French Flanders: Richebourg Part One – Richebourg War Memorial

Four months ago now, we completed our tour of the cemeteries and memorials around Neuve Chapelle. 

The tour ended with a visit to the Neuve Chapelle Memorial (orange dot) and the nearby Portuguese Military Cemetery (in green, and actually just within the commune of Richebourg – the memorial is not – so I suppose you could call that post the first part of this short tour), just down the road from Neuve Chapelle itself (top right in mauve).  Had we then travelled a couple of miles, or a little less, to the west, we would have found ourselves in Richebourg St. Vaast, on the left of the map, its war memorial marked in red, which is exactly where we find ourselves now.  Marked on the map in pink & blue, there are two British cemeteries nearby, one with associations to the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, the other a stark reminder of those little-known conflicts that you have to search for in the books but which, at the time, decimated one British regiment to the extent that the regimental war diary referred to it as the day the county died.

But all that is for later, because first, here we are in the centre of Richebourg St. Vaast,…

…where a fallen Poilu…

…still clutches the regimental flag in death.

The war memorial stands outside the rebuilt church,…

…whose predecessor is seen here in July 1915 in a similar view.

The village of Richebourg St. Vaast was behind the British lines from the autumn of 1914 until the Battle of the Lys in April 1918, when the Germans swept across this part of French Flanders.

Unfortunately, being so close to the front lines throughout that time, it was regularly shelled by German artillery…

…and by September 1918, when the Allies recaptured the village, it had pretty much been destroyed; here, a British officer, bottom left, looks out across the devastated churchyard.

On this side of the memorial, what are surely replacement panels…

…list the names of the Great War military casualties of both Richebourg L’Avoué (see map), top panel, and Richebourg St. Vaast, bottom panel.

Both Richebourgs were separate communes – as opposed to just villages – at the time of the Great War before being merged in 1971, which perhaps explains why there are more names on the war memorial than you might expect.

The names continue on this side, the upper panel combining names from both communes,…

…beneath which is what I suspect is an addendum panel on the left, and on the right, a memorial tablet from the Portuguese to their ‘French friends’.

The panels at this end…

…list civilians from Richebourg St. Vaast who died during the Great War,…

…and the top panel at the other end of the memorial lists civilians from Richebourg L’Avoué who died during the Great War,…

…both panels including a number of women.  The single name on the panel at the bottom is that of a soldier killed during what the French know as the Algerian War, which took place between 1954 & 1962.

British soldiers outside Richebourg St. Vaast church (left), and a British officer looks up towards the missing church roof (right – note also the decapitated figure of Christ in a corner), both photos from 1915,…

…as is this shot; the British used the battered spire as an artillery observation post.

Richebourg churchyard in 1915 – I spy at least six British soldiers, some checking out the photographer, crossing the picture.

Aerial shots of both Richebourg St. Vaast (above), the ruins of the church still in evidence, but not much else, and Richebourg L’Avoué (below), both photos from June 1918.

The old front lines, this whole area being under the Germans’ control at the time these photographs were taken, are marked, still as they were in 1915, with the old No Man’s Land the black snake that runs from between the text to mid-way up the right-hand side of the picture.  And the pink oblong, seen on the first map in this post, is where we are heading next.