Tag: Tolkien

Introduction

It’s common to see the terms Nécropole nationale, Cimetière militaire and carré militaire used seemingly without any underpinning logic for what the French refer to as lieux de sépultures de militaires français – military burial sites. This post looks at the differences and some of the key characteristics of these places of memory and mourning.

Carré militaire – ‘military square’

Not, as the English translation would seem to imply, a parade ground, but definitely a space intended to evoke the discipline, structure and order of military formations. A carré militaire is a section of a civilian cemetery dedicated exclusively to grouping together the graves of military personnel to create a solemn space where their memory can be collectively honoured. While, in Paris within the cimetière de Vaugirard, a carré militaire was created in 1882 for the soldats pensionnaires of l’Hôtel des Invalides – as the name implies, originally intended as a hospital and hospice for army veterans (as well as, in reality, a barracks, convent, and factory) – there’s a more ‘everyday’ example in the Cimetière municipal de Fontenay-sous-Bois (see images below). Here the headstones are of a design I’ve not encountered before, whilst the grave of Charles Guillemont is an example of an exhumé – a subject touched on in a future blog post, but briefly here a deceased soldier whose body is recovered (almost always by the family) and brought to be re-buried in another location – usually closer to ‘home’.

To be buried in a carré militaire, generally, the deceased has to have served in the armed forces and died in service, or after a period of ‘honourable service’. There has to be a formal request made by the family. This is important as it can connect to the exhumation of the deceased from a battlefield burial site previously mentioned. Proof of military service is required. There is a cost for the burial (although sometimes this is met by a body such as a veteran’s association or a local authority). The maintenance of the site is often under the care of local government organisations, Le Souvenir français or associations de bénévoles or other specialist groups, but the ministère des Armées (Ministry of the Armed Forces) has overall responsibility for the conservation of all the burial sites of French military personnel.

Cimetière militaire or nécropole nationale

The definition between these two is much more blurred and the terms are used to an extent interchangeably. For example, the enormous cimetière de regroupement (concentration cemetery) at Sillery in the Marne is frequently referred to as the « Cimetière militaire de Sillery » but is officially la nécropole nationale de Sillery. A nécropole nationale is, after all, a cemetery, but the distinction is sometimes made between a cemetery as a grouping of graves still in use, in which the dead continue to be buried, whereas a nécropole is a grouping of graves from past historical events. The latter is also associated with something old, large, and architecturally notable, whereas a cemetery implies something more ordinary.

The clearest official clarification is that of the ministère des Armées which speaks of « les nécropoles nationales [et] les carrés militaires en France métropolitaine et les cimetières militaires à l’étranger ». Cemeteries overseas, nécropoles and carrés in France. However, my impression is that often the ‘cemetery name’ is the ‘heritage name’ for a burial site – a name with some period of usage before the official nomenclature is applied, [possibly going as far back as wartime origins. That’s not to say that an ‘official’ name can’t have heritage as well, just that the intention to create a consistent official nomenclature for sights of burial and mourning is what visitors encounter on cemetery information panels – as well as in other situations (such as the IGN maps).

Planned Égalité ?

In layout, French war cemeteries (whether carrés militaires, cimetières or nécropoles françaises) may seem more uniform and plainer than those of other nations. In part, this is because no architects were involved to give individual character to their construction – a significant contrast to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission sites, for example. The entrances uniformly have laurel leaves and croix de guerre like this one at Cormicy.

Rules for their basic form mean rows (often of double graves) are separated by a central aisle leading to a pole where the French national flag flies. Individual decoration of graves is prohibited. Variations for religious reasons are what usually draw the eye – (although I intend to present, in a future post, evidence of just how much variety there actually is in the grave markers still present in French cemeteries). Large unit memorials may be present, and sometimes modern commemorations created during the Centenary. The most deceptive elements, however, are the seemingly innocuous mass grave markers for ossuaries like this.

The cemetery’s size can, therefore, be misleading as to how many casualties are actually buried there. It’s not always the case that an ossuary contains ‘unknown’ dead – as the previous photo and these of the 3 « ossuaires » at the Nécropole nationale de Friscati show. However, only a close look at the numbers actually buried beneath these markers really brings home their meaning. You may find similar markers in German war cemeteries. Don’t fail to look at each one and take a moment to absorb the scale of loss they represent.

Returning to the layout, regulations say the ground should be covered with grass – but a closer look shows there’s often a lot of variety. These tiny flowers at Cormicy in June 2022, for example, brought to mind those that grew on the graves of Theoden’s ancestors in The Lord of the Rings.

Sometimes, where issues of climate and location present specific issues, there are variations such as low hedges which are planted on each terraced level of the cemetery. as at Chêne Millet (68) – which features as the header image for this post – they’re probably intended to prevent erosion by snow or heavy rain.

Of course, all these elements add order to what was initially a much more varied arrangement of graves. I’ll end this post with a photograph from 1915 of a military burial site that has now ceased to exist. This was the ‘Upper Cemetery’ at Vieux-Thann in Alsace. The bodies of those buried in this cemetery were subsequently moved to the Nécropole Nationale de Cernay or the military cemetery at Colmar. There’s a good deal less uniformity about the graves and the markers and, obviously, the latter are wood and temporary. There’s a very republican approach to the uniformity of the modern lieux de sépultures de militaires français but, in that uniformity, something also of a European nation with a long history of loss and conflict. For someone French (or German, or indeed, from a host of other continental European nations) there’s an understanding of what such sites are and their characteristics. For me (and I suspect many others), inhabiting a small island off the coast of mainland Europe, somewhat insulated from the ravages of continental warfare until the 20th Century, there’s undoubtedly a moment of awe and horror when ‘among the crosses, row on row’ you encounter effectively the burial pits of the Napoleonic Wars and le Colonel Chabert – hundreds, if not thousands, of bodies mostly unable to be identified and flung into mass graves – an aspect of ‘the French experience of the First World War’ that perhaps we will never truly understand.