The French ordeal in the Great War

I went to two sites today that are only a few miles apart. They give some visual sense of the terrible losses endured by the French during the Great War.

Notre Dame de Lorette contains a staggering 19,000 identified burials and an even more staggering 16,000 unidentified in 6 mass graves. The graveyards on the Somme create an impact in a different way - they are dotted every few km but overall tend to be much smaller in scale than this.

The lines of headstones go on and on.

This whole area was part of the battle line in 1915 when the French advanced and took the high ground this graveyard now occupies. It was achieved at a very high cost.

La Targette is just down the road. There is a British and Commonwealth cemetry there adjacent to a much, much larger French one. Again the crosses go on into the distance.There are over 11,400 WWI French burials here.

For completeness I will add that close to these locations is a German one. There are over 37,000 buried there.

The loss of life is staggering.