Page 190 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - France

Great Battlegrounds
One of the best ways to take in the
battlegrounds is to pick up a road map and
plot a course. Follow the route between the
Marne, 50 km (31 miles) outside of Paris, where
the German army was finally stopped on the
river by French forces in 1914, to the Somme,
where two years later more than 600,000
Allied soldiers and 465,000 Germans were
EXPERIENCE Le Nord and Picardy infantry at the battle that launched the final
killed. The Somme is just a 20-minute cycle
from Amiens; here, hundreds of tanks and
thousands of aircraft supported Allied
offensive of World War I. To the northeast is
Arras, scene of a major Allied offensive.

Sunset over Ovillers Cemetery
with a section ofthe Somme
battlefield in the distance

LE NORD AND PICARDY FOR
REMEMBRANCE

France’s battle-scarred northern reaches have become a pilgrimage for
military history buffs and the descendents of the fallen alike. Today, this
peaceful region is awash with moving monuments, insightful museums and
one of the most comprehensive ancestry databases in the country.

COMMONWEALTH
WAR GRAVES
COMMISSION
The Commonwealth
War Graves Commission
(www.cwgc.org) was
set up in 1917 to man-
age the solemn task of
com memorating the
fallen soldiers of
Britain and its colonial
allies in World War I. Its A display in the
guiding principles were poignant Historial de
remarkably egal itarian la Grande Guerre
for this point in time,
stating not only that War Museums
each of the dead should Carefully curated and deeply sympathetic, some of the best
be commemo rated by World War I museums can be found across northern France. The
name on a permanent deeply affecting Historial de la Grande Guerre (www.historial.
headstone or memorial, fr) depicts World War I from the point of view of both Allied and
but also that the war Axis soldiers. While in Arras (p197), visitors can explore the
graves should make no under ground passages at Carriere Wellington (carriere
distinc tion whatsoever wellington.com), where Allied soldiers prepared for the Arras
on account of rank, race offensive in 1917. Just south in the forest of Compiegne (p198) is
or creed.
the railway carriage where German commanders signed the
November 1918 armistice; it is now a memorial and museum.
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