Landscapes of WW1

[UK_Widowmaker]

Pinched from the Pub...thanks to Stary for this

 

http://www.coolcrack.com/2011/11/amazing-pictures-of-landscape-still.html

[Von Paulus]

Thanks Simon and Stary, for sharing.

[+Olham]

Great photography - thank you, Stary and Widowmaker!

Very touching - the only original WW1 soldier's grave with the rusty helmet on it...

[UK_Widowmaker]

Great photography - thank you, Stary and Widowmaker!

Very touching - the only original WW1 soldier's grave with the rusty helmet on it...

 

Yes...stunning

[theultimat]

I'm amazed the helmet is still there. That shows the true respect of a nation for their heroes.

 

Unfortunately, in England, people go around stealing the metal from war memorials instead.

[gaw]

thanks UK....gorgeous photography

[UK_Widowmaker]

I'm amazed the helmet is still there. That shows the true respect of a nation for their heroes.

 

Unfortunately, in England, people go around stealing the metal from war memorials instead.

 

Yes...I'm afraid, the UK is broken...and no-one knows how to fix it

[Von Paulus]

I'm amazed the helmet is still there. That shows the true respect of a nation for their heroes.

 

Unfortunately, in England, people go around stealing the metal from war memorials instead.

I'm sure that this far from being only in England.

I too thought that French soldier grave very moving.

[+Hasse Wind]

Excellent photographs. Some of those battlefields are really well preserved. If you have Google Earth, try looking at some of those areas. For example around Verdun there can be found many old forts and craters.

[UK_Widowmaker]

Excellent photographs. Some of those battlefields are really well preserved. If you have Google Earth, try looking at some of those areas. For example around Verdun there can be found many old forts and craters.

 

what a good idea Hasse...I never thought of that

[+Olham]

Yes, type in "Fort de Douaumont, France", and you'll get to that site. Hardly anything left standing though...

[+RAF_Louvert]

.

 

I remember years ago on a military hop from England down to the very southwest corner of Germany, I was looking at the French landscape below and commented at one point how a certain area looked like an old WWI battlefield. The naivgator said, "It is, that's the Somme." I couldn't believe how, from the air, it still looked so much like it did all those decades ago. Some scars run very deep.

 

.

[+Olham]

True, Lou. And France hasn't changed it's countryside that much since the Great War.

When I searched Google Satelite maps for known airfield spots, I found that many villages

haven't really grown much, like Toulis for example - the triangular acre which used to be

Jasta 12's airfield, is still there. In Germany, you'd probably find newer houses there.

[Capitaine Vengeur]

Here are two places where I sometimes go wandering when coming back to my parents'. The crater lies on Côte 285, Argonne (December 1916, 52 tons of explosives, according to the sign at the edge of the hole, which is at shoulder's height). The scarred woods with remnants of stonewall are the place where Craonne stood, a living village under a green slope in 1914, erased from the face of Earth by industrial warfare, in a countryside fertilized by thousands of unrecoverd anonymous bodies during the Second Battle of the Aisne.

[UK_Widowmaker]

wow Capitaine...great pics

[+Olham]

Just went to Google Maps (Satelite) to see Craonne. There is still a living village Craonne.

Where did the old, destoyed village stand, Capitaine?

It seems to be at the Chemin des Dames - a road name I often heard in WW1.

[Capitaine Vengeur]

Just went to Google Maps (Satelite) to see Craonne. There is still a living village Craonne.

Where did the old, destoyed village stand, Capitaine?

It seems to be at the Chemin des Dames - a road name I often heard in WW1.

The old village settled down the slope has been rebuilt with the same name at some distance (3 kms or so), more integrated to the farming plains. The mashed ruins have been left untouched for the neighbouring woods to reconquer ground, as a mark of remembrance. La Bataille du Chemin des Dames is the French name for the Second Battle of the Aisne, April-May 1917. The road, named after two of Louis XV's daughters that passed there, lies along the top of a ridge where the Germans had settled formidable defensive positions: the French assault waves were slaughtered one after another by machine-guns nests set into the fortified quarries and caves deeply dug into the chalky slope, and that had been left untouched by artillery. The plateau under which Craonne was settled is named Le Plateau de Californie, after "La Californie", a "saloon américain" that was settled there (actually, a discreet rural brothel!).

 

An interesting visit in the immediate vicinity of Craonne is the main of these fortified caves, known as La Caverne du Dragon in French and Die Drachenhöhle in German. Long, terrible hand-to-hand fightings with knives and grenades in almost complete darkness occured in these galleries of chalk.

[shredward]

If you are there at the right time of year, the ghostly outlines of trench systems, gun pits and strong points are still visible in many places in the ploughed fields along the Front

Cheers,

Shredward

[+Olham]

An area I must visit when I get to France again - very interesting - and grisly too. Thank you, Capitaine!

[Von Paulus]

An area I must visit when I get to France again - very interesting - and grisly too. Thank you, Capitaine!

Indeed.