Bourlon Wood Memorial

Canadian war memorial

The Bourlon Wood Memorial, near Bourlon, France, is a Canadian war memorial that commemorates the actions of the Canadian Corps during the final months of the First World War; a period also known as Canada's Hundred Days, part of the Hundred Days Offensive.

The memorial at the Bourlon Wood commemorates the final series of battles the Canadian Corps fought in the latter phases of the Hundred Days Offensive (also known as Canada's Hundred Days) during the final months of the Great War. Particularly celebrated at Bourlon Wood are the Canadian victories the Battle of the Canal du Nord and the ensuing fight for the villages of Bourlon and Marquion and their flushing the German forces and Bourlon Wood, and the subsequent 'Pursuit to Mons' during which the Canadians participated in the liberation of the French cities of Cambrai, Denain (during the Battle of the Selle), Valenciennes and finally Mons in Belgium on 11 November 1918.

At the end of the war, The Imperial War Graves Commission granted Canada eight sites five in France and three in Belgium on which to erect memorials. Each site represented a significant Canadian engagement in the war and for this reason it was originally decided that each battlefield would be treated equally and graced with identical monuments. The Canadian Battlefields Memorials Commission was formed in November 1920 and decided a competition would be held to select the design of the memorial that would be used at the eight European sites. In October 1922, the submission of Toronto sculptor and designer Walter Seymour Allward was selected as the winner of the competition, and the submission of Frederick Chapman Clemesha placed second. The commission decided Allward's monumental design would be used at Vimy Ridge in France as it was the most dramatic location. Despite a consideration that Alward's monument at Vimy could stand alone as the sole monument to the Canadian efforts in Europe Situated on key points of the battlefield they memorialize, the central feature of the memorials would be a 13 tonne cube shaped block of white grey granite quarried near Stanstead, Quebec. The blocks are essentially identical, carved with wreathes on two opposing sides and inscribed with the phrase "Honour to the Canadians who on the fields of Flanders and France fought in the cause of the Allies with sacrifice and devotion" around the base. Though uniform in design, they are differentiated in the brief English and French descriptions of the battle they commemorate inscribed on their sides and the small parks that surround the memorial blocks, which vary in shape and layout. The Bourlon Wood Canadian Memorial it is located adjacent to the town of Bourlon, about west of Cambrai, France, and was the site of a strategic German strong point in an elevated location, concealed in the forest which was obliterated in the fighting. One British soldier, who had to bivouac in the area not long after the ferocious battle, recalled, "It wasn't much like a wood, more like a lot of crooked matchsticks stuck in the ground".