List of World War I memorials and cemeteries in Champagne Ardennes

Memorials to the Missing

These battles involved the deaths of many men and there are two major British "Memorials to the Missing" for the men lost whose remains could not be identified. The memorials at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre links to the First Battle of the Marne, and that at Soissons which links to the 1918 battle.

Monuments in Reims and the surrounding area

Reims was a front-line city throughout the four years of the war and suffered bombardment from German artillery. The Reims Cathedral was bombed and damaged on many occasions, and images of it became a rallying icon in the non-German world. Sixty percent of Reims was destroyed during the 1914–1918 war, and 4,567 Reims men were killed in the conflict, with a further 740 civilian casualties.

The German Cemetery at Loivre

The German cemetery at Loivre contains the remains of 4,149 men of whom 1,913 could not be identified and their remains are in an ossuary.

The Monument to the 119th and 319th French Infantry Regiments and the 20th Territorials at Cauroy-lès-Hermonville

This monument is located at Cauroy-lès-Hermonville near Reims. Many men of the 119th had fallen in the Battle of Charleroi on 22 August 1914, one of the battles fought at the beginning of the war and known as the Battles of the Frontiers. One inscription is from Belgium and pays homage to the men of the 119th (aux frères – their brothers in arms)

Chemin des Dames

The Chemin des Dames (literally, "path of ladies") runs 30 kilometres (19 mi) along a ridge between the valleys of the rivers Aisne and Ailette in the département of Aisne. After their retreat from the Marne, it was a logical place for the German Army to choose to turn and attempt to check the Allied advances. The German army held the ridge for most of the war, but the French made numerous attempts to remove them from it; this resulted in an enormous loss of life. 20–40 metres (66–131 ft) beneath the ridge is an almost 1 square kilometre (0.39 sq mi) cave network called "The Dragon's Lair" (La Caverne du Dragon). The subterranean caverns were originally a tunnel system created from excavations of limestone for building purposes in the 17th century, and during the war they were used by both French and German forces for field hospitals and command posts.

The Chemin des Dames has along its length many visible reminders of the war. The Fort of Malmaison held a strategic position and at La Royere the part which colonial troops played in the war is recorded. At Cerny-en-Laonnois, a little chapel is the official remembrance site for the Chemin des Dames. The Caverne du Dragon Museum is on the spot where the Germans used the old quarry as an underground barracks. The Monument to the Basques is in memory of the 36th Division, most of whom were from the south-west of France. The Plateau de Californie affords views of the Aisne valley, and was the scene of the offensive launched by General Nivelle on 16 April 1917. The village of Craonne, rebuilt in the 1920s, has the Arboretum de Craonne memorial and the National Tank Monument. All these memorials are interspersed with cemeteries and smaller monuments to the dead.

Over 130,000 men lost their lives in this area. In the French, German, British and Italian cemeteries only half of the men who died could be identified, and many were laid to rest in ossuaries.

While there were always almost daily skirmishes along the Chemin des Dames during the war there were three major battles fought. These were:

The First Battle of the Aisne was the Allied follow-up offensive against the right wing of the German First Army (led by Alexander von Kluck) and Second Army (led by Karl von Bülow) as they retreated from the Marne in September 1914. The Aisne battle began on the evening of 13 September but it was inconclusive and the two armies concluded that a head-on breakthrough was not possible and started the Race to the Sea with one attempt after another to take the opposition's flank. Once they reached the North Sea Coast, the "war of movement" ended and trench warfare took its place.

After the First Battle of the Aisne, no major battles were fought in the area until March 1917 but during this time several thousand soldiers died in local surprise attacks or coup de main operations and on 25 January 1915, German forces captured the Creute farm (today La Caverne du Dragon or the Dragon's Lair), the last remaining French position on the plateau. This was what is known as the "Battle of the Creute". The Germans then dominated the ridge.

The Second Battle of the Aisne took place between 16 and 25 April 1917. This was to become known as the "Nivelle Offensive". General Robert Nivelle was an artilleryman by training and started the battle with a six-day-long artillery bombardment involving some 5,300 guns but this arguably did no more than alert the Germans to the fact that an attack was coming. On 16 April, seven French army corps attacked the German line along the Chemin des Dames ridge but Nivelle had underestimated the enemy's defensive preparations (the Germans had created a network of deep shelters in old underground stone quarries below the ridge, where their troops had been able to take shelter during the French barrage) and the well-prepared German positions dominated the southerly slope over which the French attackers were advancing, the Germans making maximum use of their new MG08/15 machine guns. The French took 40,000 casualties on the first day alone, and during the following 12 days of the battle French losses continued to rise to 120,000 casualties (dead, wounded, and missing). The final count, when the offensive was over, was 271,000 French and 163,000 German casualties; although the German defenders suffered less, they lost some 20,000 prisoners, 40 cannons, and 200 machine guns. The high French casualty count in such a small space of time, and with such minimal gains, was perceived at headquarters and by the French public as a disaster. There was also much criticism of the agonizingly slow evacuation of the French wounded which it was thought demonstrated a lack of logistical preparations. Nivelle had to resign, and the French Army morale suffered, with growing instances where soldiers refused to accept orders.

This situation developed into a threat of complete disintegration and General Pétain, who had opposed the offensive, replaced Nivelle to reestablish order. He instituted positive changes, such as longer home leaves and better food and medical assistance for the troops. By the autumn of 1917, the British army took over the defenses at the western end of the ridge.

During the summer of 1917, the area saw the Battle of the Observatories which was a series of local attacks and counterattacks to gain control of high positions commanding the views between Craonne and Laffaux and in October, after the allied victory at the Battle of Malmaison the German forces left the Chemin des Dames and moved to the north of the Ailette River valley.

The Third Battle of the Aisne was part of the German "Spring Offensive" in which the Germans sought to recapture the Chemin des Dames ridge before the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) arrived in any great numbers. It was one of a series of offensives, known as the Kaiserschlacht, launched by the Germans in the spring and summer of 1918. The American Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry Division (United States) and the 93rd Infantry Division (United States) were the first Americans to fight in France, albeit detached from the American Expeditionary Force and under French command. The massive surprise attack (named Blücher-Yorck after two Prussian generals of the Napoleonic Wars) lasted from 27 May until 6 June 1918.

Operation Blücher-Yorck was planned primarily by Erich Ludendorff, who was certain that success at the Aisne would lead the German armies to within striking distance of Paris. Ludendorff, who saw the BEF as the main threat, believed that this, in turn, would cause the Allies to move forces from Flanders to help defend the French capital, allowing the Germans to continue their Flanders offensive with greater ease. Thus, the Aisne drive was essentially planned as a large diversionary attack.

The defence of the Aisne area was in the hands of General Denis Auguste Duchêne, commander of the French Sixth Army. In addition, four divisions of the British IX Corps, led by Lieutenant-General Sir Alexander Hamilton-Gordon, held the Chemin des Dames Ridge; they had been posted there to rest and refit after surviving the "Michael" battle. On the morning of 27 May 1918, the Germans began a 4,000 gun bombardment of the Allied front lines and the British suffered heavy losses, because Duchêne (reluctant to abandon the Chemin des Dames Ridge after it had been captured at such cost the previous year had ordered them to mass together in the front trenches, in defiance of instructions from the French Commander-in-Chief Henri-Philippe Pétain. Huddled together they were to make for easy artillery targets. The bombardment was followed by a poison gas drop and once the gas had lifted the main infantry assault by 17 German Sturmtruppen divisions commenced.

Taken completely by surprise and with their defences spread thin, the Allies were unable to stop the attack and the German army advanced through a gap of 40 kilometres (25 mi) in the Allied lines and reached the Aisne in under six hours. In fact the Germans were to smash through eight Allied divisions on a line between Reims and Soissons, pushing the Allies back to the river Vesle and gaining an extra 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) of territory by nightfall.

Victory seemed near for the Germans, who had captured just over 50,000 Allied soldiers and well over 800 guns by 30 May 1918 but, after having advanced within 56 kilometres (35 mi) of Paris on 3 June, the German armies were beset by numerous problems, including supply shortages, fatigue, lack of reserves and many casualties along with counter-attacks by and stiff resistance from newly arrived American divisions, who engaged them in the Battles of Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood and on 6 June 1918, the German advance halted on the Marne.

The French had suffered over 98,000 casualties and the British around 29,000. German losses were nearly as great if not slightly heavier. Duchêne was recalled by French Commander-in-Chief Philippe Pétain for his poor handling of the British and French troops but on a positive note the Americans had arrived and proven themselves in combat for the first time in the war. During the Second Battle of the Marne, the last fight on the Chemin des Dames occurred between 2 August and 10 October 1918 and the Germans finally abandoned the ridge and were pushed northwards.

Monuments in and around Château-Thierry

Château-Thierry is a commune in northern France, about 90 kilometres (56 mi) east-northeast of Paris, a sub-prefecture of the Aisne department in Picardy. There are monuments and a cemetery to American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) which fought in this region in the summer of 1918, when they arrived to aid the Allies in the Second Battle of the Marne and the Hundred Days Offensive at the war's conclusion.