She observes, moved, more than 2000 tombstones strictly aligned. “They were sometimes as old as our son,” notes Jody Baade, who came from Melbourne to the Australian memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, in the north of France, one of the 139 First World War sites listed as world heritage on Wednesday. of Unesco. These French and Belgian burial sites, spread between Flanders, Wallonia, North and North-East France, embody the horror of the First World War, which left 10 million dead from 130 countries, and 20 million amputees, according to the ministry. French Culture.
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Accompanied by her husband John, Jody scribbled two names on a piece of paper, those of soldiers from her town of Maroondah, near Melbourne. She will place “a small Australian flag and a paper poppy” on their graves. The couple treated themselves to this trip to Europe for their 50th birthday. Before Paris, Lyon and Italy, they devote three days, between the north of France and Belgium, to these memorial sites of the “Western Front” of the First World War. The list retained by UNESCO testifies to its global character: a Portuguese cemetery, an Indian memorial, or even the largest Chinese cemetery in France, in Noyelles-sur-Mer (north), where 842 Chinese who worked for the British army behind the front. Many of the sites are Commonwealth cemeteries and memorials, with their share of British, Canadian and New Zealand tourists. “The duty to remember is essential for us, more than for the French,” believes Jody Baade.
Like her, Edwina and Joshua, 27 and 29, from Sydney, are taking advantage of a two-month vacation in France to visit the memorial. “We realize, after making the trip, the distance that separates our country from Europe, and the sacrifices our soldiers have made for us,” she says.
Tourists from the Commonwealth “share the same Anglo-Saxon culture of remembrance and ancestors who fell on the field of honor,” insists Christian Berger, general director of the Tourist Office in the town of Arras, in the north of France. . At the end of August, the All Blacks took a detour, before the Rugby World Cup, via the Wellington Quarry, in Arras, a network of galleries redeveloped by New Zealand soldiers during the war. The place has “become a memorial hub with more than 60,000 visitors per year,” says Christian Berger, for whom the inscription “will strengthen the management of the heritage of these sites and protect them.” In recent years, attendance at memorial sites has been increased by the centenary of the Great War, notes Jean Klinkert, president of the Hartmannswillerkopf national monument committee, in Alsace (eastern France), a progression however slowed down on certain sites by the Covid-19. The Thiepval memorial, in the north of France, has lost half of its visitors, mainly British, since the pandemic. But they are “coming back slowly”, underlines Pascal-Louis Caillaut, of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), which manages 51 of the 139 sites. “Being classified as a world heritage site means 30% more attendance,” assures Olivier Gérard, director of the Douaumont ossuary, where rest the remains of 130,000 unknown soldiers killed during the Battle of Verdun. In this place, which welcomes 250,000 to 300,000 visitors per year, he observes “a renewed interest”, driven in particular by “young people aged 20 to 30 who explore the history of their families, seeking to know their roots”. He hopes that the UNESCO registration “will allow this memory to remain alive to prevent us from starting this madness again… even if it is wishful thinking”. Presented in 2018, the application of the Franco-Belgian sites was blocked by UNESCO, which postponed its examination, considering that they could “potentially be used for nationalist purposes”, recalls the Belgian historian Dominiek Dendooven, member of the scientific committee of the application. “We wanted to demonstrate that these places, where soldiers of more than 130 current nationalities are buried, are first and foremost places of meeting between cultures,” continues Dominiek Dendooven. “We are working for a better world.”