Bauvin

Département Nord First World War 2,211 German war dead 7 Russian war dead 1 Portuguese war dead 2 fallen of the Austro-Hungarian Army The German military cemetery Bauvin was established by the German troops in June 1915 during the heavy defensive fighting in the area between Armentières and Lens. More than 500 dead lie in this cemetery from this period. Around 200 soldiers lost their lives in the fall of 1914 and were later buried here. Almost 600 more died in 1917 as a result of the major Allied attacks near Arras and in Flanders and more than 300 during the German attack in March/April 1918 and the subsequent war of position until the area was evacuated in October 1918. In 1921 and 1923, the French military authorities carried out extensive reburials from seven surrounding communal areas. Those now resting here belonged to 63 infantry and 13 artillery regiments as well as numerous other units (mine throwers, medical service, supplies, airmen, etc.) and had their home garrisons in Thuringia, Saxony, Oldenburg, Hanover, Westphalia, Baden, Bavaria, East Frisia, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, the Rhineland and the Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck. Repair work between the wars The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. (German War Graves Commission) carried out the first work to improve the condition of the cemetery on the basis of an agreement reached with the responsible French military authorities in 1926. Among other things, the cemetery was landscaped and bordered with a hedge. This was followed by the planting of 300 trees, 5900 wild rose bushes and numerous other shrubs, as well as the construction of a new entrance. However, due to a lack of foreign currency and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the problem of permanently marking the graves had to remain unresolved for the time being. Final design Following the conclusion of the Franco-German War Graves Agreement on July 19, 1966, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. - with financial support from the German government - was able to undertake the final design of the German military cemeteries of the First World War in France. In addition to a fundamental landscaping overhaul of the entire site, the previous temporary wooden grave markers were replaced with Belgian granite crosses engraved with the names and dates of those buried here in 1978. All 2,211 fallen soldiers rest in individual graves. 31 of them remain unnamed. For religious reasons, the nine graves of the fallen of Jewish faith were given a gravestone made of natural stone instead of a cross. The Hebrew characters read: 1. (above) "Here rests buried .... ." 2. (below) "May his soul be interwoven into the circle of the living."