French Flanders: Armentières to La Gorgue Part Eleven – Estaires War Memorial

Estaires war memorial is not only quite unusual, and I think quite beautiful, but damned tricky to photograph, even if it doesn’t look it.

I would suggest a drone,…

…or a stepladder.

Nothing whatsoever to do with the figure,…

…which is striking enough,…

…and everything to do with the placement of the names of the dead,…

…which just happens to be on the tiles beneath our feet,…

…making them fiendishly difficult to photograph.  And you know me – I can’t miss any of the names, now can I?  It wouldn’t be right, nor respectful, in my book.  Or on my site.  And not being able to afford a drone (nor a stepladder, come to that), what follows is a series of photos that, by the end of the post, should have covered all the names, but which from a photographic viewpoint (i.e. yours) will be incredibly boring,…

…so to give you something of interest to look at, they are arbitrarily interspersed with a handful of accompanying black & white photographs, all courtesy of the IWM, showing British troops engaged in various activities in and around Estaires during the early years of the war – moments in time in the history of both town and war, frozen on film forever.

Now maybe nobody in the world will ever need to know this stuff, but to make life a little easier for anyone who does, the photograph above has been doctored to show only the tiles that are inscribed with names, in white – nineteen on the left of the blank middle column, and eighteen on the right.

So in this shot, for example, you now know exactly where you are looking (the centre column of blank tiles features the twig).  Got it?

Here we are looking at the three left hand columns of names, beginning with twelve tiles containing the names of 105 Great War military casualties,…

…beneath which are three tiles containing twenty one civilian Great War casualties (top row both above & below), with eighteen military casualties of the Second World War on the tiles nearest the camera (bottom row both above & below),…

…and finally, a single tile in the final row inscribed with three names from later conflicts; one wonders the fate, and date, of the man who died in Germany.

Huntley and Palmers.  Still going.

The right hand side begins the same,…

…the first twelve tiles, again in three columns, containing 104 more names of Great War military casualties,…

…then another three tiles, nearest the camera, with a further sixteen Great War civilian casualties,…

…followed by twelve civilian casualties of the Second World War (above & below).

I think all the names are covered and legible if enlarged (and if not, I can supply even more detailed photos if required.  Just ask.), should anyone ever need them for research purposes.  Or any reason, come to that.

Whatever that wheeled vehicle is, I want one!

Algeria, Morocco & Tunisia plaque (top) and World War II plaque (bottom) on the side of the memorial.

Images (insets above & photo below) showing the destruction of Estaires in 1918.

Our tour moves on, but not far, next post, as we cross to the south of the River Lys once more to visit the small commune of La Gorgue.

You coming?  I should click here then, if I were you.