The Aubers Ridge Part Three – Le Maisnil Church & War Memorial

Our final French Flanders post takes us to the little village of Le Maisnil, just under three miles to the east, and a little north, of Aubers. 

And here’s the map I showed you a couple of posts ago with Neuve Chapelle (in green) just behind the British lines, and, up on the ridge, Aubers (orange), Fromelles (pink) & Le Maisnil (blue), the German second line running through all three villages.

Looks like that’s the war memorial behind the trees on the right, but as the door to the little church is open,…

…we’ll take a quick peek inside, because we don’t often get the chance to look inside these small French churches,…

…and because you never know what you might find.  This Great War Roll of Honour, something that I don’t think I’ve seen in many of the French churches – nor, often, in Roman Catholic churches in the U.K., come to that (something I have never really understood) – I have found unlocked, lists eight military casualties and three civilian victims.

German troops amid the ruins of Le Maisnil; I have no idea of the date of this picture, but it has the feel of an early shot.

Outside the church, these steps lead up to the little war memorial…

…the tablet placed in front…

…showing seven faces, the six still distinguishable all soldiers named on the Roll of Honour, the seventh the female civilian victim also named on the Roll.

The second tablet remembers two victims of the Second World War, although I know not what ‘Les A.C. de 1939-1945’ means.  Although I feel I should, for some reason.

The inscription on the face of the memorial reads, ‘La commune de Le Maisnil a ses enfants morts pour la France’, which, after all the French war memorials we have seen, I would like to think is self-explanatory,…

…and the names on the two side panels…

…are the same as the eight names of the military victims on the Roll of Honour in the church.

Indeed one of the men listed on memorial, Roll of Honour & tablet…

…has a fourth memorial – it might even be his headstone, but it seems unlikely – nearby.

View from just behind the British front line looking towards the Aubers Ridge, with the sandbagged German front line crossing the picture in the middle distance, and the position of the church at Le Maisnil marked on the horizon.  So often these panoramic photographs are, or appear to be, devoid of any kind of human life, but here you might note the British soldier casually going about his work in the foreground, protected from enemy snipers by the breastwork beyond.

The church cemetery is worth a few minutes – that sounds disrespectful, but I don’t mean it to be – of our time,…

…this headstone bearing the name of one local man, ‘Mort pour la France’ in the Second World War,…

…and here a flagpole,…

…the cross in front…

…bearing a modern panel with five more names, none of whom we have encountered before, all soldiers who died in October 1914.

A final French Flanders panorama, these photographs, looking towards what was officially termed the Le Maisnil Sector, taken on 28th August 1915.

On the left the original map, with added green*, that accompanied the panorama, with my re-creation on the right.

*’Oh Edmund, can it be true that I hold here in my mortal hand a nugget of purest green?’.

Flashback to last post, and this July 1918 map that accompanied my text about the now-gone Winchester Post cemeteries.  Winchester Post is beneath the green circle, and Grant’s Post is beneath the red circle (I’ll explain the pink bit in a minute), and if you refer back to the previous maps, you can see that these panoramic photos were taken from somewhere within Grant’s Post,…

…and that the road that passes us as it heads towards, and indeed, across, No Man’s Land, is Winchester Road.  A closer look at the left-hand side of the panorama (above) shows the Aubers Ridge crossing the horizon from the right before it begins to curve away north eastwards (just to the left of the number 12).  And for those of you who believe that camouflage netting was a Second World War invention,…

…think again!  And thus the reason for the pink shaded area on the map, which, if you look carefully, covers the word ‘screens’, becomes clear without any further explanation from me.

One final close-up showing this shattered farm behind the German lines towards the right of the panorama, probably Les Mottes Farm, which, according to the coloured map, had a row of trees in front of it and was half-enclosed by a small orchard.  And with that, it’s time to say goodbye, French Flanders; it’s been an honour and a privilege, and who knows, maybe I’ll see you again one day.

I’ll leave you with two links, one to the series of posts culminating in our visit to Fromelles (above, the newest of all the CWGC cemeteries, Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery), should you wish to reacquaint yourselves with the catastrophic events of 19th July 1916, the other to our updated French Flanders Map, from which you can access all the places of interest that we have visited in the area that are featured on this website.