November 11, a day of remembrance and reflection. The Alpes-Maritimes commemorate the Great War. A ruthless, exhausting, devastating, dreadful war… A conflict the likes of which Humanity had never before known.
The General Council of the Alpes-Maritimes has developed a high-quality cultural offering accessible to all, which is resolutely focused on themes pertaining to the Great War.
The events proposed by the General Council have been grouped into four main themes: Gathering the traces of military past, discovering the heritage of remembrance, presenting war in traditional events, and transmitting memory to future generations:
Rediscovering, gathering, and valuing the traces of our military past
Discovering or rediscovering our heritage and places of remembrance
Staging war in our traditional events
Transmitting memory, especially to younger generations
Enabling individuals, families, historians, and all who wish to deeply understand what the people of that time experienced in a department marked by this unprecedented historical episode is the aim of the numerous initiatives launched to search for, develop, and make all available historical resources accessible.
The online availability of digitized draft registers constitutes an exceptional opportunity to consult military documents from the era. They concern the young men registered at age 20 in one of the conscription offices in the department. The descriptive records of contingents from 1887 to 1919 are made available.
Accessible free of charge to internet users, this new database presents 180 registers, 84,397 men listed, 120,300 digitized documents, and therefore constitutes a valuable resource for both researchers’ studies and genealogical research.
Supported by the Genealogical Association of the Alpes-Maritimes (AGAM) in partnership with the General Council, the Bleuets project is another remarkable collection effort dedicated to finding the men who died for France: the natives of the department (7,000) and those wounded at the front and hospitalized in the Alpes-Maritimes (10,000).
Discovering the heritage and places of remembrance in the Alpes-Maritimes
The war memorials in France retain their symbolic and evocative value for most of us. They indeed powerfully express the timeless voice of a generation that suffered terribly to defend our country.
