La Neuville-en-Tourne-à-Fuy

This war cemetery is home to 1,965 German war dead from the First World War. Département Ardennes The German military cemetery at La Neuville-en-Tourne-à-Fuy was established by the German troops in spring 1917 as a hospital cemetery. The wounded from the battle in April and May 1917 for the heights south of Moronvilliers came to La Neuville - a place which, like neighboring Nauroy, could not be rebuilt after the war. Later, the fallen from the German offensive in July 1918 and the defensive battles in September and October 1918 were added to the list. The memorial was created by sculptors who served as soldiers in the troops. Those buried here belonged to units whose home bases were in Saxony in particular, but also in West Prussia, Silesia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Westphalia and the Rhineland. Repair work between the wars Initial work to improve the condition of the cemetery was carried out by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. (German War Graves Commission) on the basis of an agreement reached with the responsible French military authorities in 1926. However, the problem of permanently marking the graves remained unresolved due to a lack of foreign currency and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Final landscaping After the conclusion of the Franco-German War Graves Agreement of July 19, 1966, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. - with financial support from the German government - was able to begin the final landscaping of the German military cemeteries in France from the First World War. In addition to a fundamental landscaping overhaul, in which volunteers from the Volksbund's youth camps were already involved in the early 1960s, the previous temporary wooden crosses were replaced in 1973 with metal crosses bearing the names and dates of those buried here. Volunteers from the Volksbund's youth camps moved the 35-kilogram cross foundations transported by the Bundeswehr and, like the Bundeswehr soldiers, impressively supported the Volksbund in fulfilling its tasks. All 1,965 fallen rest in individual graves. For religious reasons, the graves of the three fallen of Jewish faith were marked with a natural stone stele 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." Maintenance: The cemetery is constantly maintained by the Volksbund's maintenance service.