Welsh Division Memorial (Mémorial à la division galloise )

The 7th British Division skirted Fricourt Salient by the south and took the village on the afternoon of 1 July 1916. But the name Mametz has remained associated with the woods on the north east. This pocket of resistance handicapped efforts to advance eastward but fell (almost completely) into the 3rd Welsh Division's hands on 12 July 1916 after eight days of fierce fighting that took a brutal human toll. A plaque affixed to the memorial in 1994 remembers the Manchester regiment. The Welsh Division memorial. A memorial to the 38th Welsh Division was inaugurated on 11 July 1987, which sustained heavy losses between 3 and 12 July 1916 in Mametz Wood. The monument - a red dragon flapping its wings, spitting fire and crushing barbed wire - is of course Wales' emblem. This mythical creature is ambivalent; it may be good or evil, and angelic or demonic. At Mametz, it symbolizes Wales protecting France against the Germans.
Somme Tourist Board (Comité du tourisme de la Somme) 21 rue Ernest-Cauvin 80000 Amiens, France Phone +33 (0) 322 71 22 71 Fax +33 (0) 322 71 22 69 e-mail: accueil@somme-tourisme.com The Somme Tourist Board will be happy to provide any information you might require about the Somme battlefields and Circuit du Souvenir (remembrance events, directions, transport, private and group tours, helicopter flights, accommodation, etc.). CDT also publishes a series of Memorial Tourism brochures.

Some of them managed to cross the border into Spain and Andorra; the others were taken and transferred to Camp du Vernet on the night of 26 August 1942. During the first roundup, around 200 people were arrested and interned before being transported to Auschwitz.

A second roundup took place between 9 and 11 January 1943: 266 Jews were arrested. On the bend in La croix du Ruisseau, a stele pays tribute to the 640 men, women and children sent to live in Aulus-les-Bains in 1942 and those arrested during the two roundups.

Quelques lieux remarquables

• La maison du docteur Faure, médecin thermal, père d'Edgar Faure (1908-1988), écrivain et homme politique
• Le monument aux morts. On y lit beaucoup de noms identiques avec à côté leur sobriquet correspondant le plus souvent au nom de la maison où ils vivaient 
• L'Office du Tourisme. Sur l'ancien emplacement de l'hôtel du Midi construit en 1866, le Grand hôtel, qui a fonctionné jusqu'en 1939, puis a été réquisitionné pendant la guerre. Après la Libération, en raison de son état de délabrement, il n'est plus utilisé que comme salle de café et de réunions, avant d'être démoli dans les années quatre-vingt-dix
• L'Hôtel Majestic. Lorsque, le 11 novembre 1942, l'armée allemande a envahi la zone Sud, elle a établi son cantonnement à l'Hôtel Majestic.

01 - Les Neufs Fonts

02 - Carrière des Frouns

03 - Oratoire St Vincent

04 - Salle d'animation du Camping ancienne scierie

05 - Emplacement de l'ancien Casino

06 - Colonie de la Ville de Toulouse anciens Hôtels du Parc

07 - Ancienne usine à Gaz

08 - Maison du Dr Faure

09 - Les Bemèdes ancienne maison Crouzat

10 - Hôtel de France

11 - Hôtel Georges

12 - Grand Hôtel

13 - Allée des Bains

14 - Parc Thermal

16 - Hôtel Beauséjour

17 - Hôtel Majestic

18 - Villa les Bains ancien Hôtel des Bains

19 - Hôtel La Terrasse

20 - Monument aux Morts

21 - Hôtel Les Oussaillès ancienne Maison Charrue

22 - Gîte d'Etape ancien Presbytère

23 - Eglise d'Aulus

25 - Oratoire St Bernard de Menton

26 - La Croix du Ruisseau

27 - Le Moulin

28 - Office de Tourisme emplacement Hôtel du Midi

29 - Aulus La Trappe

Mairie d'Aulus-les-Bains

Place de la Mairie 09410 Aulus-les-Bains

Tél. : 05 61 96 00 87

Bureau d'Aulus-les-Bains

09410 Aulus-les-Bains

Tél. : 05 61 96 00 01

Antenne de l'Office de tourisme de Haut-Couserans

09140 Aulus-les-Bains

tél. 05.61.96.02.22

fax : 05.61.96.01.79

e-mail : aulus-les-bains@worldonline.fr

Fort de Leveau is part of a fortification system dating back to 1874. It is just one of the structures erected around Maubeuge to protect it.

It is a "cavalier and high battery" structure, surrounded with masonry ditches with a scarp and counterscarp. These were defended with two caponiers (covered passages), with the entrance and the gorge protected with two flanking casemates.

Before World War 1 began, a concrete gun turret for two 75mm guns was added. The fort was bombarded and evacuated on 7 September 1914. According to sources, between 80 and 120 people lost their lives and the building was seriously damaged.

It was refurbished in the 1930s and observation posts were constructed. The fort fell on 19 May 1940. During the Liberation, it was the backdrop of combats between the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) and German troops.

Today, the fort belongs to the town of Feignies and is preserved as a place for reflection and strolling, steeped in history. Since 1993, the Association de Sauvegarde du Fort de Leveau has been looking after the site.

The main living quarters and defences of the fort can be visited: barracks, caponiers, concrete structure, central tunnel, trenches. Inside, a museum is dedicated to the two world wars. All objects and documents concerning the fort or Maubeuge are displayed in the gunpowder room, while the artillery store and the central corridor display uniforms, documents and apparatus from the Great War. Visitors can also discover a room decorated with furniture of the time. Lastly, the museum has a room dedicated to the Second World War.

Exhumations were carried out at the request of families of soldiers who died on 7 September 1914. In 1998, after two years of painstaking work, the bodies of nine buried soldiers were exhumed. They were able to be identified thanks to their identification tags and thus emerged from an 84-year oblivion. Nearly all of the families were found and invited to the funerals of their grandfather or great-grandfather. A moving ceremony took place at the fort and a commemorative plaque was unveiled, followed by another ceremony at the Assevent cemetery to bury the bodies.

Fort de Leveau

Association de sauvegarde du fort de Leveau

BP 68 59750 Feignies

Tel./Fax: +33 (0)3 27 62 37 07

Quizz : Forts and citadels

The fort has several notable features, the most impressive of which is the covered interior road, bordered on either side by the facades of the barracks and a room which is completely reinforced.

At 497m, the top of the fort offers superb views of the Pays de Montbéliard (orientation table).

A fortification must meet a defensive need and make use of the human resources and materials available, and is bound by geographic and strategic constraints. Using the example of Mont-Bart Fort, we will analyse these points for the fortifications constructed after the Franco-Prussian war.

At the end of the 19th century, France's army was inferior in terms of numerical strength to that of its powerful neighbour.

France therefore adopted a defensive system designed by General Séré de Rivière to guard against another invasion.

Fortifications were constructed to compensate for inferior human resources.

Given the loss of a part of Alsace and Moselle, the defensive system had to be redesigned in the Vosges rather than being based along the Rhine. The major subjects under consideration were controlling channels of communications and preventing supplies from reaching the enemy army. The answer found was a network of forts which all protected each other. This curtain of forts was supported by fortified camps, which acted as stoppers to block the major roads, as at Belfort.

Experiences in 1870 had taught Séré de Rivière the importance of keeping the enemy at a distance. It was essential to build numerous forts, some of which would only be occupied in the event of a conflict. The network needed to be dense for the system to be effective.

Mont-Bart Fort lies at the southern extremity of the Belfort fortified camp, behind the confluence of the Allan and the Doubs. It overlooks Pays de Montbéliard, with the exception of the Ecot plateau.

Its defence was linked to Mont-Vaudois, Lachaux and Le Lomont forts, and the Roches battery. The gateway to Alsace was closed off by the forts. The roads, railways and waterways were controlled by the forts.

Should an army succeed in sneaking between the forts, it would rapidly be blocked because supplies would not be able to get through. Forts were constructed to resist the weapons which existed at the time.

However, weapons developed very quickly between the late 19th century and the early 20th century. Forts were modernised to keep up with these developments until the First World War.

Mont-Bart Fort
Rue du Mont-Bart - 25420 Bart

Tel: +33 (0)3 81 97 51 71 - Fax: +33 (0)3 81 96 23 85

Email: fort.mont-bart@wanadoo.fr

(Guided visits by appointment)

This limestone pre-alp range reaches heights of 600 to 800 metres. Its north-south orientation makes it a natural obstacle to invasions from the west and a travel route between Nice and the Vésubie Valley. These dry-stone fortifications were set up by French troops who invaded the County of Nice in 1747. It runs from Mont Férion to the sea, passing through Mont Macaron and the Terrier Plateau. The system includes a double line used as a shooting bench, equipped with redoubts. The most interesting vestiges are located on the Terrier plateau.

Trom the D 19

Montagne et Traditions Association

Quizz : Forts and citadelles

This commune includes the villages of Beaumont, Gare-de-Beaucourt and Hamel. These villages were situated just behind the German Lines. At the time, Newfoundland was a British colony and on this basis - as with all the countries of the Empire - it raised a volunteer army. On 1st July 1916, at 0900, the men of the first Newfoundland Regiment had scarcely left their trenches before coming under fire from German machine-guns. Half an hour later only 68 of them were left unscathed. All the officers were either killed or injured. Proportionally to the number of troops involved, this action was one of the most murderous of the entire the Somme offensive. The village was finally taken on 13th November 1916 by the 5th Scottish Highland Regiment.

Designed by landscape architect Rudolph Cochius, the park covers 16 hectares and was inaugurated in 1925. At the entrance there is a monument to the 29th Division to which the Newfoundland Regiment was attached. A path leads to a viewing table at the top of the Caribou mound - so called because it is surmounted by a bronze statue of a caribou, the symbol of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, which is the work of English sculptor Basil Gotto -, from where the overview of the battlefield enables the trench "system" to be understood. Three bronze tablets at the base of the mound serve as a national memorial to the fallen. A single petrified tree escaped the devastation: this is the skeleton of the "tree of danger", so-called because it was located at a particularly exposed observation point. The German front line passed through the bottom of the park, close to the statue of the Scotsman in the kilt of the 51st Highland Division, which seized the enemy position on 13th November 1916 ...
Young bilingual Canadian students lead guided tours from early April to the end of November. On-site Centre for Interpretation.
Newfoundland Memorial 80300 Beaumont-Hamel Tel.: +33 3 22 76 70 86 Fax: +33 3 22 76 70 89 e-mail: newfoundland_memorial@vac-acc.gc.ca Open every day from 15th January-15th December 9am-5pm (1st May-30th October, 10am-5pm). Comité du tourisme de la Somme 21 rue Ernest-Cauvin 80000 Amiens Tel. : +33 (0) 322 71 22 71 Fax : +33 (0) 322 71 22 69 e-mail : accueil@somme-tourisme.com The Comité du Tourisme de La Somme is at your disposal for all information relating to the Battlefields of the Somme and the Route of Remembrance: commemorations, access, transport, guided tours for groups and individuals, helicopter flights, accommodation, etc ... The CDT also publishes a range of brochures on Remembrance Tourism.

Quiz : Forts et citadelles

The Memorial is situated on the left bank of the Marne on a hill overlooking the river and the town of Dormans. When the plan to erect a large monument to remember all of the battles in Marne was confirmed, this site was chosen by Marshal Foch as a place that represented both battles. The building was made possible thanks to an association founded by Madame de la Rochefoucauld in 1919, overseen by the Cardinal of Reims and the Bishop of Châlons. A vast park with a chateau was purchased, and the first brick was laid on 18 July 1920. The building work, which took 10 years from 1921 to 1931, was funded by numerous donations, in particular those collected by the ‘national subscription’ in 1929 dubbed "four monuments day” (the association which became a charity, was recognised as a public interest organisation by presidential decree on 20 May 1932).

The impressive ensemble was designed by architects Marcel and Closson. A monumental staircase leads to a large square with a sundial and a viewpoint indicator that shows the names of the villages in the Marne Valley where the Battle of 1918 was fought. The square itself leads to a crypt that is overlooked by the church that boasts a bell tower and two ridge towers.

The inside of the chapel is entirely dedicated to the glory of the “soldiers, the army and the fatherland".

The stained-glass window in the choir represents Christ welcoming a soldier to symbolise all those who died during the Great War, presented to him by Joan of Arc and St Michael. On each side, angels intercede in his favour.

The stained-glass windows at the sides of the transept (by the renowned Lorin firm in Chartres) represent the patron saints of the different branches of the army.

The four columns standing on the crypt’s vaulted bases are decorated with sculptures depicting the four great invasions of France by the Huns, the Arabs, the English and the Germans, which were all contained (the Catalunian Plains in 451, Poitiers in 732, Orleans in 1429 and Dormans 1914-1918).

The 52-metre tower houses several bells, the largest weighing 304 kg. Beside the chapel is a cloister. Rather austere in appearance with its pointed arch, from the side it is attached to a funerary building housing the ossuary, close to a lantern tower for the dead. At its entrance, a medallion features the effigies of marshals Foch and Joffree, the two victors of the battles of the Marne, while the names of all the soldiers who fought in the battles are engraved in the wall plaques.

Inside the ossuary, the mortal remains of 1,332 French soldiers who fell between 1914 and 1918 are held in 130 coffins; only 11 of these men were identified. The funerary chamber also holds two urns: the first one contains earth taken from the cemetery in Italy where soldiers of the Free French Forces killed during the battles in 1943-1944 in Monte Cassino are buried; the other holds the ashes of deportees returned from Dachau in 1948.

Every year since 1993, during the Armistice commemorations, an official ceremony is held in the ossuary where a wreath given by the French President is laid by a delegate Senior Officer from the Elysée Palace.

Opening times

From 1 April to 11 November every day from 2-6 pm and Sundays from 10 am to 12 pm and 2-6 pm.

Contact

Dormans Tourist Information Office, Château de Dormans - 51700 DORMANS
Tel: +33 (0)3 26 53 35 86

Memorial secretariat: +33 (0)3 26 57 77 87

Memorial: +33 (0)3 26 59 14 18

Site du 90e anniversaire des batailles de la Marne

Office de tourisme de Dormans 

Source: MINDEF/SGA/DMPA - Vincent Konsler

Constructed in a month and a half on eighty hectares of land on the heath land of Gurs, the internment camp originally had about four hundred huts and was enclosed by a double barbed wire fence.

Spanish Refugees The "reception centre" was considered by the authorities of the Third Republic to be operational from April 1939. Several thousand Spanish refugees, mostly soldiers from the Spanish Republican Army and volunteers from the international Brigades, were sent there. The buildings, which were supposed to be temporary, were quickly inundated with mud and the poor living conditions claimed numerous victims.
The "undesirables" From May 1940 onwards, the Vichy regime sent refugees arrested in the towns of Paris and Bordeaux, French political activists and Basque political refugees, to be interned at the Gurs camp. The Jews The Statute on Jews, issued on the 3rd October 1940 led to their large-scale internment from the autumn of 1940. Natives of France, Germany's Baden province or central Europe, for many of them Gurs was the last stop before the Nazi extermination camps: indeed, between August 1942 and March 1943, six convoys took several thousand internees from Gurs to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. After the Liberation, the camp was used as a place of detention for collaborators and German prisoners. Closed on the 31st December 1945, the site was radically altered from 1946 onwards, with the sale and destruction of the huts, followed by the planting of a forest in an attempt to forget the history of a camp that had been run from start to finish by the French authorities.
The national memorial In 1994 the national memorial of the internment camp at Gurs was inaugurated. The Israeli artist Dani Karavan designed it as a journey of reflection in three parts on internment in the Vichy camps. - At the end of the camp's central thoroughfare, the frame of a hut reminds visitors of the harsh living conditions of the internees - more than sixty people were crammed into each of these cramped buildings.
- a 180-metre long railway track stretches from this hut to symbolise the ultimate journey to the death camps, the final destination of many Gurs internees.
- At the entrance to the camp, the rails end abruptly at a concrete slab with barbed wire around it, representing the Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
The camp cemetery There are more than a thousand graves of those internees who died at the Gurs camp between 1939 and 1943. Restored in 1962 by the towns and the Hebrew Consistory of the Baden province, it has two steles: one paying tribute to the Spanish and the Brigadista, and the other dedicated to the memory of the Jews, most of whom were expelled by the Nazis from the Baden province in October 1940 before the decision on the final solution.
The camp's central thoroughfare and adjacent paths The camp road links the former camp entrance on the route de Mauléon with the cemetery and stretches about two kilometres, parallel to the D 936. On each side of this central thoroughfare, old paths, paved by the internees with shingle from the mountain streams of the Oloron, can still be seen. In the middle of the trees and shrubbery that now cover the site, visitors can also see some memorial structures that were created in 2002 by sixth-form classes from a business college specialising in careers in the building trade. Modelled on the camp's former wooden huts, several "virtual huts" have been constructed using cords to remind us that the forest there today must not try to hide the camp of yesterday.
The Gurs camp association Tour Carrère 25 avenue du Loup 64000 PAU Email administrator: abauzit99@orange.fr Tours The camp and its memorial are permanently open. Entry is unrestricted and free of charge. Access 90 km from Bayonne via Peyrehoarde and Escos on the A 64/E 80 (exit no. 6 - Peyrehoarde) and then the D 936. 45 km from Pau via Tarsacq, Noguères, and Mourenx, on the D 2, the D 33, the D 281, the D 111, the D 947 and then the D 936. 65 km from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port on the D 933 towards Sauveterre-de-Béarn, then the D 936. 6 km from Navarrenx on the D 947 and then the D 936.

Because the Normandy landing memorial sites are well worth a detour, a tourist route dedicated to D-Day would not be complete without a visit to the site of Bénouville Bridge,called "Pegasus Bridge" since 1944. Installed in 1934, this lift bridge, just over thirty metres long and nearly seven metres wide, was at the cutting-edge of modernity of the time, as it was driven by an electric motor, the task of which was made easier by an impressive concrete counterweight. 

In the night of 5 to 6 June 1944, three Horsa gliders from the British 6th airborne division, under the orders of Major Howard, landed in silence, just a few metres from Bénouville Bridge. Their insignia, a Pegasus, was the name given to the structure thence onwards.
 

The mission of the British 6th Airborne glider infantry was to seize the bridge. Along with the taking of the neighbouring Ranville bridge, the idea was to prevent German reinforcements from hitting the eastern side of the imminent landing.
In addition, cutting the artery between Caen and the sea would preserve a passage for later expansion of the Allied Beach Head. Armed by around fifty men, a 50 mm canon and a little bunker housing a machine gun, the German garrison defending the strategic structure was rapidly dominated by the first liberators on Normandy soil.

"Ham & jam, ham & jam": a few hours after the gliders arrived, this was the radio signal given to announce Major Howard's mission was a success. The commando still had to fight against enemy counter-attacks, notably by elements of the 21st Panzer.

It managed to keep its position and kept the bridge intact until back-up arrived on Sword Beach.

The meeting was finally achieved at around 1pm, with the famous bagpipes of Bill Millin, personal piper of Lord Lovat, playing in the background. Major Howard's parachutists, in control of the only points for crossing the two rivers between Caen and the Channel, made the first D-Day attack, which gave allied troops control of communications between the east and the west of the River Orne and its canal.

A symbolic site

Immortalised on screen in 1962 during the film The longest day, the first Normandy site under allied control still has many signs of the heroic actions that happened here and which preceded the Landing of 6 June 1944.
In 1960, Pegasus Bridge was extended by five metres following widening of the canal and was then replaced in 1993 by a new, wider and more modern structure. The new bridge is raised, like its glorious predecessor, and has reproductions of the old railing and wooden pathways from the time. In the centre of the site, visitors can still see the German anti-tank canon in its basin, the role of which was to defend access to the port.
Near the banks of the canal which the bridge spans is a path lined with a bronze bust of Major Howard and three stones mark the exact position of the three gliders. On the opposite bank is the first Normandy house liberated by the allied troops, which is in fact the famous Café Gondrée. In summer, the site puts on a sound and light show which stages the intermingled destinies of Bénouville Bridge and Major Howard's men.

Installed between the River Orne and the canal, the Pegasus Memorial was inaugurated on 4 June 2000 by the Prince of Wales and the French defence minister. In addition to the real Bénouville Bridge, which was reassembled after being taken town in 1993, the memorial has a "Bailey" bridge from 1944: named after a British engineer, these bridges could be assembled by forty sappers in less than three hours and were used to allow heavy military vehicles to pass.
Recently, the ministry of defence (general secretariat for administration; department of memory, heritage and archives) made a financial contribution to the installation of a life-size replica of a Horsa glider in the middle of the park around the memorial.
 

The permanent exhibition areas in the memorial give visitors the opportunity to see films of archives and showcases with an impressive collection of objects and documents to the glory of the British 6th airborne division: fragments of gliders from 1944, soldiers' equipment, Major Howard's personal objects and Bill Millin's bagpipes!
For young visitors and their teachers, the Pegasus memorial offers free of charge an educational file which traces a journey rich in emotions, thus emphasising the necessary orientation of memory actions to the younger generations.

Mémorial de Pegasus Bridge

Avenue du Major Howard 14860 Ranville
Tel. +33 (0)2.31.78.19.44.
Fax: +33 (0)2.31.78.19.42.
Email: memorial.pegasus@wanadoo.fr

Tours
The Pegasus Memorial is open every day, except in December and January. Guided tours (in French or English) are organised upon reservation.

Getting there
Five kilometres from Ouistreham, via the Ranville/Cabourg.exit 

Pegasus Bridge Memorial site

Website of Normandy’s regional tourist committee