On 31 August 1914 a
patrol of Gemran uhlans [light cavalry armed with lances] arrived in Arras, almost directly north of Noyon. They stayed only a few hours before
trotting off. Six days later they were followed into the city by an entire
German division, which occupied Arras. The French attacked in October and drove
the Germans out. The Germans retreated only a short distance and throughout the
rest of the war the city lay within artillery range. Almost the entire city was
destroyed by 1918, including the famous cathedral.
I drove into Arras on a warm day with
the sun shining down. I had been told that the war memorial featuring an angel
stood just outside the railway station in Place Foch. As it turned out the
square was a short distance from the station, and it took me a bit of time to
work out where the angel was to be found.
She is a strikingly modern angel,
accompanied by a soldier. Between the two are engraved the words:
"Arras a ses enfants morts pour
la défense du droit. La Paix, les ailes largement déployées, debout sur le
promontoire. Le soldat français, hier soldat de Dieu, Aujourd’Hui Soldat de
l’humanité. Sera toujours le soldat du droit".
My rather poor command of French makes
that to mean:
"Arras
has his dead children for the defense of the right. Peace, wings widely spread,
standing on the promontory. The French soldier, yesterday a soldier of God,
today a soldier of humanity, will always be a soldier of what is right."
This is a complex monument for the
dominating figures are not the only ones here. There are reliefs on either side
of the angel and the soldier. Those on one side celebrate peace, while those on
the other show war. The peace reliefs start with a tractor in the fields with
four farm hands, accompanied by cows, horses, beehives and sacks of flour. Next
come three miners digging coal. Then there are women at work in the linen
industry, a woman holding a baby and sheaves of corn. The scenes fo war include
a soldier in the trenches, a donkey carrying a pack and five marching soldiers.
Then there are a sailor, an infantryman and an aviator holding hands. Then
there is a nurse carrying a tray of medicines and a figure representing “Notre
Dame de Lorette” that most important war memorial and cemetery. At the top
is a bundle of rifles flanked by two croix de guerres and above them a row of
torpedoes.
This is all the work of Félix-Alexandre Desruelles (1865–1943) who was born in nearby Valenciennes. It was inaugurated in
1933 by the then famous and much admired Marshal Philippe Petain, who before
the Great War had been the colonel of the 33rd Infantry Regiment
which was the main garrison force in Arras. It has been Petain who had taken
command at Verdun and brought an end to the German offensive there at the end
of 1916. He won ever greater plaudits from his contemporaries in 1940 when, as
Prime Minister, he negotiated what appeared to be a remarkably generous peace
from Hitler following the surrender of the French armies. As the war
progressed, it became clear that Petain had arranged little more than an abject
capitulation. By 1945 he was vilified and was thrown into prison having been
convicted of treason.
This grand monument was damaged by
German bombs on 19 May 1940. The town council made the rather quixotic decision
not to repair the memorial. They thought the scars of 1940 merely added to the
message of the horrors of war, so left them there. You can still see them
today.
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