Arras, WW1 memorials part duex

Arras is a city in northern France. The Carrière Wellington is a network of quarry tunnels used by soldiers during WWI. North of the city, surrounded by lush countryside, the Canadian National Vimy Memorial honors the Canadian soldiers killed during the war. In town, the cobbled Place des Héros has buildings with Flemish facades, including the Town Hall and belfry. The Abbey of St. Vaast houses a fine arts museum.

We drove to Heroes square which was completely obliterated during World War 1 along with the rest of town.
We then drove over to the Carrière Wellington Museum. The Carrière Wellington is a network of caves built by New Zealand miners in the in 1917 for World War I. The front lines had been a stalemate between Germany and the allies for over a year. The Ally generals got together to come up with a grand plan to breakthrough the stalemate. The UK brought up 500 professional miners from New Zealand to create a tunnel system through an existing series of limestone quarries. The miners dug about 20 km of tunnels in a six month period. This allowed British troops to get within tens of yards from the German trenches.
The UK made their attack in April 19 17 and exceeded their battle plan in overextended their lines, past their supply lines. This allowed the Germans to regroup and ultimately wind up, pushing them back and led to a defeat at the battle of Arras.
The tour started in the museum and we learned about the Commonwealth forces (India, New Zealand, Fiji, Australia, Canada, New Foundland. Scotland and Ireland. We took an elevator 20 m down into the tunnel system where the guide took us through an audiovisual display, describing the creation of the tunnels the battle plan and how they put the 24,000 troops into the tunnels to prepare for the attack.
In the end, we came back up the elevator and saw a film that describe the attack some of the successes, but ultimately the failure of the French and UK troops to repel the German invaders. No significant change in the front lines and tens of thousands of more lives lost on both sides.
We have learned that Belgium has 618 military allies, and they are randomly throughout the countryside in the south along the French border. One of the differences between the French and the UK war grave commissions are that France, leans toward very large cemeteries and centered them in beautiful plots of land, where the British, and even the German tended to have much smaller cemeteries surrounding the sites of each of the individual battles.Leia mais