List of World War I memorials and cemeteries in Champagne-Ardennes

This is the '''list of World War I memorials and cemeteries in Champagne-Ardennes.

The modern-day Champagne-Ardenne covers four departments: Aube, Ardennes, Haute-Marne, and Marne. Its rivers, most of which flow west, include the Seine, the Marne, and the Aisne. The Meuse flows north. This region was to see much fighting in the 1914–1918 war and many battles of which arguably the most important were the First Battle of the Marne and the Second Battle of the Marne. The First Battle of the Marne, also known as the Miracle of the Marne, was fought between 5 and 12 September 1914. The battle effectively ended the month long German offensive that had opened the war and the counterattack of six French field armies and one British army along the Marne River forced the German Imperial Army to abandon its push on Paris and retreat northeast to the Aisne, setting the stage for four years of trench warfare on the Western Front

The Second Battle of the Marne or the Battle of Reims, fought from 15 July to 6 August 1918, was the last major German attack of their five phase Spring Offensive, the German attack failing when an Allied counterattack led by French forces and including several hundred tanks overwhelmed the Germans on their right flank, inflicting severe casualties. The German defeat marked the start of the relentless Allied advance which culminated in the Armistice about 100 days later. Thus the Second Battle of the Marne can be considered as the beginning of the end of the Great War whereas the First Battle of the Marne really marked the beginning of what was to be a static war dominated by the trenches rather than the planned war of movement and manoeuvre.

Ironically the German attack in 1918 had been intended as a large diversionary attack to draw the Allies' attention away from Flanders as the "Spring Offensive" had not been the success the Germans had hoped for and Erich Ludendorff believed that an attack through Flanders would give Germany a decisive victory over the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), the most experienced Allied force on the Western Front at that time. It was to shield his intentions then and draw Allied troops away from Belgium,that the attack was launched in the Marne area but because of the way the battle on the Marne developed the attack in Flanders was never to happen.

Memorials to the Missing
These Battles of the Marne did of course involve the deaths of many men and there are two major British "Memorials to the Missing" which cover the men lost in the two battles whose remains could not be identified. These are the memorials at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre which links to the First Battle of the Marne and that at Soissons which links to the 1918 battle.

Monuments in Reims and the surrounding area
Reims itself was a front line city throughout the four years of the war and suffered constant bombardment from German Artillery. The cathedral was bombed and damaged on many occasions and images of it became a rallying icon in the non-German world. 60% of Reims was destroyed during the 1914–1918 war and 4,567 Reims men were killed in the conflict and a further 740 civilian lives were lost.

The monument aux morts in Reims
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! scope="col" style="width:1000px;"|The monument aux morts in Reims There are reliefs on either side of this central figure. The relief on the left is entitled "1914 le sacrifice" and is dedicated to the families of the dead ("Aux familles des morts pour exalter la grandeur de leur sacrifice.") whilst that on the right bears the legend "1918 la leçon du passé" and speaks to future generations reminding them not to forget the sacrifices of their parents.("Aux generations nouvelles pour qu’elles sachent et se souviennent"). A list of the names of the dead was sealed up with one of the memorial's bricks and there is a book in the Reims town hall which also contains this information Along the top is the inscription.
 * Reims has a fine war memorial which is located in the Place de la République. The architect was Henri Royer with sculptural work by Paul Lefèbvre.  It was inaugurated in 1930 by Philippe Pétain and the Minister of War André Maginot. The central statue in bronze shows a youth deep in thought.

The German Cemetery at Loivre
The German cemetery at Loivre contains the remains of 4,149 men of whom 1,913 could not be identified and their remains are in an ossuary.

The Monument to the 119th and 319th French Infantry Regiments and the 20th Territorials at Cauroy-lès-Hermonville
This monument is located at Cauroy-lès-Hermonville near Reims. Many men of the 119th had fallen fighting at Charleroi on 22 August 1914, one of the battles fought at the beginning of the war and known as the "Battles of the Frontiers". One inscription is from Belgium and pays homage to the men of the 119th ( “aux frères”/ their brothers in arms)

Chemin des Dames
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! scope="col" style="width:1000px;"|Chemin des Dames
 * The "Chemin des Dames" runs east and west in the département of Aisne, between in the west, the Route Nationale 2, (Laon to Soissons) and in the east, the D1044 at Corbeny. It is some thirty kilometres long and runs along a ridge between the valleys of the rivers Aisne and Ailette. It acquired the name in the 18th century, as it was the route taken by the two daughters of Louis XV, Adélaïde and Victoire, who were known as the "Ladies of France". At the time, it was scarcely a carriage road, but it was the most direct route between Paris and the Château de Boves, near Vauclair, on the far side of the Ailette. The château belonged to Françoise de Châlus, former mistress of Louis XV, Countess of Narbonne-Lara and former lady of honour to Adélaïde, whom the two ladies visited frequently. To make the journey easier, the count had the road surfaced, and it gained its new name. The ridge's strategic importance first became evident in 1814 when Napoleon's young recruits beat an army of Prussians and Russians at the Battle of Craonne.  After their retreat from the Marne it was a logical place for the German Army to choose to turn and attempt to check the Allied advances.  For most of the 1914–1918 war the German army held the ridge but the French made numerous attempts to remove them from it and this resulted in an enormous loss of life.
 * The "Chemin des Dames" runs east and west in the département of Aisne, between in the west, the Route Nationale 2, (Laon to Soissons) and in the east, the D1044 at Corbeny. It is some thirty kilometres long and runs along a ridge between the valleys of the rivers Aisne and Ailette. It acquired the name in the 18th century, as it was the route taken by the two daughters of Louis XV, Adélaïde and Victoire, who were known as the "Ladies of France". At the time, it was scarcely a carriage road, but it was the most direct route between Paris and the Château de Boves, near Vauclair, on the far side of the Ailette. The château belonged to Françoise de Châlus, former mistress of Louis XV, Countess of Narbonne-Lara and former lady of honour to Adélaïde, whom the two ladies visited frequently. To make the journey easier, the count had the road surfaced, and it gained its new name. The ridge's strategic importance first became evident in 1814 when Napoleon's young recruits beat an army of Prussians and Russians at the Battle of Craonne.  After their retreat from the Marne it was a logical place for the German Army to choose to turn and attempt to check the Allied advances.  For most of the 1914–1918 war the German army held the ridge but the French made numerous attempts to remove them from it and this resulted in an enormous loss of life.

Beneath the ridge is an almost one-square-kilometre cave network called "The Dragon's Lair" (La Caverne du Dragon). The subterranean caverns were originally a tunnel system created from excavations of limestone for building purposes in the 17th century. The caves are some 20–40 metres below the surface and during the war they were used by both French and German forces as field hospitals and command posts.

The Chemin des Dames has along its length many visible reminders of the war. The Fort of Malmaison held a strategic position and at La Royere the part which colonial troops played in the war is recorded. At Cerny-en-Laonnais we find the little chapel, which is the official remembrance site for the Chemin des Dames and the Caverne du Dragon Museum on the spot where the Germans used the old quarry there as underground barracks. We find the Monument to the Basques in memory of the 36th Division most of whom hailed from the south-west of France. We find the Plateau de Californie which affords magnificent views over the Aisne valley, which was the scene of the offensive launched by General Nivelle on 16 April 1917. We find the rebuilt village of Craonne with its arboretum of Remembrance and the National Tank Monument, all these memorials interspersed with cemeteries and smaller monuments to the dead.

It is calculated that over 130,000 men lost their lives in this area and in the French, German, British and Italian cemeteries only half of the men who died could be identified and many were laid to rest in ossuaries.

Whilst there were always almost daily skirmishes along the Chemin des Dames during the war there were three major battles fought. These were-


 * First Battle of the Aisne (1914) - The Anglo-French counter-offensive following the First Battle of the Marne.
 * Second Battle of the Aisne (1917) - Part of the Nivelle Offensive.
 * Third Battle of the Aisne (1918) - The third phase or (Operation Blücher) of the German Spring Offensive.

The First Battle of the Aisne was the Allied follow-up offensive against the right wing of the German First Army (led by Alexander von Kluck) & Second Army (led by Karl von Bülow) as they retreated after the First Battle of the Marne in September 1914. The Aisne battle began on the evening of 13 September but it was inconclusive and the two armies concluded that a head-on breakthrough was not possible and started the "Race to the Sea" with one attempt after another to take the opposition's flank, which, when no one managed this, saw the race finish on the North Sea Coast. Thereafter a "war of movement" ended and trench warfare and a static war took its place.



After the First Battle of the Aisne no major battles were fought in the area until March 1917 but during this time several thousand soldiers died in local attacks or coup de main operations and on 25 January 1915, German forces captured the Creute farm (today La Caverne du Dragon or the Dragon's Lair), the last remaining French position on the plateau. This was what is known as the "Battle of the Creute". The Germans now dominated the ridge.

The Second Battle of the Aisne took place between 16 and 25 April 1917. This was to become known as the "Nivelle Offensive". General Robert Nivelle was an artilleryman by training and started the battle with a six-day long artillery bombardment involving some 5,300 guns but this arguably did no more than alert the Germans to the fact that an attack was coming. On 16 April, seven French army corps attacked the German line along the Chemin des Dames ridge but Nivelle had underestimated the enemy's defensive preparations (the Germans had created a network of deep shelters in old underground stone quarries below the ridge, where their troops had been able to take shelter during the French barrage) and the well prepared German positions dominated the southerly slope over which the French attackers were attacking, the Germans making maximum use of their new MG08/15 machine guns. The French took 40,000 casualties on the first day alone and during the following 12 days of the battle, French losses continued to rise to 120,000 casualties (dead, wounded, and missing). The final count, when the offensive was over, was 271,000 French casualties and 163,000 Germans casualties and although the German defenders suffered less, they lost some 20,000 prisoners, 40 cannons, and 200 machine guns. The high French casualty count and in such a small space of time and with such minimal gains, was perceived at headquarters and by the French public as a disaster. There was also much criticism of the agonizingly slow evacuation of the French wounded which it was thought demonstrated a lack of logistical preparations. Nivelle had to resign, and the French Army now suffered from instances were soldiers refused to accept orders: Mutiny was in the air.

This situation developed into a threat of complete disintegration and General Pétain, who had opposed Nivelle's offensive, was called in to take over from Nivelle and to reestablish order. This he did without harsh collective punishments and he also instituted positive changes, such as longer home leaves and better food and medical/surgical assistance for the troops. By the autumn of 1917 everything began to settle down and the British army took over the defenses at the western end of the ridge during the following twelve months.

During the summer of 1917 the area saw the Battle of the Observatories which was a series of local attacks and counterattacks to gain control of high positions commanding the views between Craonne and Laffaux and in October, after the allied victory at the Battle of Malmaison the German forces left the Chemin des Dames and moved to the north of the Ailette River valley.

The Third Battle of the Aisne was part of the German "Spring Offensive" and the Germans wanted to recapture the Chemin des Dames ridge before the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France in any great numbers. It was one of a series of offensives, known as the Kaiserschlacht, launched by the Germans in the spring and summer of 1918. The American Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division (United States) and the 93rd Infantry Division (United States) were the first Americans to fight in France, albeit detached from the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) and under French command. The 92nd & 93rd would continue to fight under French command for the duration of the war. The massive surprise attack (named Blücher-Yorck after two Prussian generals of the Napoleonic Wars) lasted from 27 May until 6 June 1918. Operation Blücher-Yorck was planned primarily by Erich Ludendorff, who was certain that success at the Aisne would lead the German armies to within striking distance of Paris. Ludendorff, who saw the BEF as the main threat, believed that this, in turn, would cause the Allies to move forces from Flanders to help defend the French capital, allowing the Germans to continue their Flanders offensive with greater ease. Thus, the Aisne drive was essentially planned as a large diversionary attack.

The defence of the Aisne area was in the hands of General Denis Auguste Duchêne, commander of the French Sixth Army. In addition, four divisions of the British IX Corps, led by Lieutenant-General Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon, held the Chemin des Dames Ridge; they had been posted there to rest and refit after surviving the "Michael" battle. On the morning of 27 May 1918, the Germans began a 4,000 gun bombardment of the Allied front lines and the British suffered heavy losses, because Duchêne (reluctant to abandon the Chemin des Dames Ridge after it had been captured at such cost the previous year had ordered them to mass together in the front trenches, in defiance of instructions from the French Commander-in-Chief Henri-Philippe Pétain. Huddled together they were to make for easy artillery targets. The bombardment was followed by a poison gas drop and once the gas had lifted the main infantry assault by 17 German Sturmtruppen divisions commenced.

Taken completely by surprise and with their defences spread thin, the Allies were unable to stop the attack and the German army advanced through a 40 km gap in the Allied lines and reached the Aisne in under six hours. In fact the Germans were to smash through eight Allied divisions on a line between Reims and Soissons, pushing the Allies back to the river Vesle and gaining an extra 15 km of territory by nightfall.

Victory seemed near for the Germans, who had captured just over 50,000 Allied soldiers and well over 800 guns by 30 May 1918 but, after having advanced within 56 km of Paris on 3 June, the German armies were beset by numerous problems, including supply shortages, fatigue, lack of reserves and many casualties along with counter-attacks by and stiff resistance from newly arrived American divisions, who engaged them in the Battles of Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood and on 6 June 1918, the German advance halted on the Marne.

The French had suffered over 98,000 casualties and the British around 29,000. German losses were nearly as great if not slightly heavier. Duchêne was sacked by French Commander-in-Chief Philippe Pétain for his poor handling of the British and French troops but on a positive note the Americans had arrived and proven themselves in combat for the first time in the war. During the Second Battle of the Marne, the last fight on the Chemin des Dames occurred between 2 August and 10 October 1918 and the Germans finally abandoned the ridge and were pushed back northwards. Peace now returned to the Chemin des Dames but it had witnessed unimaginable scenes of horror!

The Calvary at Choléra
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! scope="col" style="width:1000px;"|The Calvary at Choléra There is also a French Military Cemetery at Berry-au-Bac called the "Cemeterie militaire de Moscou" (there was a hamlet nearby called Moscou) which contains 3,933 bodies of which 1,958 lie in ossuaries. There are also 6 Russian graves and 1 Belgian. There is a small section which contains the bodies of 29 British soldiers of which 17 could not be identified. There is also a monument in the cemetery dedicated to the engineers of 19/3 Engineering Company, part of the 2nd Engineers.
 * The Calvary in front of the Tank Memorial at Berry-au-Bac indicates the spot where the first attack was made by French tanks and also remembers all who fell on the Chemin des Dames. There was a farm at this spot called the " La Ferme du Choléra".
 * The Calvary in front of the Tank Memorial at Berry-au-Bac indicates the spot where the first attack was made by French tanks and also remembers all who fell on the Chemin des Dames. There was a farm at this spot called the " La Ferme du Choléra".

Cemeteries in Soupir
{| class="wikitable sortable" ! scope="col" style="width:1000px;"| Cemeteries in Soupir
 * Located south of the Chemin des Dames, the village of Soupir was largely destroyed during the Second Battle of the Aisne in World War I. Today, five national cemeteries are located in Soupir: two French, one German, one British and one Italian.  The two French cemeteries are Soupir French Military Cemetery No 1 and Soupir French Military Cemetery No 2 and the German cemetery joins onto Soupir French Military Cemetery No.2. There are 11, 089 German soldiers buried there. 5,134 have their own graves (19 of them unknown soldiers – “unbekannt” ) whilst a further 5 995 are buried in the mass grave in the centre of the cemetery.

Monument to the 103rd French Infantry Regiment
This memorial was erected courtesy of the French veterans organisation "Souvenir français" and is located in the village of Aubérive. The inscriptions include and

Memorial remembering the "Eugène" trench and the Monument to the 8th Army Corps
The memorial to the "Eugène" trench is a "Souvenir français" funded one and this and the 8th Army monument stand in the Val de Vesle which lies east of Reims and in the direction of Sainte-Ménehould. The memorial is dedicated to those soldiers who were killed in the area in the offensives of April 1917. Also near to the "Eugène" memorial are Vauthier Bornes "36" and "37".

The 8th Army monument is located where the D931, the Reims-Suippes road crosses the D34, the Beine-Nauroy road at Val de Vesle. Another Vauthier Borne, number "38" is nearby. The inscription does not mince words We are entreated not to forget the dead. "They too loved life and gave their lives to ensure that there would be peace between all men! Passersby don't forget this! The "Monts de Champagne" mentioned running from west to east were Le Mont Cornillet with a height of 209 mètres, Le Mont Blond with a height of 221 mètres,  Le Mont Haut with a height of 257 mètres,  Le Mont Pertois with a height of 200 mètres,  Le Casque with a height of 242 mètres,  Le Téton with a height of 232 mètres and a final hill that does not have a name and has a height of 220 mètres.
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