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Remembered Today:

April 1917 Around Arras


JimSmithson

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Hi Fred

Yes, the book is available. I can see it on Amazon.co.uk or you can use Pen & Sword direct.

Dave's thread can be found at

Jim

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Jim,

I am working with Peter Barton on a new panorama volume about the Battle of Arras. It is due for completion later this year and will be published in 2009. We too hope that it will open people’s eyes to the Arras area. It is a fascinating battlefield to visit and so quiet compared to Ypres and the Somme. In fact, we’ll be out there on another recce later this month. The dearth of literature on the battle means we have a tremendous crop of unused sources to choose material from. The panoramas found in the German archives really are special. Many thanks for posting these pictures – they are very useful (and very well photographed too!)

Cheers

Jeremy

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Hello Jim,

very likable this thread about the region south of Arras.

If I would have the knowledge of all relics I would like to create a "foot-path of remembrance" and pin-point it into a map, that bounds the most essential remains of this area.

Together with your great pics it might be be helpful for visitors.

Fritz

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Jim, as ever great photographs ,would like to see more of this area

Fritz my friend a good idea, which begs a question, are there many/any organised trips around this part of the battlefield?

Andy

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I am working with Peter Barton on a new panorama volume about the Battle of Arras.

Good to hear another book is coming out on Arras - it does surprise me there are so few.

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  • Admin

Fantastic photographs- thank you for sharing them.

Michelle

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Glad you enjoyed them Michelle

Fantastic news that there is at last going to be some new material on the area. The panoramas on The Somme and Passchendaele are superb books and I am looking forward to the one later this year called The Battlefields of the First World War. A specialist one on Arras will be a fine addition to the collection.

I do feel there is still a need for a number of additional guides such as the Vimy Ridge ones and Paul's 'Walking Arras'. Paul can only get so much into a BE copy of the whole area. I think there is scope for a whole book on Neuville-Vitasse/Wancourt or Rouex or whatever. I just don't have the time or expertise to be the one to do it, although there are times when I am tempted. Maybe Fritz and I can create a stopgap issue of some kind in the meantime, with all the help we can get from the Andys of this world.

Can you get over to Arras in August Fritz? Maybe we can mull over it then.

Jim

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Jim, Fritz

It would be a pleasure to help out with any project on these forgotten areas, I know that Andy S would be tempted

You might just bump into Jeremy and Peter whilst you are out there

Andy

:rolleyes:

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Hello Jim, hello Andy,

I agree with you, experts are needed to make this job perfectly. But we all others could bundle up our knowledge to make it easier for them. - What I meant, it must be easy with the support of Google to mark the remains which are still existing, to feature the lines and so on. Not more for the beginning, just a thing that will grow ever more. Perhaps Ican do more in my next life as pensioner.

I can´t visit you in August, Jim, my family has organized my holiday in another wise. But in autumn you have the first priority. Hope you will be in France then. In the meantime we can extend our experience about the war at Arras.

Cordial greetings to you all

Fritz

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If you gentlemen do go ahead with a project on Arras, if there is anything I can do to help let me know. As with any book you write, you always have material left over, plus like some of you, I have been visiting the ground for one to two years. Arras certainly needs to be better known.

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That's very kind of you Paul. You are raising the spectre of 'having a go' even higher in my mind in spite of the more rational part of my brain saying when and how! I will be giving some serious thought to a possible venture (but only with a team) whilst at the house in August. In the meantime, a little further south but still an interesting, hardly visited 1918 area here is Gommiecourt cemetery.

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Not to be mixed up with Gommecourt as someone at the CWGC did when replacing the book in May this year.

Interestingly in the cemetery are quite a number of German graves, more than I have seen before but then I am not as seasoned a traveller as many Pals here.

post-28845-1215631185.jpg

Jim

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If you gentlemen do go ahead with a project on Arras, if there is anything I can do to help let me know. As with any book you write, you always have material left over, plus like some of you, I have been visiting the ground for one to two years. Arras certainly needs to be better known.

In that case Paul do you have enough left to do a 'walking the Somme 2' ( or Ypres or Arras ) ?

Mick D

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I was going to add two other photgraphs last night but the site seemed to lock out on me. These are of a lovely small cemetery in Erviliers, not far from the last place. The tree in the cemetery is majestic and although I am not an expert I would think pre-dates the War.

post-28845-1215716374.jpg

post-28845-1215716416.jpg

All from 1918 again, maybe that can be a theme of a Walking .... part 2?? Ssshhh no advertising

Jim

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  • 1 year later...

Reviving an old thread.

Just had a few days in France & Flanders and thought I’d post a picture of Peter Barton taking a panorama. This is for our Arras book due out in June next year. The original panorama (British No.554, taken from Hill 90 on 29 April 1917) was taken just a bit further back but a field of corn obscured the modern view. It takes in Monchy le Preux all the way across to Vis en Artois with Wancourt in the foreground. Just shows the length that one has to go to in order to get the shot!

post-16428-1254081985.jpg

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Jeremy

I would be interested to know exactly where you took this from Jeremy. In my work on the area Hill 90 has become a bit of an interest of mine, mainly due to the fact that the point on the trench maps marked 90 is not the high point that everyone assumes today. The topology on the old maps does not match the new. I think I can place the tree behind Peter but I am not certain.

Annoying to see that I thought I was going to get on with a piece of work in 2008, all good intentions...... Instead I think I will just add some to this thread of what I did in the summer.

Jim

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I was going to add two other photgraphs last night but the site seemed to lock out on me. These are of a lovely small cemetery in Erviliers, not far from the last place. The tree in the cemetery is majestic and although I am not an expert I would think pre-dates the War.

post-28845-1215716374.jpg

post-28845-1215716416.jpg

All from 1918 again, maybe that can be a theme of a Walking .... part 2?? Ssshhh no advertising

Jim

Jim

As you can see I am a fair distance from the areas you visit however your photographs make me feel I am right there.

Thank you for sharing them.

It is true that one photograph is worth a thousand words !!!!

Tony

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Some panoramas I took whilst over in France this summer.

post-12171-1254173330.jpg

Greenland Hill from the Inn (gone now) towards Fampoux.

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post-12171-1254174044.jpg

Fampoux , the start line towards Rouex, Brown's Copse Cemetery is behind the treeline.

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post-12171-1254174596.jpg
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post-12171-1254175986.jpg

Point de Jour and 'the Ridge'

John

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Has anyone got any shots of the Gavrelle area to post? I would be more than interested to see.

Roger

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I dont have any of Gavrelle as such, but the 1st of my pictures is taken on the Rouex / Gavrelle road. The photo was taken with my back to Gavrelle it's about 500 metres away.

John

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