Great War tourist trails on the Nord

Great War tourist trails on the Nord - Pas-de-Calais

The Nord - Pas-de-Calais has produced a pdf guide to Great War sites in the region that includes four themed trails. The first follows the front line, starting with a little cross-frontier diversion to Ypres, then Fromelles - Loos - Notre-Dame-de-Lorette - Vimy - Arras - Bullecourt - Flesquières - Hébuterne and finishing at Ayette Indian and Chinese Cemetery.

The second covers both the war of movement of the first few months of the war and the subsequent German occupation. It starts in Comines, before going through Lille, down to Cambrai, then back north, finishing at the French war cemetery at Assevent, near Maubeuge.

The third covers the rear areas and the Channel coast. It starts at the monument to the Dover Patrol at Sangatte, outside Calais, before heading southwards Wimereux - Terlincthun - Boulogne - Etaples and finishing at Haig's statue in Montreuil-sur-Mer.

The final tour covers the reconstruction of the areas devastated by the war. Unsurprisingly, it covers much of the same ground as the first, but with a larger emphasis on rebuilt towns and post-war cemeteries. Starting in Méteren, it visits, amongst other places Bailleul, Lens, Arras and Cambrai, finishing in Tourcoing.

The website version links to information (in French) about each and every site on all four tours. Unlike the shorter Artois tour, there is no time recommendations - you will obviously want to go at your own pace - but there's enough here to keep everyone amused for a good week, if not longer.

Photo: the Canadian memorial at Vimy, from wikipedia

Around the First Battle of the Marne: 3 victory

The third (and last) part of visiting the 1914 battlefields of the Marne in connection with my Osprey on the First Battle of the Marne. Although the fighting had gone on for several days, the Germans had not succeeded in defeating the Allies, although they had been driven back in places with heavy casualties. But the front was too long for the number of men engaged, and gaps, small and large, began to appear. Both sides rushed to fill the gaps, but began to run out of men. The clash to the west of the town of Montmirail was the straw that broke the German camel's back. We stayed at the Hotel Le Vert Galant in Montmirail. More by chance than design, the French had found the open flank of the German 2nd Army. On 8th September, masking Montmirail itself, French infantry from 36th Division crossed the Petit Morin river and climbed the wooded slopes opposite, supported by artillery. The key combat was the struggle for the small village of Marchais-en-Brie. The German comman...

Kings of the Air: Clément Ader

This is the first of a series of biographical sketches based on the research I am doing for my new book Kings of the Air: French aces and airmen of the Great War , to be published by Pen & Sword. Clément Ader (1841-1925) was a French inventor, whose attempt at heavier-than-air flight some years before the Wright brothers was so nearly successful. Ader had a restless mind, and his inventions covered a wide range of fields. In 1868, he began as a velocipede manufacturer. Instead of conventional iron tyres, his machines used a rubber tubular tyre of his own invention, resulting in a much lighter frame, and a much more comfortable ride. The war against German in 1870 brought an end to his work. He then began working for a railway company in the south-west of the country, the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer du Midi. In 1875, he designed an engine that laid rails, that saw service for several years. He then turned to the new telephone, commercialising the inventions ...

The French Air Force in the First World War

Published by Pen and Sword in their Images of War series, January 2018, and available where all good books are sold. The French air force of the First World War developed as fast as the British and German air forces, yet its history, and the enormous contribution it made to the eventual French victory, is often forgotten. So Ian Sumner's photographic history, which features almost 200 images, most of which have not been published before, is a fascinating and timely introduction to the subject. The fighter pilots, who usually dominate perceptions of the war in the air, play a leading role in the story, in particular the French aces, the small group of outstanding airmen whose exploits captured the publics imagination. Their fame, though, tends to distract attention from the ordinary unremembered airmen who formed the body of the air force throughout the war years. Ian Sumner tells their story too, as well as describing in a sequence of memorable photographs the ...

Ian Sumner

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