French Graveyards.

[Peter Cairns]

While I am posting a little map tip I picked up from my annual trips to france is this.

In French Villages the church is often the most prominent building often close the village centre even in a small village. However there is nearly never a graveyard beside it.

French graveyards tend to be just outside the village or at it's edge, not beside the church. They also look quite different.

By an large they have a high wall around them are densely packed and are full of small mausoleums odd but true.

I've tried to find some good photos but a search tends to bring up war graves which really aren't typical. Try using Google Maps to zoom in on a small french village and then use Street view to take a close look.

The best I can come up with to get it right would be to create some new skins for the basic "Shed" Flavour object and fill it with those.

Peter.

[jhmorneau]

Now that you say it... Indeed graveyards in french villages do not look at all like they presently do in the game. Here is an example :

Nothing like lawn + crosses like in the US or GB (?). To my mind the only french graveyards that look like that are the military cemeteries.

[sburke]

Early after the CMBN release there was a thread that discussed this and suggested using other stuff in the cemeteries from the monuments flavor objects etc. LLF also created some interesting stuff for the Ramadi scenario way back in CMSF.

[Sequoia]

But what did they look like 69 years ago?

[George MC]

But what did they look like 69 years ago?

Possibly more like these:

Old graveyard

or like this

[John Kettler]

Here's one that's been around for a bit. No idea where in France, though.

http://4photos.net/en/image:254-16082-French_Graveyard_images

Normandy cemetery for sure, complete with bizarre tax bill story.

http://planetivy.com/offbeat/38819/french-government-sends-tax-invoice-to-deceased-mans-grave/

Another old French graveyard.

http://www.123rf.com/photo_1158236_graveyard-old-french-style.html

Graignes, Normandy (See B&W pic bottom of Post #1)

http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/22376-graignes-massacre/

Regards,

John Kettler

[Peter Cairns]

John,

Looking at them reminds me that, particularly for towns, metal railings would be a good addition as a new type of wall.

They give little cover but can be harder than a fence to cross and can block non armoured vehicles.

I wonder what Italian graveyards are like?

Peter.

[John Kettler]

Peter,

Like this

http://www.carolinaecheverri.com/2011/03/17/cimitero-monumentale-del-verano-rome-italy-17/

http://www.carolinaecheverri.com/wp-content/uploads/DSC_0776.jpg

There are many more, but Google Images doesn't have the links in yet, so the pics go nowhere. Ditto "Italian Cemetery," I'm afraid. From what I've seen, though, they look like they provide lots of cover. Stone slabs are much better for this than crosses.

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

jh_morneau,

From what I tell, based on research done by me so far, the example you provided not only has to be post WW II, but appears to be no more than a few decades old. The funerary monuments look altogether too new, in my view, to be much older than that. You're there, and I'm not, so I could be way off, but style alone seems to indicate I'm right.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Michael Emrys]

Possibly more like these:

Or this one, which is apparently adjacent to a church as well as across the lane from it.

Country church. The third image down.

Michael

[passeur]

I think each french region has its customs regarding that matter.

Living in the South, It´s common to see family mausoleum, but there are smaller graves as well ( a simple cross, or a tombstone).

[jhmorneau]

Sure, the photo I posted is pretty recent but it shows you that most of the time a french grave comes with a large horizontal stone (is this what you English-speaking folks call a tombstone ?) (mind you I'm not a graveyard grog nor an English grog ).

There will be also some family mausoleums as wel (that is, only for the wealthy families). Basically, the lower you income, the plainest the tombstone.

Short version is : CMBN needs tombstones

[Michael Emrys]

Sure, the photo I posted is pretty recent but it shows you that most of the time a french grave comes with a large horizontal stone (is this what you English-speaking folks call a tombstone ?)

Er, no. A tombstone is that vertical plaque placed at the head of the grave, usually with the deceased's name plus whatever other information the survivors felt applicable, such as dates of birth and death. Quite often there is some expression of sentiment such as a line of poetry or a remembrance by a loved one. Sometimes it took an ironic turn:

Owen Moore has gone away

Owin' more than he could pay

Michael

[usgubgub]

When I did my map of Pont St. Clovis, a fictional bocage village in the Vire area, I put a few graves by the church and a separate cemetery. This is because I seem to recall that it was Napoleon that decreed that cemeteries had to be located outside villages and separate to the churches.

Before then, people would have been buried near a church, as was the custom in Medieval Northern Europe. So churches should probably get a few headstones and crosses and the odd monument, and more recent cemeteries should be walled and more structured/denser.

[jhmorneau]

So Michael, if a tombstone is not that horizontal stone we have in our french cemeteries, what would be the correct word in English ? I though the vertical one was called a headstone !?

I noticed that in English you have two words which I thougt were synonyms but are not : graveyard and cemetery.

"A graveyard (from Old English graf "pit"; yairden "garden, open place")[1] is any place set aside for long-term burial of the dead, with or without monuments such as headstones.

In countries with a Christian tradition it is usually located near and administered by a church. From the early 19th century, new burying grounds were frequently founded as cemeteries, which are burying grounds that are separate from a church or parish."

[source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard]

[Broadsword56]

When I did my map of Pont St. Clovis, a fictional bocage village in the Vire area, I put a few graves by the church and a separate cemetery. This is because I seem to recall that it was Napoleon that decreed that cemeteries had to be located outside villages and separate to the churches.

Before then, people would have been buried near a church, as was the custom in Medieval Northern Europe. So churches should probably get a few headstones and crosses and the odd monument, and more recent cemeteries should be walled and more structured/denser.

Napoleon's wars filled so many cemeteries that they probably needed the space once the churchyards filled up.

[Michael Emrys]

So Michael, if a tombstone is not that horizontal stone we have in our french cemeteries, what would be the correct word in English ?

Now there you've got me. I suppose there must be a word in English, even if it is borrowed from another language, but I don't know what it is.

I though the vertical one was called a headstone !?

It is sometimes, but not as often SFAIK. Tombstone is such a common word that there is even a town in Arizona named that.

Michael

[Blackcat]

In my trips around Normandy I certainly recall seeing many churches with graveyards around them just as one would with English country churches. Furthermore just as with English Country Churches most of the graves would be quite old (19th century and before) with only the occasional modern grave. Probably the French just like the English ran out of room as the population increased.

I did discover a distinctive Commonwealth War Grave Commission headstone in one coastal Norman church - turned out to be a RAF chap who was shot down in 1943 and was buried, by the Germans, in the nearest consecrated ground to where he was found.

So to come back to the point of the thread I can't see what is wrong on portraying churches surrounded by graveyards on CMBN maps.

[Peter Cairns]

BlackCat,

As I started this I thought that the walled dense cemetery would be a good feature to add to maps but it may be that they are more the standard further south.

Peter.