World War One battlefield reminder : the French Memorial in honour of the soldiers fallen during the german offensive of april 1918
(Browse the collection : West Flanders Province time lapse and video stock footage)
Carrying on up the hill, at the top is another parking area, by which is a large French Memorial. This is a tall, imposing white monument, with the figure of an angel on the front. The figure represents France, the granite monument behind is 54 feet high and topped by a poilu’s helmet. On the front are the words ‘Aux soldats Francais 1914-1918’. The angel has her eyes closed, with what seems an expression of suffering and sadness on her face.
The French Memorial at Kemmel. She sits next to a steep road in a cup in the trees, standing a fair way up the slopes of the mount on a clutch burning incline. Known as Mont Kemmel, Mount Kemmel or Kemmelburg depending on your nationality, all of them held it a one point or another between 1914 and 1919. It sits in Heuvelland in Western Flanders, not far from the French border below Ypres on the bottom of the Salient.
Allied soldiers (first British, then French) were an easy target for the German artillery attacking from the top of the hill. The ossuary was built at the end of the war. The various local testimonies of the time show the importance of the number of bodies still left on the ground after the Battle of the Flanders Mountains.
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kemmel190424_029_fhd | kemmel190424_029_uhd | kemmel190424_029_web |
Mov ProRes 422 HQ | Mov ProRes 422 HQ | H264 Mp4 |
322 Mo | 1,24 Go | 19,3 Mo |