The candles burned too long and left nasty sooty streaks on the white pillar. The underground cave is cold and damp, water dripping from the ceiling. In this place of memory, no one has dared to erase these black imprints which have become, over time, unusual traces of the Great War. It was here, in a chalk quarry located under the town of Arras, that chaplain GC Danvers celebrated, on Sunday April 8, 1917, the Easter mass for the British soldiers of the 2e Suffolk Regiment. The front line is then close. On the small wooden table installed at the foot of the pillar numbered “5.E”, the ecclesiastic has placed a crucifix, a missal and two candles whose smoke defiles the neighboring stones. The young recruits implore God to protect them from grapeshot and to watch over their families back home. The next day, at 5:30 a.m., to the whistles of their officers, the 1,500 men of 2e Suffolk will spring from the bowels of the land of Arras, like thousands of other compatriots engaged in combat, and will take part in the biggest surprise attack of 14-18: the battle of Arras. Many will not come back.
“Thanks to the stories of several elders tommies [les soldats de l’armée britannique]we were able to determine the exact place where Reverend Danvers had improvised this religious service and the manner in which the service was held”, says the director of heritage and archeology at the town hall of Arras, Laurent Wiart, who, on this summer morning, guides us in the Wellington quarry. This maze of underground galleries located 20 meters deep, south of the city center, was opened to the public in March 2008. Visitors wearing a solid protective helmet enter it after taking a rather rustic screened elevator. We feel, for a moment, black-faced. “Aren’t you claustrophobic? »asked Laurent Wiart before the descent.
Magnificently preserved and documented, this former place of military life bears vivid witness to the Battle of Arras. With 4,000 Britons killed per day during the six weeks of fighting, the conflict was more deadly, on the side of the Allies, than Verdun or the Battle of the Somme. However, in the history books of French schoolchildren, only a few lines are devoted to him. Is it because none of our soldiers took part? « The battle of Arras » is, on the other hand, forever engraved in the memory of the nations of the Commonwealth.
A fabulous Trojan horse
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