The Le Touret Memorial to the Missing and CWGC Cemetery in France
The Le Touret Memorial commemorates over 13,400 British soldiers who were killed in this sector of the Western Front from the beginning of October 1914 to the eve of the Battle of Loos in late September 1915 & who have no known grave. The Memorial takes the form of a loggia surrounding an open rectangular court. The names of those commemorated are listed on panels set into the walls of the court & the gallery, arranged by regiment, rank and alphabetically by surname within the rank. The memorial was designed by John Reginald Truelove, who had served as an officer with the London Regiment during the war, & unveiled by the British ambassador to France, Lord Tyrrell, on 22 March 1930. Almost all of the men commemorated on the Memorial served with regular or territorial regiments from across the United Kingdom & were killed in actions that took place along a section of the front line that stretched from Estaires in the north to Grenay in the south. This part of the Western Front was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting of the first year of the war, including the battles of La Bassée (10 October – 2 November 1914), Neuve Chapelle (10 – 12 March 1915), Aubers Ridge (9 – 10 May 1915), and Festubert (15 – 25 May 1915). Soldiers serving with Indian & Canadian units who were killed in this sector in 1914 & ’15 whose remains were never identified are commemorated on the Neuve Chapelle & Vimy memorials Those who fell during the Battle of Aubers Ridge are commemorated on the Ploegsteert Memorial. The men of the Indian Corps began burying their fallen comrades at this site in November 1914 & the cemetery was used continually by field ambulances & fighting units until the German spring offensive began in March 1918. Richebourg L’Avoue was overrun by the German forces in April 1918, but the cemetery was used again in September & October after this territory was recaptured by the Allies. Over 900 Commonwealth servicemen who were killed are buried here.
Size: 5627px × 3699px
Location: 11 Rue du Bois 62136 Richebourg, France
Photo credit: © Niall Ferguson / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: cemetery, cwgc, france, front, graves, great, le, memorial, missing, remembrance, sacrifice, touret, war, western
