Montdidier

Département Somme 8051 German war dead First World War The Montdidier German military cemetery was established in 1920 by the French military authorities as a collective cemetery for German war dead who had been buried in temporary graves in 134 surrounding municipalities. Over the course of the next 15 years, a further 1,000 fallen soldiers whose remains were found during the clearing of the battlefields of the summer battles of 1916 and 1918 and during construction work were added. Only a few of those buried here died during the German advance in the fall of 1914 and during the subsequent trench warfare. However, the losses rose sharply during the major German attack in March 1918 - during which Montdidier was occupied by German troops for the first time - and the Allied counter-attack in August 1918. The troops buried in Montdidier belonged to units whose home garrisons were in Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Bavaria, East and West Prussia, Poznan, Silesia, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony, Baden and the Hanseatic cities of Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck. The regiments of the Prussian Guard and the units from Alsace and Lorraine also made heavy sacrifices. Repair work between the wars The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. (German War Graves Commission) carried out the first repair and expansion work to improve the condition of the cemetery from 1927 onwards on the basis of an agreement reached with the responsible French military authorities in 1926. Trees and bushes were planted, the graves were landscaped, an entrance with steps leading up from the road to the cemetery and a forged gate were built, the communal grave was surrounded by natural stone walls and a memorial with three copper crosses and an inscription was erected. 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 of 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, the previous temporary wooden grave markers were replaced in 1974 with metal crosses bearing the names and dates of those buried here. The 35-kilogram cross foundations were moved to the graves by volunteers from a Volksbund youth camp. The German Armed Forces transported the foundations and, like the young people, provided significant support for the work of the Volksbund. Of the 4351 people buried in individual graves, 237 remain unknown. There are 3700 fallen soldiers buried in a common grave. 801 of them are known by name. For religious reasons, the graves of the six fallen of the Jewish faith were marked with a natural stone headstone 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.