The landscape that bears the scars of World War One
As film-goers see the horrors of 1917 thanks to Sam Mendes’ Oscar-nominated film, Carolyn Boyd travels through the French landscape to see how it is forever scarred by war.
Twelve thousand small white crosses arranged in geometric lines rise like a gentle wave across the shallow slope. My eyes follow the lines into the vanishing point and the first stomach-wrenching blow of emotion rises to my throat, choking me and sending tears streaming down my cheeks. We haven’t even stopped the car yet. As we drive north from Arras, this first sight of La Targette cemetery followed by several more cemeteries evokes the deepest of sorrows as I realize the magnitude of losses in just this area alone.
The sight makes real the knowledge that World War I left 9.5 million soldiers dead and more than 21 million wounded. Under each of those crosses lies a soldier; a son, a brother, a father, an uncle; a man who loved and was loved; who laughed and cried; who lived and then died in a horrific and brutal war.
As film goers learn more of these horrors thanks to Sam Mendes’ Oscar-nominated film 1917, it is a visit to memorial sites and museums on the very land that these battles were fought that makes the stories of those losses real. Over the last century, the area north of Arras has welcomed visitors and relatives who come to pay their respects; here there are cemeteries for the British, French, German, Czech and Polish. However it is the museums, many new or refurbished since 2014, that hold the key to gaining a better understanding of the war’s history and providing visitors with a vivid and emotional experience.
Arras is a city that was once on the front line, and it’s here we learn more about the story of World War One. At the Wellington Quarry, found on the outskirts of the city is a superb museum that tells how, in 1916, New Zealander tunnelers dug beyond the existing disused quarries under the streets of Arras. With fellow allied miners, they created a huge network of tunnels under No Man’s Land. In so doing, they created a secret barracks for 20,000 soldiers, which proved crucial in the Battle of Arras.
We don our hard hats follow our tour guide into the lift and descend 20 meters into the chilly caverns. As we walk through the various quarries, the tour alternates between an audio guide and the tour guide to show what life was like for the young soldiers who came from all over the world – each quarry is named after their home cities, Auckland, Wellington, Nelson, Blenheim, Christchurch and Dunedin for the New Zealanders, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Crewe and London for the British. Our guide points out graffiti and drawings on the rocks and shows us how the soldiers stationed there washed in freezing cold water and slept on wooden bunks, and also how they kept up morale. The audio guide has actors telling stories and reading letters home from the soldiers, stoic and philosophical. Knowing that this was where so many young men spent the last days of their lives is heart-breaking. So too is the recreation of how the soldiers headed up, out of the tunnels and into the chaos of the front line. At 5.30 am on 9th April 1917, and to the enemy’s surprise, the troops exited the quarries close to German trenches and pushed them back by seven miles. The offensive was considered a tactical success, but the Battle of Arras dragged on, eventually drawing to a close in May 1917 with nearly 300,000 casualties on both sides.
As we walk into Arras for lunch, the sun shines down on its magnificent squares, surrounded by its colorful houses with their crenelated and curved Flemish roofs. Young people chat and laugh as they sit on café and restaurant terraces and the scene is of elation that the weekend is nearly here. Most of these beautiful buildings were destroyed during the War, rebuilt from the rubble in the years after.
At the new Lens 14-18 museum, we learn more about the Battle of Arras and the war’s other battles and how the war impacted the people and soldiers in the surrounding Artois region, especially those living in the German-occupied area. Descriptive panels, black and white photographs and artifacts tell of the evacuation of Lille; how harshly the locals were treated by the Germans; about the choking gas attacks; the life and poems of Wilfred Owen; and how – with death so omnipresent – photographs of corpses weren’t considered taboo. The design of the building is striking too – an austere black box that instills a sense of trepidation. Inside though, the architecture offers me some solace. Between the chilling exhibits, narrow corner windows offer slices of the surrounding countryside: the light pours into the dark space and I can see the golden fields, the verdant hedgerows, trees fluttering in the breeze. I can see where life goes on, how the landscape has healed and how the sun still rises and sets.
We end our trip at possibly the most affecting site, France’s largest World War I cemetery, Notre-Dame de Lorette. Up a manicured drive behind the museum, it looks out over the vast landscape from its hilltop position. Crosses (and some Stars of David) continue into the distance and, as I read some of the names, my heart feels like lead. Its 25 hectares are the final resting place of 40,000 soldiers – marked by 20,000 individual graves and eight ossuaries containing the remains of those unknown. Among them are six graves in which the father died in World War I, and the son in World War II. The 52-metre lantern tower and the Romanesque-Byzantine church both date from 1920, but since 2014 they have been joined by a further memorial. The Ring of Remembrance was designed by architect Philippe Prost and is a moving work of reconciliation. On 500 vertical sheets of bronzed stainless steel arranged in an ellipse, it presents every single name of all 580,000 soldiers of every nationality who died in the Artois region, listed in alphabetical order. As I walk slowly past the Bourdins and the Browns, the Fischers and Fletchers, the Schmidts and the Sher Singhs, patterns emerge where the more common names are listed; there are three panels of Smiths, one and a half of Jones, names listed in mesmerizing rows. While the cemeteries mark out these soldiers by nationality, maintaining them as adversaries, this beautiful memorial puts them side by side, no matter what their rank, regiment or nationality. People; who laughed, who cried; who lived and then died.
For more information about the museums and memorial sites, visit www.visit-pas-de-calais.com and www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/first-world-war-places-remembrance.
Carolyn Boyd is a travel and food writer specialising in France. Discover more of France thanks to her articles at www.carolynboyd.net/go-to-france
