Normandy Part - 4.

The Thiepval Memorial is the British Memorial mainly dedicated to the regiment and corps of the British Army as well as soldiers for the Royal Navy Division and South African Brigade.

The memorial is made of redbrick, faced with Portland stone - upon which is engraved the names of 73,000 soldiers who died on the Somme battlefields between July 1915 and March 1918 and who have no known grave.

'Here are recorded names of officers and men of the British Armies who fell on the Somme battlefields July 1915 - February 1918 but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death'.

At the foot of the memorial lies a cemetery containing 300 British and 300 French graves, many of whom are unknown.

The grey stone French crosses bear the single word 'Inconnu' meaning unknown.

 

The British rectangular graves made of white stone bear the inscription 'A soldier of the Great War/known unto God'.

 

'That the world may remember the common sacrifice of two and a half million dead, here have been laid side by side Soldiers of France and of the British Empire in eternal comradship'.
As inscribed on the Thiepval Cemetary Cross of Sacrifice (source: Wikipedia).