Neuve-Chapelle Memorial in Neuve-Chapelle, Nord-Pas-de-Calais

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Get directions Neuve-Chapelle, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France

Coordinates: 50.57512, 2.77482
Cemetery ID:

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The village of Neuve Chapelle is some 5 kilometres north of La Bassee and 20 kilometres west-south-west of Lille. The Memorial is 800 metres south-west of the village on the east side of the road from La Bassee to Estaires.

The Neuve-Chappelle Memorial commemorates the more than 4700 soldiers of the Inidan Army who died in fighting on the Western Front in World War I and who have no known grave. Also located here are special memorials to Indian soldiers who died in captivity during WWI and were buried at Zehrensdorf Indian Cemetery in Germany, as well as memorials to a number of WWII Indian Army POWs.

The Memorial takes the form of a circular enclosure, in the foreground of which is a column nearly 15 metres high, recalling the pillars of Asokar, surmounted by a Lotus capital, the Star of India and the Imperial Crown. On either side of the column two carved tigers guard this temple of the dead. The column and the tigers are supported by a podium, on the near side of which is carved "INDIA 1914-1918", while on the far side are the Battle Honours of Indian units on the Western Front. From the ends of the podium a pierced stone railing extends half-way round the circle, and the ends of the semicircle are marked by two small domed "chattris", roughly East and West. Engraved on the Memorial is the following inscription: "TO THE HONOUR OF THE ARMY OF INDIA WHICH FOUGHT IN FRANCE AND BELGIUM, 1914-1918, AND IN PERPETUAL REMEMBRANCE OF THOSE OF THEIR DEAD WHOSE NAMES ARE HERE RECORDED AND WHO HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE."