WW1-CENTURY/FRANCE MEMORIAL Half a million WW1 friends and foes reconciled in new memorial in France
Record ID:
708225
WW1-CENTURY/FRANCE MEMORIAL Half a million WW1 friends and foes reconciled in new memorial in France
- Title: WW1-CENTURY/FRANCE MEMORIAL Half a million WW1 friends and foes reconciled in new memorial in France
- Date: 27th October 2014
- Summary: ABLAIN-SAINT-NAZAIRE, FRANCE (OCTOBER 22, 2014) (REUTERS) NEW MEMORIAL TO 580,000 WW1 WAR DEAD IN NORTHERN FRANCE IN FORM OF RING NAMES OF SOLDIERS WITH "ROUGE" SURNAME ON MEMORIAL VARIOUS OF PANELS WITH NAMES INSCRIBED PROJECT DIRECTOR YVES LE MANER WALKING NEXT TO PANELS (SOUNDBITE) (French) PROJECT DIRECTOR YVES LE MANER SAYING: "What's special about this memorial is that it groups together, in simple alphabetical order, friends and foes from the past. It brings together 580,000 names of soldiers who came from the whole world over to fight in northern France between 1914 and 1918. Canadians, Europeans, Africans, Indians, Australians, New Zealanders -- they're all brought together a century later in a sort of posthumous fellowship because these people had multiple talents, manuel and intellectual, and these talents were lost for the whole of humanity because of the war. And we're bringing them together after their deaths." VARIOUS OF NAMES OF WAR DEAD OF DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES (SOUNDBITE) (English) PROJECT DIRECTOR YVES LE MANER SAYING: "It is of course a unique monument. The main difference between this place and the others around is the fact that we are mixing in the same list people who were friends and foes during the First World War. And they are listed by alphabetical order, without any difference of race, religion, rank and nationality." VARIOUS OF MAN LOOKING AT NAMES WAR DEAD WITH NAME "SMITH J" ON MEMORIAL (SOUNDBITE) (English) PROJECT DIRECTOR YVES LE MANER SAYING: "The first expression is that you need silence when you enter this place. You are overwhelmed by mass deaths. And somewhere you can spot names which are close to yours and there is a very special feeling, it's a continuity between generations, and the main difference is that now we're living in peace in Europe. It's something new for our whole continent." VIEW OVER COUNTRYSIDE SEEN THROUGH MEMORIAL NAME OF BRITISH POET WILFRED OWEN ON MEMORIAL MEMORIAL SEEN THROUGH TREES MEMORIAL (SOUNDBITE) (French) ARCHITECT PHILIPPE PROST SAYING: "I was thinking about the rings you make when you're a child, or a human ring when everyone holds each other's hands in a sign of fellowship, and that seemed to me like the image, the form, best suited to speaking about these 600,000 soldiers killed in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, and who today are brought together all in one place by a political will, and organised in strictly alphabetical order, without being distinguished by rank, religion or nationality." VARIOUS OF MEMORIAL EXISTING MEMORIAL IN NOTRE-DAME DE LORETTE CEMETERY CROSSES IN CEMETERY
- Embargoed: 11th November 2014 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: France
- Country: France
- Topics: General
- Reuters ID: LVAPRGH68SI4XLKZ9ROFVE4QANA
- Story Text: A hundred years on, over half a million former friends and enemies who lost their lives on the First World War battlefields of northern France are reconciled in a giant memorial to be inaugurated next month.
580,000 names are etched onto the three-metre high walls of the memorial, arranged not by nationality or regiment but in alphabetical order to give a sense of the scale of the human suffering of the four-year conflict.
From Hermann Hautumm to Etienne Havard and Richard Haverland, the names of soldiers who once looked at each other across No Man's Land are united on the edge of France's largest war cemetery on a hilltop overlooking the Artois region.
"Canadians, Europeans, Africans, Indians, Australians, New Zealanders -- they're all brought together a century later in a sort of posthumous fellowship because these people had multiple talents, manuel and intellectual, and these talents were lost for the whole of humanity because of the war," project director Yves Le Maner told Reuters Television.
France and Britain's global empires brought combatants from all over the world to the region and visitors can pick out European, African and Middle Eastern names all muddled together on the monument's walls.
The "Ring of Memory" is for those who died in the modern-day French region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais and does not include the many millions more who lost their lives in neighbouring Belgium or in battles including the Somme and Verdun.
Some very common names are repeated many times over -- soldiers with the surname "Smith" take up three of the 500 panels -- and the effect is both to shock the visitor at the scale of the destruction, but also to help commemorate personal sacrifices.
"You are overwhelmed by mass deaths. And somewhere you can spot names which are close to yours and there is a very special feeling, it's a continuity between generations," Le Maner said.
Some notable names jump out from the memorial, including British poet Wilfred Owen who was killed at Ors in the final week of the war, and Luxembourgish Tour de France winner Francois Faber.
Le Maner said that collating individual nations' lists of war dead had been a two-year project, with the task easier for some countries than others.
Whilst the British authorities have kept comprehensive lists since the 1920s, many paper records of German servicemen were destroyed during air raids in the Second World War. Spaces have been left so that any omissions can be added.
Architect Philippe Prost said the form of a ring, with its 328-metre perimeter, was chosen to give a sense of unity to the names of fallen former enemies.
"I was thinking about the rings you make when you're a child, or a human ring when everyone holds each other's hands in a sign of fellowship, and that seemed to me like the image, the form, best suited to speaking about these 600,000 soldiers killed in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, and who today are brought together all in one place ," he said.
The site is on the edge of the Notre-Dame de Lorette French war cemetery, itself containing the bodies of over 40,000 soldiers, and intended to be the focal point of a region peppered with British, German, Polish and Czech memorials, to name but a few.
It will be inaugurated on Armistice Day on November 11 by French President Francois Hollande, in the presence of dignitaries from other countries involved in the conflict.
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