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2018 France/ Belgium Trip Post No 17
From Bertangles we headed for Fricourt German Military Cemetery near Albert still on the trail of the Red Baron.
The cemetery is located on the east side of the D147 road from Fricourt to Contalmaison, approximately 1 kilometre north of Fricourt village. It was begun in 1920 by the French authorities as the battlefields north of the Somme river were gradually cleared of debris and the remains of the soldiers who died in action.
Von Richthofens body was moved from the civilian cemetery in Bertangles to the new military at Fricourt, section 4, grave 1177. In 1925, at the request of his brother his body was again exhumed and taken to Berlin to be buried for the third time in a state funeral. Later still at the height of the Cold War in 1975 he was once again exhumed and moved to the family home at Weisbaden in Germany to be buried for the fourth and last time.
Today his grave at Fricourt is occupied by Pte Sebastian Paustian.
The bodies of German soldiers were brought to Fricourt from some 79 communes in the regions around Bapaume, Albert, Combles, the Ancre valley and Villers-Bretonneux and are not buried in any sequence of time.
The cemetery is the resting place for 17,027 German First World War soldiers. They died on the Somme battlefields over the four years of the Great War, from late September 1914, when the German Second Army established a defensive front line in this sector, to the spring and summer Battles of the Somme in 1918.
Approximately 1,000 of the soldiers lying here were killed during the early weeks of the war from late August to the late autumn of 1914, and during the trench warfare from that time through 1915 and up to June 1916.
From the beginning of the British and French Allied Somme offensive of 1st July 1916 to the close of the battle in mid November 1916 approximately 10,000 German soldiers lost their lives on the Somme battlefields. A further 6,000 German soldiers were killed during the large-scale German Spring offensive, called the “Kaiserschlacht” by the German Army, from 21st March 1918 and in the battles which followed it up to October 1918.
Of the 17,000 burials at Fricourt only 5,057 German soldiers have an individual grave. Of these, 114 soldiers are unidentified. These soldiers are generally buried in a double grave at the foot of each cross with a double grave on the other side therefore showing four names on one cross. There are 14 Jewish graves which have headstones instead of crosses.
The remains of 11,970 soldiers lie in four communal graves (Gemeinschaftsgräber). Of these the names of 6,477 remain unknown. The names of those who are known to be buried in the communal graves are inscribed on metal tablets at the rear of the cemetery.
The theme of five crosses is the logo of the German War Graves Agency, the VDK.
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