Just tried that link and found my grandfather's grave north of Caen (Cambes Frances). I actually knew where it was (never been) but sad to think he died 26 years before I was born in early July 1944. But so did no many others for obvious reasons.
Maybe this is why subconciously I have played games in the past like Call of Duty??
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We went to the Rimini area twice earlier in the decade and on both occasions visited the Coriano Ridge Military cemetery where my wife's great uncle is buried. It is a remarkably calm and peaceful place, at the edge of a village in the hills above the Adriatic; and beautifully maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
It makes you think, walking amongst the hundreds of graves of people who were about half your age when they died fighting for your country.
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Blimey, Oily, that's a tall order, but if you have no success with the sites above there is another where I can almost guarantee success. The people on here are WW1 experts, many have photograped hundreds/thousands of War Graves - I've taken a few myself for pals on the forum - and they will chew over it until the correct answer is arrived at.
1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/
Go to the Cemeteries and Memorials section and ask your Q.
My first impression was that it might be Caberet Rouge Cem at Souchez - but it's a big British cem and the German one (the crosses you mention) is not visible from it (I think) though only a few hundred yards away.
Going to have a look at my Michelin maps now to see if I can find where you were!!
Good luck
Phil W
You might also have some luck looking at this site which has excellent IGN maps of France (if you use the sliders to swicth from aerial photos to "cartes")
www.geoportail.fr/visu2D.do?ter=metropole
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Thanks for the replies guys.
I hasten to add that I am not searching for a relative at the site I mention. Rather it was my first encounter with a War Grave area and that by chance too. This led to an interest in military history..
I have a clear mental picture of the site, but now could not draw a 70 mile radius around it.
Its not memory fading, because straight after the trip I was the same looking at the map.
I put it down to fatigue of a 3 week camping trip and someone else navigating.
Regards and thanks
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Oily,
Any idea which road you were on at the time?? Was it the N43?
Any idea where you were near? Cambrai? Bethune? Lille? St Quentin?(All near A26) Or were you near the A1 (Arras? Roye? Compeigne?) or even A16/A29 (Amiens, Beauvais? Villers - Bretonneux???)
Phil
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Its all a blank Phil as girlfriend of the time was full time navigator. (and I was brain dead with fatigue) If you took a main route other than the motorway between Reims and Calais it would be somewhere along it, perhaps in the middle, not sure. Then a left turn and a mile or two to a *very* small town with a bank.
(If you ever read this FW where was it?)
;)
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To add,
For what its worth, I can remember mile after mile of flat farmland and a worry that we would arrive in Calais without money. Hence left turn to town and bank.
Perhaps less than 100 miles then and not less than 50 from Calais. I think we went to the West of Reims.
I`m writing this purposely not getting the map out as its been counter productive in the past to what remains of the impression.
Edited by oilrag on 02/09/2008 at 23:10
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If there is no personal connection with this particular site, might I respectfully suggest that it might be better not to try to find it again? You have a special memory not just of the place but also the mood you were in at the time and the person that you were then. It's like a memory of a truly great meal - you could go back to the same restaurant with the same people and eat the same dishes at the same table, but it's not the same.
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Is it definitely WW1 could it be a May 1940 battlefield ?
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Had a really good look at IGN maps on
www.geoportail.fr/visu2D.do?ter=metropole
but can't find a site which fits yoour description exactly - closest I can get is near Aix Noulette, NW of Arras - (I am assuming that you my well have been coming up the old N43 (Reims, Laon, St Quentin, Cambrai, Arras, Bethune, St Omer, Calais)
You could look closely at stretches between Marquion and Dury: Arras and Bethune.
But your best bet is a Q on
1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/index.php?act=idx
as previously mentioned or try
www.inmemories.com/
It's a site by Pierre Vandevelden and he is a really helpful chap who has walked all the cems.
He helped me a great deal in finding the graves of pals of my grandad who were killed (Willie Smith, Jack Tilston, Norman McMorrin and Major Kurten) and sent me photos he had taken and I sent hm some in return
www.inmemories.com/Cemeteries/huts.htm
www.inmemories.com/Cemeteries/becquigny.htm
www.inmemories.com/Cemeteries/aveluycomext.htm
www.inmemories.com/Cemeteries/camon.htm
Sorry, getting a bit(!) off the subject here, but WW1 can become an obsession, especially when both grandads survived 4 years!! - obviously or I wouldn't be here!
Good luck Oilrag -
PhilW
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Cheers Phil, Will look through that.
Nsar, Yep, of course you`re right- F did seem a bit of a snake though on home ground ;);)
"Is it definitely WW1 could it be a May 1940 battlefield ?" (PU)
Now there`s a thought....I thought counted back 70 years on site, but did I?
I`m preparing for the late September trip (as previously mentioned) now and lagging behind on `Tommy` - Richard Jones. (A lot of cross referencing and considering detail)
With the time available I think this one is going to remain as a memory rather that a photo.
It makes you wonder though, how many soldiers years after the wars went back to find a particular site?
If they actually found a precise location, It surely must have been amazing to turn up years later and find peaceful farmland and corn growing, where once had been total devastation.
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In Wimereux the local cemetery has both Allied and German graves (google tells me).
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"In Wimereux the local cemetery has both Allied and German graves (google tells me)
Wimereux Communal Cem doesn't have both I don't think (It does have Macrae of "In Flanders' Fields" poem though), but Terlincthun Cem on outskirts of Wimereux does have a German section
See northern end of
www.cwgc.org/plans/14-78/M002.GIF
Regards
Phil
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Google tells me
Wimereux Communal Cemetery contains 2 845 Commonwealth burials of the First World War.
The cemetery also contains 14 Second World War burials, six of them unidentified.
There are also five French and a plot of 170 German war graves.
www.webmatters.net/cwgc/wimereux_com.htm
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Mapmaker,
You are absolutely correct! - I haven't noticed the German graves on my visits there, probably because the headstones lie flat rather than stand upright (sandy soil and on a slope).
I will have a closer look next time!
Regards,
Phil
www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?cemetery...1
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>>You are absolutely correct! -
I shall take your word for it. I merely repeat what I read...
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"It makes you wonder though, how many soldiers years after the wars went back to find a particular site?
If they actually found a precise location, It surely must have been amazing to turn up years later and find peaceful farmland and corn growing, where once had been total devastation."
oilrag,
I have quite a few photos taken by my grandad in 1918 at the end of the war and then in 1929 when he evidently (we only have the photos - my Dad, his son, found them in the 1980s never having known that he returned) went on a "guided tour". I say "guided" because there are photos of where he was (mainly Somme) and where he wasn't (Belgium) during the war.
If you are interested there are pics at
s33.photobucket.com/albums/d73/PhilRW/1929%20and%2.../
of where a comrade was killed - photos from 1929 and when Dad and I found the site again in 1993.
Also here
s33.photobucket.com/albums/d73/PhilRW/Cachy%20Road...g
is where Major Kurten was killed in April 1918 (possibly the point of furthest advance towards Amiens by the Germans - they captured the howitzers overnight before the Aussies regained them and began the advance from Villers- Bret to final victory), and on return in 1929 the fuse tins from the howitzers were still by the roadside!
This site was obliterated by a new junction on the A29 a few years ago (I have photos of it in 1990s however.
Above not very motoring related, but when Dad retired we spent many happy days driving all over the Somme retracing Grandad's war diary and finding where he had been. Some of the villages which weren't destroyed are exactly the same as they were in 1918 or 1929.
See previous link
s33.photobucket.com/albums/d73/PhilRW/1918%20and%2.../
Best wishes
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I've just looked at the War Graves Commission site. I put my (unusual) surname in and found records for half a dozen young men from both wars who will almost certainly have been relatives, maybe cousins, of my grandfather. He was at the Somme, but fortunately survived. Incredibly moving to read about them. It's wonderful that these graves are still maintained and that people are working to recover others.
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I remember my father describing what it was like, in the PO rifles aged 16, to go over the top, walk forward on 6' of the dead and wounded and slowly cut a way through the wire - while the Germans, rather unsportingly, mowed them down.
After something like that, our modern generation of teenagers would need "therapy" for life!
He used his pay wisely; when he returned, injured and gassed, he bought a brand-new BSA 650 for £4-17-6 and resumed his job as a telegram boy on the Black Isle.
Edited by Screwloose on 03/09/2008 at 16:36
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Beteen Reims and Epernay,there are two cemeteries adjoining,one Allied,one German-both extremely moving and just down the road,a French one.
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Phil, Those photo`s are really interesting, thanks. We will be visiting Albert again later this month, intending to see the museum and having forgotten about French lunch time on the last trip!
Mapmaker, There were two separate cemeteries at the site i was referring to. I`m actually wondering now whether it was a Second World War site..
Screwloose,
As mentioned before, there was an old chap who had gone over the top at Passchendaele in our village when I was a teenager. Wish I had talked with him more at the time.
JC2, Wonder if that`s it? Will get the map out later
Regards
Edited by oilrag on 03/09/2008 at 17:20
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Off the main road betweem Reims and Epernay,halfway down on the west side.
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Oilrag - try and get hold of a book Fatal Avenue by Richard Holmes - cracking read on this area with modern day motoring routes.
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PU, I will order it this week before I forget the title again, Thanks.
Regarding the site I was looking for. Have been studying Google Maps. I now think F navigated us on minor roads well to the West of Reims on route from a camp at Vitry le Francois.
*Perhaps* passing Noyen, Ham, Perrone, Bapaume and the on the D341 running North from Arras.
Its further West than I thought and well North of Reims.
Edited by oilrag on 03/09/2008 at 19:11
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The ones I was talking anout were near Chaumuzy and Pourcy;I do not think anyone would have navigated down there but the whole area is covered in small cemeteries,beautifully maintained but little visited.
Edited by jc2 on 03/09/2008 at 20:10
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I am the author of two books dealing with the aeronautical history of the Cumbria, Dumfries and Galloway region with a third soon to be published.
Some thirty years ago I researched the events of 31.3.41 in which your uncle tragically died. Two days ago I travelled to Painswick to photograph F/O J.W. Seddon's headstone.
I would appreciate some biographical information of John Seddon.
Hope you can help,
peter.connon@gmail.com
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Whilst outside the T&Cs of the site - letting the post stand, dragging it back to Motoring though. I've been invited to ride from Calais to Dunkirk in the summer (pedal power) I hitch - hiked this route in the 70s - anybody got some recent experience of the roads - are they traffic free is or is there a good (flat) cycle track, cemeteries and WW2 sites will be POIs. Blackberry Bold will provide mapping and navigation aids.
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SWMBO and I went on a short motoring weekend to Bruges a few years ago. Her maternal granpa and his two brothers served in the Cheshires, Jim being killed on 7.7.17. Three of the dressing stations near Proven in Belgium were called, Fixing'em, Mending 'em and Bandaging 'em.
Jim is buried in a double grave with a member of the RA, in the little cemetery now called Mendinham on the site of the dressing station. There are German graves there but they face the other way.
All very emotional, we signed the book and left a message.
Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori
Ted
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