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[RedSpade]

Agracier,   It must have taken you a lot of time to compile all of that.  Thanks so much for the research.  That was awesome of you to do and I greatly appreciate it.

RS

[agracier]

Something else i found while going through old photos taken during the past years: these are inscriptions from one of the 4 or 5 Great War monuments in the provincial town of Pau in France. It pays homage to Portuguese soldiers killed in the Great War on French soil and also to Spanish Republican volunteers who fought with Free French Forces during WWII.

Here's an interesting note on these last. War photographer Robert Capa, famous for his SCW work, apparently knew some of these Spanish volunteers from his time in Spain during the late 1930's and met up with some during the liberation of Paris in 1944 and later in the year during a failed attempt by these to invade Spain.

[juanmalapuente]

Thanks for the pictures, Agracier. It's very emotive to see this gratitude gesture, since Republican Spanish played also their small but significative role in WWII.
Here a little info about the "Spaniards that liberated Paris":

http://www.rfi.fr/culture/20110912-nueve-liberation-espagnols-paris-1944

[max_thehitman]

Cool photos once again Agracier , thanks good buddy. I like them very much.
Its good to know that someone paid tribute to the fallen dead Portuguese soldiers in WW1 too. Not many people know
they fought in that war, and many also died there on the battlefield.

One interesting thing that many folks don´t know is that the Portuguese soldiers were used as front-line "talkers", I am
not really sure of the correct name now, but it was a very important job other than fighting in trenches.
Some of their jobs was to be on the telephone , one guy was in the HQ and another on the front-line, and they talked in
Portuguese over the telephone translating the orders the generals said. Since the very old Portuguese language is so
dificult to master, not even the German code breakers could understand what these soldiers were saying. So its was like
Top-secret talk. 
It´s like the same job the brave North American Indians did for the US Marines in the PTO in 1943-1945. The Japanese code
breakers could not understand a word they said. 
And that is how some wars are won!... with strange languages.

[juanmalapuente]

I came across this nice memorial in Abidjan and I remembered your thread, Agracier.




Beside you can find "La Maison del Combatant"




Best regards to everybody from Ivory Coast

[agracier]

Very nice and thanks for having this in mind during your visit .... thanks.

[Moggy Cattermole]

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.

It's the same in Britain. You can go through almost any village and there will be a memorial, be it a simple pillar or cross, or a statue of a soldier.

Interesting excavations of the tunnels around the Lochnagar Crater on the Somme. This photo shows how things have recovered - fascinating to see, especially with the enormous creater there;

[The_Alaska_Man]

How did the crater get there?

[dagwood]

from Agracier above....."Here's an interesting note on these last. War photographer Robert Capa, famous for his SCW work, apparently knew some of these Spanish volunteers from his time in Spain during the late 1930's and met up with some during the liberation of Paris in 1944 and later in the year during a failed attempt by these to invade Spain."

Now there's an interesting "what if" campaign for mission builders....

Thanks all and in particular Agracier. Great research.

Cheers

Dag

[agracier]

How did the crater get there?

Soldiers, engineering units often composed of former civilian miners, dug tunnels under the German lines, piled up as many tons of explosives as they could get their hands onto and then hopefully launched a coordinated ground attack when the mines blew. This was done from early in the war till up to last. The British mine craters are well known in the Anglo-Saxon world, but the French were just as avid miners, but it on different sectors of the front.

The Brits mined in Flanders and the Somme, while the butte de Vauquois in the Argonne was the most extensively mined area on the front. This was done by both French and German units. In Vauquois you can still see the ravages of the blown away ridge line and visit the underground tunnels. It is an eerie underground experience.

Here are few underground and above ground shots of a visit to Vauquois some years ago. The main fighting occurred in 1915, which is why the monument still shows a French soldier in the older uniform style with kepi. I believe that by the end of the war, in 1918, the sector was taken over by American units.

[crazyeddie]

Went down to Verdun earlier this year, and stopped off at Vaquois (See image above) on the way, very impressive with numerous mine craters and defensive positions, all still pretty intact. A small hilltop village that must have seemed like heaven in hell to those who fought up there.  Then went on to find The Crown Princes Bunker to the north of there, the only bunker I have ever seen with a bay window, coving around the ceilings and an Ingle nook fireplace, those Germans knew how to build bunkers !!!!

The Verdun battle field is a monument in itself, Morte Homme, Fort Douomont, Fort Vaux and all the other smaller emplacements, all very impressive if a little neglected. Verdun citadel is in a very poor state of repair but still worth a look and a walk around.

Not an area Brits normally visit but as interesting as The Somme and more to see than The Somme or Ypres I thought.  Locals very friendly, bumped into quite a few Germans who said the same. 

On the way home visited my Grandfathers grave at Vadencourt near St Quentin, a good stopping point half way down to Verdun.

Interesting thread, keep it going. 

 

[agracier]

The further east along the old front line you go, the more things are different and by extension interesting. From the media, movies and TV, we think of the Great War as a conflict that took place in the mud and slime of Flanders Fields with below ground shelters and trenches. But to the east, starting in the Argonne and further, the front lines were often above ground and in hilly and varied terrain. And because fewer people live here, the remnants are often in better condition, or rather since they form part of the landscape, they are an integral part of it still.

And then there are the great forts built along the eastern marches, almost all still there in some form or another. If you have good maps and don't mind some tramping in the woods, you can often get inside abandoned forts for a look around. Others are still open as museum - obviously many at Verdun, but also the Fort du Troyon further east, arguably one of the most important impediments to the German advance in 1914. It held out against the Crown Prince's army advancing against Verdun and never fell during the entire war, even though it looks like some sort of vintage American civil war fort with high walls and casements.

https://www.google.be/search?q=fort+du+troyon&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Nr4&tbo=u&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=9FHIUNbNOJG0hAec1oGICQ&ved=0CDgQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=1062

And here is a small chapel not far from la crete des Eparges, also in the Argonne. It was used as a dressing station for wounded during the war. Contrast it with a wartime illustration by artist Georges Scott. The stained window from this chapel, illustrates the possibly apocryphal scene which occurred nearby in the Bois Brulé when a French officer was said to have called upon the dead:  'Debout les Morts!' to fight off a German attack. Quite a different form of ecclesiastical art than you normally see in a church or chapel.