Thiepval (France) (AFP)

A monument 45 meters high, engraved with 72,000 names: 105 years after the Battle of the Somme, the imposing Thiepval memorial, dedicated to the Commonwealth soldiers who died in the summer of 1916, undergoes major works, in order to continue to maintain the memory of their sacrifice.

On a hill in the Picardy countryside stands this memorial composed of three Art Deco-style arches, inaugurated in 1932 as a tribute to the soldiers - mainly British but also South African - who fell in what is remembered as the "British Verdun ".

With more than 12,000 servicemen killed on day one, July 1, 1916, and whose bodies have not been found, the Battle of the Somme was the most costly in WWI for the British Army. .

On Thursday, the British ambassador was expected on the spot, five years after the commemoration with great pomp of the centenary, in the presence of François Hollande, David Cameron and part of the British royal family.

Thiepval is "the largest and most emblematic memorial in the world for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC)", explains Xavier Puppinck, director for France of this commission which maintains 23,000 sites in 153 countries.

In France, it employs 400 people, including 300 gardeners.

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The CWGC has undertaken major renovation work on the memorial, the second phase of which, launched in March 2021 at a cost of 3 million euros, is due to be completed in May 2022.

On the program, drainage and improvement of the waterproofing of the building, exposed on its hill to wind and rain, but also restoration or replacement of stone panels on which the names are engraved.

"It's always moving: it's not just a name engraved in stone, it's the memory of a soldier. They crossed the Channel to die for us", confides Franck Michel, engraver of the occupied CWGC to re-engrave a name that had been damaged, scrupulously respecting the original font.

On the panels are strung rosaries of Watson, Newton, Kelly ...

- "Ridiculous earnings" -

The memorial welcomes - apart from the health crisis - 250,000 visitors per year, including many British school groups.

The surrounding countryside is full of small British, Canadian and New Zealand cemeteries.

From the top of the memorial, not accessible to the public, we can guess, behind a small Franco-British cemetery, the blisters left by the trenches.

If the wind turbine blades now turn on the horizon, the ground remains riddled with galleries and shells, but also with the bodies of hundreds of soldiers who have never been buried.

"The gains were ridiculous for a battle that left almost a million dead," said Puppinck.

The CWGC made it their "mission that their sacrifice is never forgotten", while the average age of British soldiers was "22 or 23 years".

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They had joined in whole groups from the same village, from the same company.

This battle and its "staggering daily death rate" thus resulted in "social mourning, which affected all of society", explains Lucie Balin, of the CWGC.

If during the interwar period, "the Germans felt entitled to come to commemorate their dead", the Second World War turned the situation upside down.

But "this is starting to change, the Germans are starting to come and try to understand what happened", observes Mr. Puppinck.

As for the French, they wonder more about their history since the celebration of the centenary, he rejoices: "2016 has relaunched more than closes the chapter".

© 2021 AFP