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[agracier]

I've been organizing some of my photos taken of Great War monuments, memorials and sites. These are on Panoramio and organized with the tag 'Great War'. For anyone interested, the link below should give these specific photos only.

http://www.panoramio.com/user/2972562/tags/Great%20War

[max_thehitman]

Hey that looks great. I like those pictures.
When I have the time I will take a photo of the big WW1 soldier monument I have
here in my hometown to add to your colection. The WW1 soldier memorial is dedicated to
all the Portuguese soldiers who fought alongside the allies and died in France. My great grandfathers
brother died there in the Somme, may he rest in peace.
This is a good webpage idea Agracier.
Thank you for keeping their memory alive for future generations to remember. SALUTE!

Cheers
MAX

[agracier]

I got this one from a friend ... so I can't upload since it's not my photo.

[max_thehitman]

Hey, that´s pretty cool photo.
It says "Angola and Moçambique - There is no greater honour in your life,
than to be a soldier and Portugues".
I was born in Lobito, Angola   
That´s in Africa... by the seaside... with elephants and zebras walking down the main street.
Yes, that is very true,
 I am Tarzan´s son. 

[agracier]

One of the inescapable phenomena of French and Belgian towns, villages and hamlets is that virtually all of them have  monument dedicated to the fallen of the Great War. Some of the larger cities have several and that is not counting the numerous cemeteries, ossuaries and other memorials large and small, private or public. You can stop in any French village and find such a monument or agree to meet at the local Great War memorial.

In France alone there are now some 33 700 communes and each invariably has such a memorial or monument. In Belgium there are 600 communes left over. An impossible job to ever document all Great War memorials. I don't think such an endeavor has been attempted yet ... and that's not even counting Great Britain and other nations. Imagine what a book that would be.

[RedSpade]

Is there anyplace where you can look at the terrain or maybe what is left of the trenches or similar?  In the Somme or other place?  That is something on my bucket list (something you just gotta do before you "kick the bucket" aka die)?

[agracier]

Is there anyplace where you can look at the terrain or maybe what is left of the trenches or similar?  In the Somme or other place?  That is something on my bucket list (something you just gotta do before you "kick the bucket" aka die)?

There are still many places where you can visit trench remnants, though for them to be recognizable as trenches they do have to be regularly cleaned out and kept in halfway decent condition. Unkept trenches are barely recognizable now unless you know where to look. But once you have identified a specific battlefield area, you can often find many remains of trenches, especially in eastern France or areas around Reims and Verdun.

Around Ypres in Belgium there are several private museums such as for instance Sanctuary Wood museum
http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/museum-sanctuary-wood.htm
It's a nice old fashioned museum, with rear area trenches that were preserved immediately after the war by the owners of the property who started a museum in the 1920's.

There is also Bayernwald - German trenches recently restored. It is said that Hitler was stationed here for a while.
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayernwald

Around Notre Dame de Lorette in northern France, trenches are still to be seen in a local museum adjacent to the cemetery. This is a haunting site of great beauty and sorrow and one of the most beautiful in France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_de_Lorette

Vauquois - a ridge in France in the Argonne nearby Verdun, also has preserved trenches, mine craters and many underground passages. To visit these underground passageways you must make reservations, but they are well worth the visit, eerie and desolate and places of absolute darkness. The open air trenches are always open for visits.
http://www.worldwar1.com/france/vacquois.htm

There are also trenches near les Eparges, and many others not far from St Mihiel in France, the American sector from 1918 onward.
http://pierreswesternfront.punt.nl/index.php?r=1&id=415109&tbl_archief=

Also a vast battlefield of trenches exists at Vimy, near Arras. This was first held by French troops and later by Canadians. Here also you can visit underground shafts and tunnels.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_National_Vimy_Memorial

These are but a very few of the many trench remnants. Along the Somme battlefields you will find many small areas of trenches and mine craters.

There are also the battlefields of Verdun, which abounds in remains of all kinds and the area around Reims, the Fort de la Pompelle and other areas nearby in the Champagne where the late 1915 offensive was started.

Actually there are just too many to list. For a concentrated area where distances are not far from each other, the Ypres area might be the best place to go.

There are also quite a number of photos in  the link in the first post above of some of the places mentioned.

And aside from trenches, it should be noted that forts of all kinds played very important roles in the Great War - from the Verdun forts of Douaumont and Vaux, the Fort de la Pompelle near Reims, the forts of Maubeuge, Antwerp and the wonderfully evocative Belgian fort of Loncin near Liege in Belgium.
http://www.fortdeloncin.be/

There is also a nicely restored fort of Liezele near Brussels Belgium which was besieged during the fighting in Belgium from August-October 1914.
http://users.telenet.be/bart.van.bulck/

These can all be visited. You can look up the info on the Net should you be interested.

[juanmalapuente]

I'd love to visit those interesting places in Belgium. Some Belgian friends have invited me to do so, but I couldn't go yet.
Great pics and idea, Agracier. Many of these monuments have artistic value beside the historic one. 
I wanted to send you my pics of Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, but I couldn't find them after browsing my folders for a while, so I'll post a couple of links.
They have a great WWi museum there too.




http://www.theworldwar.org/s/110/new/index_community.aspx

[agracier]

If you know where to look on Google maps, you can often find aerial photos of the trench remnants. Here are a few:

Sanctuary Wood near Ypres. The terrain also contains underground tunnels an shelters.


_______________________

Notre Dame de Lorette


The rectangular area is a national cemetery and rebuilt chapel and monument. You can see the 2 trench lines opposing each other, with No-Man's Land very small between them, scarcely 10 meters or so. To the right the German trenches, to the left the French. The line extended right through the old chapel, where now a new building was built along with a large cemetery.

____________________

Vauquois


The red circled areas show trenches and the pathways follow the old trench lines. Notice the many mine craters in the landscape.

_____________________________

Antwerp - a redoubt of the 2nd perimeter of forts: You can still see the remains in the landscape of the impact of a 420 or 320mm German or Austrian artillery shell, even after all these years.


____________

Bayernwald near Ypres. There are several concrete bunkers.


_____________

and a last one of Les Eparges in eastern France near St Mihiel: this area has not been restored or upkept, but you can still see zig-zag trench remains very clearly. The circular parking area has a monument overlooking the trench lines.

[max_thehitman]

Great aereal photos, Thanks Agracier. I like those very much.
I also take Google-earth aerial photos of WW2 famous places.

A few months back I also did a very good research into WW1 trenches. Their design and
the way they were dug up according to original plans and I also looked at many WW1 aerial
Recon photographs to see what the battlefields looked like with trenches around them.
I did a few photoshop layers with the painted trench designs and crater effects and sent it to UP~Boomer.
He is a real master map-maker for the IL-2 game.
He then added my stuff to his WW1 Somme Map, and reworked some of his magic into it and
it came out incredible. It is now available for us in this DBW-1916 game.

One thing I can say with all honesty is that UP~Boomers map is The Best WW1 battlefield map of all
the games I have seen so far.Not even ROF or OFF comes close. I have seen their game.
 If a person wants to really know what a real WW1 "No man´s Land " looked like from the air,
then fly over in the Somme WW1 map for IL-2 DBW-1916.
The way the trenches are all laid out, some straight lines and some zig-zags, the new crater formations from
recent bombings
and other month old bomb-craters that are now filled with new grass or just left abandoned as is on a farmland.
The roads leading up to the battlefields and also the towns that sorround the battlefield areas.

It is all very realistic looking and you can even take aerial photos of teh game and then compare them with real aerial photos of the First World War. Put them side by side to see the diference. There is hardly no diference between what is real life and what is on the DBW-1916 map.
UP~Boomer did a superb job on it.

[Wildchild]

Another fun one to search on google earth is Abandoned AFB's

[agracier]

Here's a somewhat special monument, that while not really very artistic, does capture the feel of 20th century history in France. It's in Pau, one of at least 4 Great War monuments that I as a casual visitor know of. It's located on a wall of the train station, somewhat forlorn now, being surrounded by modern day advertising and small businesses.

But the text on the plaques says it all:
'Here on the 6th of August, 1914, the 18th regiment of infantry from Pau embarked for the Eastern Frontier'
'Here on the 7th of September, 1939, the 18th regiment of infantry from Pau, embarked for the Eastern Frontier'

Interesting note - this same regiment, under the command of gen. Lafayette, was present during the siege of Yorktown in 1781, during the American War of Independence.