Formation
La Cambe, as an existing site of German war dead that was already informally cared for by the German War Graves Commission, was a natural choice for one of the six formal sites. After the signing in 1954 of the Franco-German Treaty on War Graves, La Cambe was formally cared for, allowing the remains of 12,000 German soldiers to be moved in from 1,400 locations in the French departments of Calvados and the Orne.
La Cambe was officially inaugurated as a German War Cemetery in September 1961. Since that date, the remains of more than 700 soldiers have been found on battlefields across Normandy, and reinterred at La Cambe.
Layout and landscaping of the site began immediately after formal handover, which today has created at its centre a large tumulus, flanked by two statues and topped by a large dark cross in basalt lava, which marks the resting place for 207 unknown and 89 identified German soldiers, interred together in a mass grave. The tumulus is surrounded by 49 rectangular grave fields with up to 400 graves each. On the large green grass area the graves are identified by flat grave markers.
The sign in front of the cemetery reads as follows:
| “ | The German Cemetery at La Cambe: In the Same Soil of France Until 1947, this was an American cemetery. The remains were exhumed and shipped to the United States. It has been German since 1948, and contains over 21,000 graves. With its melancholy rigour, it is a graveyard for soldiers not all of whom had chosen either the cause or the fight. They too have found rest in our soil of France. |
” |
Read more about this topic: La Cambe German War Cemetery
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