Biography | H. Chalton Bradshaw — 7048 Names, and a Wall You Walk Through to Reach Them

Four years after Horse Guards Road, on the verge of the D930 between Bapaume and Cambrai, Bradshaw built the other kind of memorial. The Cambrai Memorial is not a monument standing beside a cemetery; it is the way into one. Three arches in a screen wall face the road, with 1914 · LOUVERVAL MILITARY CEMETERY · 1918 cut along the entablature and a vaulted arcade behind them. The graves are through the arches and down the terrace.

The same dedication is cut at each end of the screen, once in English and once in French, and the two give the same number. The English panel reads TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND TO THE ENDURING MEMORY OF 7048 OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE FORCES OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE WHO FELL AT THE BATTLE OF CAMBRAI 20 NOV - 3 DEC 1917 BUT WHO HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE. THEIR NAMES ARE HERE RECORDED. The French panel ends ICI LEURS NOMS SONT INSCRITS. Charles Sargeant Jagger cut the sculpture.

Those thirteen days had two halves. The British attack of 20 November 1917 went three to four miles into the German defensive system in a morning, and the fighting for Bourlon Wood that followed did not finish the job. On 30 November the German counter-attack opened, and in the Long Long Trail's account it had run nearly three miles by nine that morning. Third Army's own return gives 44,207 dead, wounded and missing between 20 November and 8 December; the Tank Museum puts British losses near 45,000 and German losses above 41,000. Ground changed hands twice, and the missing are the arithmetic left over.

Lieutenant-General Sir Louis Vaughan unveiled the memorial on 4 August 1930, sixteen years to the day after Britain declared war. Bradshaw was thirty-seven, and had thirteen years left.

The road still runs a few metres from the arches. The number is the first thing you read on the way to the graves.

📸 Cover: the memorial screen from the Bapaume-Cambrai road, the English dedication cut on the left return and the French on the right. Second image: the French panel, giving the same 7048. Both by René Hourdry, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.