. In December 1914 the Germans took the village and held it for several hours before the British drove them out. Mine warfare was rife in 1915 and 1916. The nearby memorial erected in 2010 commemorates the tunnellers who died in the sector, most of whom were British.
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Prior to the total destruction of Bailleul in 1918 the heart of the town was a rectangular open area known as the Grand’ Place. it was lined with numerous shops, home to trades such as clockmaker, jeweller, grocer, cobbler, hatter, seedsman, baker, tailor, barber, photographer, ironmonger, and toymaker. there were probably twenty cafes and bars before the war.
Residences of the wealthy burghers were concentrated in rows in the town centre and were, for the most part, built in the classical style of the eighteenth century which featured white rendered façades with rectangular, archless windows.
In March 1919 the town council began consulting on plans to rebuild the town, its edifices and infrastructure. the council received several tenders and voted in its meeting of 25 March 1920 to select the proposals of Louis-Marie Cordonnier. These included reproducing the original layout of the town, rebuilding its main monuments and widening the streets that converge on the town square or Grand’ Place.
Cordonnier also chose to pursue a neo-Flemish aesthetic inspired by several dwellings of Bruges. Public buildings, homes and even some factory façades were built in this architectural style, thus bestowing on the town a completely new appearance.
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A new class of French society emerged between the tenth and thirteenth centuries: the bourgeois or burghers. They were merchants and businessmen (often drapers in the case of Bailleul) who demanded the right to administer their affairs themselves. towns which obtained a ‘charter of the liberties’ from the Count of Flanders would then build a bell tower or belfry. Bailleul bell tower was also used as a watchtower during wartime and, as such, witnessed numerous fires and the reconstruction works that followed. We are reminded of the tower’s role as a lookout post by the vane at its summit which shows the fairy Mélusine watching over the town.
In late March 1918 a German shell severely damaged the tower and several days later Allied artillery, in an effort to force the occupier out of the town, reduced it to rubble. All that remains of the tower are the walls of the Gothic room, now a listed historic monument, which date from the thirteenth century. After the war architect Louis-Marie Cordonnier was given the task of rebuilding the town hall and the bell tower, both opening in 1932. in 2005 they were recognized by UNesCO as world heritage.
The tower is composed, at its base, by the Gothic room which is surmounted by a balcony (the mayor’s office) and the archives room where the precious charters were once conserved. Above the clocks can be seen the parapet from where the patrol kept lookout. The campanile contains a carillon of thirty-five bells which plays Flemish melodies on the quarter hour. The most remarkable feature of the town hall is the portico above the main entrance. From its balcony representatives of the magistrate would read out ordinances and announce important events. Immediately below its roof is a niche containing a statue of Our Lady of Faith, patron saint of homes.
Visitors can, during opening times, admire the vast stained-glass window that overlooks the grand staircase. it depicts the trades that brought prosperity to the town (lacemaking, potting, flax spinning, wool weaving) and the crops grown in the region (flax, wheat, hops, potatoes).
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Bailleul boys’ school once stood on the site now occupied by the town’s water towers. It was requisitioned during the war by the British authorities who used it as a dispensary for the military. In 1915 it became British Casualty Clearing station No. 53.
There used to be a public fountain in front of the school. it was built in 1844 to alleviate the chronic water shortage affecting the town and drew its waters from the springs of Mont Noir.
Water was distributed to the population at eight points situated around the fountain. The first water tower was built in 1882 and abutted the gable of Bailleul Church. It was destroyed in the shelling of 1918. In 1921 a replacement water tower was erected on the highest site in the town so that water could be distributed to the new houses built with several storeys. Consequently, the boys’ school had to be moved to another site.
A second water tower was added in 1961, drawing its water from the Artois Hills some forty kilometres from Bailleul.
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This museum was founded in 1861 on the bequest of Bailleul native, Benoît De Puydt, a court clerk and wealthy collector. Throughout his life the art enthusiast acquired objects relating to Flemish culture from the fifteenth to the twentieth century, assembling a vast collection. subsequent donations from artists and art-lovers have intensified the charm of this unusual repository.
During the Great War the museum remained open for soldiers and important visitors, gaining the surname ‘Le Petit Cluny’, a reference to the Paris museum of medieval history.
In March 1918 two military trucks moved part of the collection to safety in Normandy. However the museum building was utterly destroyed and probably seventy per cent of the collection was lost. War reparations paid for the collection to be rebuilt.
For the paintings lost in the war, the museum has found a novel way of bringing them back to life: descriptions of the original works written in 1881 by the curator of the time are displayed on panels of similar size. All the viewer has to do is add a little imagination....
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During the war No. 30 Rue du Musée, which belonged to historian Ignace de Coussemacker (1842–1890), was used as a place of worship. It displays a votive pediment and cartouche bearing the inscription: ‘This house is one of the few buildings to have survived the destruction of our town in 1918, praise be to the adorable heart of Jesus.’ It is clearly different in design to the neighbouring houses which date from the post-war reconstruction, such as No. 36 whose red-brick façade incorporates stone scrolls, pinnacles, scallops and pediments.
Marguerite Yourcenar Hall (No. 3) was designed in 1923 by the architect René Dupire to be used as a place of worship while the church was being rebuilt, and later for the parish’s charitable works. It was severely damaged during the air raids of 1940 and restored on a modest budget. Despite the losses the overall design is of high quality and its references to medieval Flemish style are precise and learned. Note the tudor arches surmounting the main entrances.
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Dedicated to saint Vedast, the pre-war church was a ‘hall church’ whose nave and side aisles were of similar height and breadth. the style was popular in Flanders from the fifteenth acentury. There also used to be a public garden at the back of the church.
Post-war reconstruction of the church came to a halt in 1926 to allow the architects L. M. and L.S. Cordonnier the time to draw up a more modest design, reducing the cost of construction by half. Works restarted in 1930. However the quality of the materials had to be high for such an imposing ‘neo-Romano-Byzantine’ edifice. Its eclectic style references the Romanesque in the tympana, the tower, the chevet, the pulpit and the high altar; art deco in the organ case; egyptian art in the capitals and the confessionals; and Ravenna art in its use of mosaics.
Lucien Detrez oversaw the iconographic work. Camille Deberdt made the sculptures and Charles Hollart, the cartoons of the historiated stained glass windows. Stained glass windows in the ambulatory tell the story of Bailleul and those in the transept, the saints of Flanders. The apsidal chapel is devoted to saint Anthony the Great, a saint who enjoyed particular devotion among the inhabitants of Bailleul as protector and healer.
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These two houses are the work of architect Jacques Barbotin. The design of No. 4 was inspired by an old house in Bruges. One of the most imposing buildings of the post-war reconstruction, its façade is almost seventeen metres long and comprises three sections of which the central gable underlines the building’s symmetry. The ornamentation is of high quality and comprises numerous decorative motifs, including moulded doors, salient arch stones, a baroque cartouche, a small balcony, a votive niche, and dormer windows with lanterns.
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The war memorial stands on the site of the old Jesuit chapel which was built in the seventeenth century and dedicated to saint Armand. It commemorates the destruction of the town, the sacrifices of soldiers and civilians, and those who died in the war of 1870. Architect Jacques Barbotin’s design incorporates materials recovered from the ruins of the town’s principal monumental buildings (bell tower, church and chapel). From Desolation springs Victory bursting with Life (sculpted by Camille Debert).
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Built in 1925, the Lacemaking school taught the techniques of making lace with bobbins. Its remarkable neo-Flemish character features yellow brick walls, stepped gables, diamond leaded windows, wall tie plates, eaves, and typical door and window frames. A coat of arms on its façade shows a young lacemaker at work and a lace winding frame. The inscription Le Retour au Foyer references a charitable organization which revived the teaching of lacemaking. A bust depicts the American lawyer and philanthropist William Nelson Cromwell, one of the charity’s patrons.
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In 1713 the ratification of the treaty of Utrecht attached Ypres and its castellany to the House of Austria. As a result Bailleul became the bailiwick and presidial seat, or court of justice, for all ‘French Flanders on the coast’. This fine example of French classicism was built in 1776–77 and is the only public building in Bailleul to have come through the war unscathed. Restoration works in 1920 included rebuilding the right-hand spans and the roof destroyed in the war.
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This obelisk was erected to commemorate the 25th Division of the British Army which suffered heavy losses holding the front at Bailleul between 1915 and 1918, in particular at the Battle of Messines. On the sides of the memorial can be read the names of the division’s units and the battles in which they took part. In total 13,290 British soldiers perished in the area. they also show the coats of arms of Great Britain and Bailleul. The town was awarded the Croix de Guerre on 7 June 1921 on the occasion of the unveiling of the memorial.
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Bailleul public garden owes its name to Jean Plichon, member of the French parliament from 1888. His house at No. 8 Rue saint Jacques was destroyed in the German offensive of April 1918. After the war he donated the land to the town for the purpose of creating a public garden. in his inaugural speech he declared that Bailleul had lived up to its reputation as a ‘garden town’. even today it is affectionately known as ‘the town in the country’.
Formerly a girls’ school, the current nursery and primary school was built in 1923 from plans by René Dupire. its long red brick façade features a central pavilion and is highly decorated, including a broken or open pediment. Numerous windows ensure the classrooms were brightly lit. twenty-two dormer windows provide natural lighting for the rooms under the slate roof.
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Considered to be one the finest examples of the post-war reconstruction, the library was designed by architect René Dupire and opened in 1926. It stands on the site of the original girls’ school and the Dames de saint Maur boarding school, both anterior to 1914. As for the boys’ school, it comprised four separate buildings arranged around a garden. One contained the classrooms, another the bath house, and the other two were accommodation.
Set back from the street, the classroom building comprises a forty-five metre monumental façade whose subtle play on light and shadow shows off to best effect the sand-coloured bricks.the advanced central part is connected to the bath house which, today, contains the public multimedia library. Access to the baths was not only open to pupils but also to inhabitants of the town whose houses were not equipped with washing facilities. Its existence underlines the council’s desire to use the opportunity of the post-war reconstruction to improve public health.
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Bailleul Communal Cemetery was set up in October 1914 near the town cemetery to take the bodies of British, French and German soldiers. Because it was a hospital town, Bailleul concentrated many of the wounded returning from the numerous battles of Ypres. In late 1915 an extension was added to the first military cemetery to accommodate a further 4,500 dead, most of them British or from countries of the British empire, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India.
After the armistice in 1918 the graves of the small cemeteries dotted around the district of Bailleul were moved to this Communal Cemetery extension and the wooden crosses were replaced with white headstones. On the cemetery’s southeast side two imposing chapels, resembling Greek temples, flank the Stone of Remembrance. The latter bears the famous Kipling inscription: their name liveth for ever more. A third British plot, the Outtersteene Communal Cemetery extension, is situated in a small village in the district of Bailleul. It contains 1,397 graves.
Today, the many gardeners of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission busy themselves throughout the year to maintain the cemeteries and keep them in bloom from spring to autumn.
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