| Courcelette (Battle of the Somme) Memorial | |
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| Canada | |
Canadian Courcelette (Battle of the Somme) Memorial |
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| For the Canadian Corps participation Battles of the Somme and the Canadian soldiers who made the supreme sacrifice in those actions. | |
| Location | near Courcelette, France |
| The Memorial's inscription reads: THE CANADIAN CORPS BORE A VALIANT PART IN FORCING BACK THE GERMANS ON THESE SLOPES DURING THE BATTLES OF THE SOMME SEPT. 3RD - NOV. 18TH 1916 |
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The Courcelette Memorial is a Canadian war memorial that commemorates the actions of the Canadian Corps in the final two and a half months of the infamous four and a half month long Somme Offensive of the First World War. The Canadians participated at the Somme from early September to the British offensives end in mid-November 1916, engaging in several of the battles-within-the-battle of the Somme, including actions at: Flers-Courcelette, Thiepval Ridge, the Ancre Heights and the Ancre as well as a small role in providing relief to their Australian comrades in the final days of the Battle of Pozières.
The battles on the Somme were the first in which all four divisions of the Canadian Corps were used in the Great War in the same battle (though all four were never used simultaneously at the Somme) and at its end on the 18th of November it had cost the Canadians over 24,000 casualties. However, the efforts of the Canadians on the Somme were noteworthy inasmuch as they ultimately captured all of the objectives assigned to them, (though not always on the original timeline) a feat that few other British forces who fought on the Somme could claim. This fact helped cement the Canadian's reputation as fierce and elite fighters and put them in line to face some of the toughest tasks assigned to British units for the duration of the war.
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The Canadian Battlefield Monument Commission established after the Great War was appointed to select the location and design of the memorials to commemorate the Canadian participation in the First World War. The Canadian National Vimy Memorial at Vimy Ridge was selected as the national memorial site and seven other locations at Hill 62, St. Julien and Passchendaele in Belgium, as well as Le Quesnel, Dury, Courcelette and Bourlon Wood in France were chosen to commemorate significant battles the Canadian Expeditionary Force had engaged in. Each of the seven sites were to have an identical granite block inscribed with a brief description of the battle in both English and French.
The Courcelette Memorial sits beside the D929 (Albert-Bapaume) roadway, just south of the village of Courcelette itself. The site is a small square park with gardens of hedges, and maple trees. A 'Y' shaped pathway leads from the entrance to stone seats at several places around the outer edge looking out at the former battlefield. In the centre of the park the grey granite block monument is set on a low circular flagstone terrace. [1]
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