I saw a photo of it several years ago in the NY Times…a perfectly enormous arch, I’m fairly sure it was in Normandy, although one would think it would be further east, closer to Verdun or Ypres or the Somme.
There are loads of Great War memorials in northern France, but this one shocked me by its sheer immensity. Some people milling around the foundations looked like ants.
And yes, I DID google it, with no luck.
Is this the one?
Was it the Menin Gate?
Here’s some more information about the Thiepval Memorial (the arch shown in the link provided by Darwin’s Finch) that I found here, http://battlefields1418.50megs.com/thiepval_memorial.htm:
So far, Google and I haven’t found a larger WWI memorial arch in France.
Thanks, guys! (All except for YOU, Carcosa, no, it ISN’T the friggin’ Arc de Triomphe) The Thiepval Memorial it is!
Damn, it’s an ugly thing, isn’t it. I’m used to WWI memorials being more aesthetically pleasing.
I’m surprised there aren’t better pics online of war memorials. You know how hard it is to get decent photos of that enormous thing in the Valley of the Fallen… the ghastly, overblown, crypto-Fascist memorial Franco built for the Spanish Civil War dead?
Uke, what exactly seperates crypto-Fascist from Fascist? Alluding to Mein Kampf instead of quoting it outright? Wearing Doc Martens instead of jackboots?
I heard it a lot early in the reign of Shrub Part Deux, but I’ve never gotten a straight answer. A lot of straight lines, but never a straight answer.
Crypto-facists usually, dress up their ideas by pretending to suscribe to a different belief system, for example this is often used against certain Capitalists, Communists, racists (the BNP for example) and believers in political correctness.
BNP? Bornean Nationalist Pigfuckers?
Slight correction. Thiepval is located in Picardy , not in Normandy. There are WW1 cemetaries in Normandy but they were usually associated with military hospitals located way behind the front line.
Crusoe: Oh, the British Nationalist Pigfuckers.
Always a pleasure!
Oops! Well, you could not provide a name or location and you stated you did try to google it, so if I try a very simple search such as:
french memorial “great war”
and get the following site:
http://www.footstepmaps.com.au/greatwar.html
which does in fact contain pictures of Thiepval among others, I would have to think you had already ruled these out lest I insult your intelligence.
The only other HUGE arch I can think of that might be construed as a WWI memorial is the Arch of Triumph.
Well, thank you, then. I won’t insult your intelligence by pointing out that the Arc de Triomphe predates World War One by quite a few years. And that Paris is neither Normandy nor Picardy.
Unless you were thinking of the eternal flame for the French Unknown Soldier that was installed beneath the Arc?
U. Ike, while this may be a technical highjack, the biggest of the French WWI memorials is the Verdun battlefield. Even in the early 1970s when we were there is was both moving and horrific–square miles of scrub timber on ground that was still torn up beyond conception with a scattering of little wrought iron crosses with faded flowers hung on them. This was more than 50 years after the war ended and families were still leaving flowers on those sad little monuments, I suppose in memory of young men who just disappeared in the maelstrom. Road work in the area was still turning up scraps of equipment and bone then, I don’t know if that is happening now or not.
Also, the Last Post at the Menin Gate still goes on every evening–very impressive and simultaneously heart breaking and bracing–as are the hundreds of British garden cemeteries scattered along the British sector of the front.
As you drive through Northeastern France you will run into all sorts of isolated memorials that just pop up in the country side. Some are pretty ugly but many are significant works of monumental art. I suppose the locals have learned to live with them, but for a traveler they can be a surprise. We ran into one on the old St. Mihiel battlefield, a shell shaped column topped by a spread eagle. Ithad been freshly decorated by one of the local parishes. It was a monument to the First Infantry Division, US Army. Don’t tell me that the French hate Americans.