List of World War I memorials and cemeteries in Artois


List of World War I memorials and cemeteries in Artois, within the historic County of Artois and present day Pas-de-Calais Department of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, located in northeastern France. World War I battles in this area of the Western Front include the First Battle of Artois, the Second Battle of Artois, and the Third Battle of Artois.
It divides this part of the Western Front into four distinct sections:
Following the various declarations of war which were to lead to the First World War, the German Army opened the war on her western front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium and then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The German Army forced the Allied armies to retreat until the Battle of the Marne was fought, when the tide turned and the German Army was forced to retreat northwards. They did so to the river Aisne, dug in on the high ground there, and fought the First Battle of the Aisne. This encounter was inconclusive and what historians call the race to the sea followed, during which neither side was able to achieve a breakthrough as they edged to the north and at the conclusion both sides were to dig in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France. This line, the Western Front, remained essentially unchanged for most of the war. A war of movement was over and a type of warfare that no side had planned for was to take its place: a static war of attrition with both sides entrenched on either side of the front line.
Between 1915 and 1917, there were several major offensives along this front. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances. However a combination of entrenchments, machine gun nests, barbed wire, and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties on the attackers and counterattacking defenders and as a result, no significant advances were made. Among the most costly of these offensives were the Battle of Verdun with a combined 700,000 dead, the Battle of the Somme with more than a million casualties, and the Battle of Passchendaele or "Third Ypres", which saw roughly 600,000 casualties.
Both sides tried to break the deadlock by introducing new military technology, including poison gas, aircraft and tanks but it was improved tactics that eventually restored some degree of mobility to the conflict. The German Spring Offensive of 1918 was made possible by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that marked the end of the conflict on the Eastern Front. Using the recently introduced infiltration tactics, the German armies advanced nearly to the west, which marked the deepest advance by either side since 1914 and they very nearly succeeded in forcing a breakthrough.
The Germans could not in the end break the Allied line and now the numerical advantage given the Allies by the volume of soldiers arriving from the United States of America fuelled an inexorable advance by the Allied armies during the second half of 1918. The German Army commanders finally realised that defeat was inevitable, and the government was forced to sue for conditions of an armistice. This took place on 11 November 1918 and the terms of peace were agreed upon with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
After the Battle of the Marne and the Battle of the Aisne, the encounters between the two opposing armies moved northwards towards Compiègne on 17 to 18 September 1914, to Roye on 22 September 1914, the Battle of Albert from 27 to 28 September 1914, and then the Battle of Arras from 30 September to 5 October 1914. From 4 to 8 October 1914 there was fighting at the Battle of La Bassée and at Neuve Chapelle. The two armies then continued to move northwards until the Yser and the North Sea coast were reached.
Neuve Chapelle was to see a further Battle of Neuve Chapelle from 10 to 13 March 1915, followed by the Battle of Aubers Ridge on 9 May 1915, Battle of Festubert from 15 to 25 May 1915, and the Battle of Loos from 25 September to 18 October 1915.
No major attacks took place in the Arras sector from the end of October 1915 to April 1917, but then we see the huge Battle of Arras fought from 9 April to 17 May 1917, fighting at Hill 70 in August 1917, the "Kaiser's Battle" from 21 to 28 March 1918, the Battle of the Lys in April 1918, and the Second Battle of Arras in August 1918.

Sector 1. Arras: From south of Ploegstreet to Festubert

The Battle of Armentières was part of the so-called "Race to the Sea", the series of battles that were ultimately to define the line of the Western Front as trench warfare finally took over in the autumn of 1914.

Cite Bonjean (New Zealand Memorial)

Le Quesnoy Memorial

Memorial to the 1914 Christmas Truce

Sector 1: Fromelles (Fleurbaix), Aubers, Neuve Chapelle and Festubert

South from Armentières was the front line dominated by the Aubers Ridge. The German army held this ridge, so much of the fighting in the sector involved attempts to dislodge them from it.

The [Australian Memorial Park] at Fromelles and the [Battle of Fromelles] 19 to 20 July 1916

Further images of the "Cobbers" memorial

Below are some photographs of the "Cobber" memorial, and V C Corner.

[Neuve-Chapelle Indian Memorial]- The [Battle of Neuve Chapelle] March 1915

Aubers Ridge and Festubert

It was on 24 March 1915, several days after the failed offensive at Neuve-Chapelle, that General Joffre made an official request for the British Army to take part in a huge offensive he was planning in Artois at the beginning of May. The aim of the offensive was to break through the German line north of Arras. The main thrust of the attack was to be made by the 10th French Army on Vimy Ridge and two supporting attacks on the flanks would, it was hoped, secure the heights of Lorette Spur to the north-west and other high ground to the east of Arras. If everything went according to plan the French hoped that they would be able to advance into the coal basin itself and take Douai.
In this context the British fought two battles, that at Aubers Ridge and at Festubert, both fought in May 1915, and both to distract the German's from Joffre's main attack.
Neither battle achieved the results hoped for and huge casualties were sustained- it reportedly took three days to transfer the wounded of 9 May to the field ambulances on the second line. In one single day of fighting the British Army had lost 11,000 men which was, in relative terms, one of the highest casualty rates of the Great War, in particular for officers.
The memorial at Le Touret remembers those who died at Aubers and Festubert and have no known grave.

Memorial to the 15th Battalion Canadian Infantry

[Le Touret Memorial] and Le Touret Military Cemetery

The Portuguese Cemetery and Memorial at Neuve Chapelle and the memorial at La Couture

Sector 2. Artois: From La Bassée and Béthune to Lens

Dud Corner Cemetery, the [Loos Memorial], and the [Battle of Loos]

In the autumn of 1915, the British High Command had little enthusiasm for another major offensive but the French were quite insistent on one. Joffre's plans involved a two-pronged attack. The French Army was to launch a major attack in the Champagne area and a Franco-Commonwealth attack was planned on a line to the north of Arras. Of this 32-kilometre stretch the British were allocated a section running from Givenchy just north of the La Bassée Canal and the industrial town of Bully-Grenay in front of Lens; the Gohelle Battlefields.
One reason for Haig and French's lack of enthusiasm was that they did not feel that they had fully absorbed the lessons of Second Ypres, Festubert, Neuve Chapelle and Aubers Ridge, the earlier offensives of 1915 and the doomed Gallipoli campaign had diverted precious men and munitions from the Western Front. However, their major concern was that the levels of ammunition available would not support a major offensive as the initial advances by the infantry would have to be supported by a high degree of artillery fire. The French demand was however met and the British Army allocated the 10 kilometre sector mentioned earlier. At this battle the British intended to make their first use of gas and the offensive would give Kitchener's "New Army" a chance to show their mettle.
In fact the offensive failed both in the Champagne and at Loos and the Loos Memorial at Loos-en-Gohelle commemorates the 20,605 British officers and men who were killed from 25 September 1915 to the end of the war in November 1918 in the little sector between the river Lys in French Flanders and the village of Grenay, near Lens, in Artois. The Loos memorial forms the rear and two sides of Dud Corner Cemetery, so called because of the high number of unexploded shells found there.
The thousands of names of the servicemen missing in action with no known grave are inscribed on 139 stone panels attached to these side and rear walls. The Loos Memorial was designed by Sir Herbert Baker with sculpture by Charles Wheeler. Stone tablets containing the names of the missing are numbered from 1 to 139, starting at the north-west corner of the memorial and running around the walls to the south-west corner. It was unveiled by Sir Nevil Macready on 4 August 1930.
The Battle of Loos had opened on 25 September 1915. The 9th Division scored one of the few successes by gaining a foothold on the Hohenzollern Redoubt and Fosse 8, the main observation posts used by the Germans to view the area and the 15th took Loos and pushed on to the Hill 70 Redoubt. However, the gains, won at such a horrific loss of life, had to be capitalized on quickly and the reserves were brought into action too slowly. The Germans counter-attacked and by 27 September the offensive was breaking down and the Germans had retaken both the Hohenzollern Redoubt and Fosse 8. Attempts to retake these important positions were made on 13 October 1915, but failed after further heavy losses and by 19 October 1915, the battle petered to a halt. The British Army had lost over 20,000 men.
Field Marshal Sir John French, already being criticised before the battle, lost his remaining support in both the Government and Army as a result of the British failure at Loos and his perceived poor handling of his reserve divisions in the battle. He was replaced by Douglas Haig as Commander of the British Expeditionary Force in December 1915.
The first use of gas by the British had not been a success but Kitchener's New Army had at least been "bloodied" and in every sense of the word. It has been estimated that more than 14,000 of those named on the walls of the Loos Memorial died in the Battle of Loos and that of the 8,500 who died on the first day, over 6,500 were to have no known grave.
Among the dead on the British side at Loos were: Fergus Bowes-Lyon, brother to Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, author and poet Rudyard Kipling's son, John, and the poet Charles Sorley.
"Loos was the fourth failure of 1915 for the British and this time losses reached almost 48,000 men; at Vimy the French figure was almost identical. In the wider Artois offensive the total was 143,567.".
No further attacks were to take place in the Gohelle, Vimy and Arras sectors until the spring of 1917.

Memorial to the 55th (West Lancashire) Division at Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée. "They win or die. Who wear the rose of Lancaster"

Memorial to Lieutenant Hillyar Hill-Trevor

The Tunnelers' Memorial at Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée

58th French Infantry Division

Memorial to the [1st King Edward's Horse] at Vieille Chapelle

Sector 3 Artois: Loretto Heights">Notre Dame de Lorette">Loretto Heights and [Vimy Ridge]

The south-eastern end of the Vimy Ridge the east of the ancient city of Arras. East of Arras the front line crossed farms and villages. Arras was evacuated by French forces on 29 August 1914 but reoccupied a month later. It remained in French hands throughout the war. Underneath the city there were tunnels and catacombs dug out of the chalk by the Romans. Some were used during the First World War by medical units and as safe shelter for Allied troops. The city was destroyed by German artillery bombardments from vantage points on the high ground.
"As the boundary of the clay plain of Flanders and the chalk uplands of Artois, the Vimy Ridge and its smaller cousin Notre Dame de Lorette created a formidable military barrier, a geological fracture destined to have a deep impact on the lives of soldiers struggling for topographical advantage." In 1914, the German Army had taken both these ridges and had occupied both Loos and Lens, and it was largely as a consequence of the efforts of French Alpine divisions, and troops from Senegal, that they were kept out of Arras. Once the front line had stabilised, Arras was left at the centre of a salient and open to constant artillery bombardment from the high ground to the north and south. The French were always sought to redress this situation and after an offensive in 1914 Foch launched the Second Battle of Artois from 9 May to 19 June 1915. The Germans were driven from Notre Dame de Lorette but a major break-through was not achieved. The Vimy Ridge and beyond it Douai remained in German hands. There was however to be little respite and 1915 was to see another offensive in the area, the Battle of Loos.
South of the coalfields around Lens, the Artois landscape gently rises up in a series of finger-like spurs. Two spurs of particularly high ground afford magnificent views in all directions. These spurs lie in a north-west to south-east direction and are located north-west of the city of Arras. They are known as the Loretto Heights and the Vimy ridge.

Notre Dame de Lorette and the Second Battle of Artois from 9 May to 18 June 1915

Images Notre Dame de Lorette

Vimy Ridge

Early fighting for Vimy Ridge

The ridge had fallen to the German Army in October 1914. The French Tenth Army attempted to dislodge the Germans from the region during the Second Battle of Artois in May 1915 by attacking their positions at Vimy Ridge and Notre Dame de Lorette. During the attack, the French 1st Moroccan Division briefly captured the height of the ridge, where the Vimy memorial is currently located, but was unable to hold it owing to a lack of reinforcements. The French made another attempt during the Third Battle of Artois in September 1915, but were once again unsuccessful in capturing the top of the ridge.
In February 1916 the British XVII Corps relieved the French Tenth Army from the sector and, on 21 May 1916, the German infantry attacked the British lines along a front in an effort to force them from positions along the base of the ridge. The Germans captured several British-controlled tunnels and mine craters before halting their advance and entrenching their positions. British counter-attacks on 22 May did not manage to change the situation, and in October 1916 the Canadian Corps relieved the British IV Corps and took up position along the western slopes of Vimy Ridge.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge 9 to 12 April 1917

The Canadian Corps, commanded by Sir Julian Byng, was ordered to seize Vimy Ridge in April 1917.
In the week leading up to the battle, Canadian and British artillery subjected the enemy positions on the ridge to a constant barrage and the new No. 106 fuze, which allowed shells to explode on contact, as opposed to burying themselves in ground, facilitated the destruction of hardened defences and barbed wire.
The four Canadian divisions involved stormed the ridge at 5:30 a.m. on 9 April 1917. The Canadians showed great bravery and Hill 145, the highest and most important feature of the Ridge, and where the Vimy monument now stands, was captured in a frontal bayonet charge against machine-gun positions. After a further three days of fighting the Canadians were victorious. Victory was however achieved at a great cost with 3,598 Canadians killed and another 7,000 wounded.
The capture of Vimy was more than just an important battlefield victory. For the first time all four Canadian divisions attacked together: men from all regions of Canada were present at the battle. Brigadier-General A.E. Ross declared after the war, "in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation."
In 1922, the French government ceded Vimy Ridge to Canada in perpetuity together with the land surrounding it. The gleaming white marble and haunting sculptures of the Vimy Memorial, unveiled in 1936, stand as a terrible and poignant reminder of the 11,285 Canadian soldiers killed in France who have no known graves.

The Canadian National Vimy Memorial Site

Images Vimy Memorial

The Vimy Memorial

Images of the Vimy Memorial

Caberet Rouge British Cemetery

"Flambeau de la paix"

"Flambeau de la paix"
In Artois the scale of death is illustrated around the hamlet of La Targette in the parish of Neuville-Saint-Vaast. La Targette is the name of the road junction where the Béthune-Arras road crosses that running from Thèlus to Mont St Eloi. In one area La Targette British Cemetery, an enormous French National Cemetery, and a German cemetery with almost 45,000 dead buried in it. In La Targette village is the "Torch" memorial shown here. A hand bearing a torch emerges from a heap of rubble, representing the hand of a dead soldier; there is an identification tag on the wrist of the hand which carries the date 5 May 1915, and in front is a plaque, which invites the passerby to ponder on the many dead who died in this corner of France.
The monument was erected in 1932 in memory of the men who fought in the area from May to June 1915. Rubble from houses in the village which had been destroyed during the war was used for the base of the monument.

La Targette French Military Cemetery

The German Cemetery at Neuville Saint Vaast known as "La Maison Blanche"

La Targette British Cemetery

Czechoslovak Cemetery and Memorial - Neuville-Saint-Vaast

Sector 4. Artois: Arras and Cambrai

St Laurent-Blangy German Cemetery

The Arras Memorial and the Flying Services Memorial and the Battle of Arras

The Battle of Arras was a British offensive during the First World War. From 9 April to 16 May 1917, British, Canadian, New Zealand, Dominion of Newfoundland, and Australian troops attacked German defences near the city of Arras.
At this phase of the war, the Allied objective was to end the stalemate of the trenches and break through the German defences into the open ground beyond and engage the numerically inferior German army in a war of movement. The French High Command's plan was to launch a massive attack about to the south of the British sector in the Aisne region and at Arras the Allied objectives were to draw German troops away from the ground chosen for the French attack and to take the German-held high ground that dominated the plain of Douai. The British effort was a relatively broad front assault between Vimy in the northwest and Bullecourt in the southeast. After considerable bombardment, Canadian troops advancing in the north were able to capture the strategically significant Vimy Ridge and British divisions in the centre were also able to make significant gains astride the Scarpe river. In the south, British and Australian forces were frustrated by the elastic defence and made only minimal gains. When the battle officially ended on 16 May, British Empire troops had made significant advances but had been unable to achieve a breakthrough and the stalemate of the trenches returned.
The Battle of Arras is normally divided into two phases. Phase one would embrace three encounters: the First Battle of the Scarpe which ran from 9 to 14 April 1917; the First Battle of Vimy Ridge from 9 to 12 April 1917; and the First Battle of Bullecourt from 10 to 11 April 1917.
The Second phase would embrace the Battle of Lagnicourt on 15 April 1917; the Second Battle of the Scarpe from 23 to 24 April 1917; the Battle of Arleux from 28 to 29 April 1917; the Second Battle of Bullecourt from 3 to 19 May 1917; and the Third Battle of the Scarpe from 3 to 4 May 1917.
A great deal of ground was gained for relatively few casualties in the first two days and a number of strategically significant points were captured, notably Vimy Ridge. Additionally, the offensive succeeded in drawing German troops away from the French offensive in the Aisne sector. In many respects, the battle might be deemed a victory for the British and their allies but these gains were offset by high casualties and the ultimate failure of the French offensive at the Aisne.
Siegfried Sassoon makes reference to the battle in his famous anti-war poem "The General" in which he derides the incompetence of the British military staff. The Anglo-Welsh lyric poet, Edward Thomas was killed by a shell on 9 April 1917, during the first day of the Easter Offensive. Thomas's war diary gives a vivid and poignant picture of life on the Western front in the months leading up to the battle.
Sassoon's poem read-

'Good-morning; good-morning!' the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
'He's a cheery old card,' grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
* * *
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

The Arras Memorial

Memorial to the New Zealand Tunnelers at Arras

Memorial to General Ernest Barbot at Souchez

Memorial to the 9th Scottish Division at Point du Jour

Memorial to the 64th Infantry Brigade in Cojeul British Cemetery

The 42nd Division Memorial at Trescault

Memorial to the 62nd Division at Havrincourt

Cambrai Memorial and Louverval Military Cemetery

The German War Cemetery on the Solesmes road and the Cambrai East Military Cemetery

Caribou Memorial at Monchy Le Preux

The Bourlon Wood Memorial

Bullecourt Memorial Park

The Slouch Hat Memorial

The Vis-en-Artois Memorial and Cemetery

Miscellaneous Images

Some recommended websites