Chinese cemetery of Noyelles-sur-Mer

The largest Chinese cemetery in France. As a result of an agreement made on December 30, 1916, thousands of Chinese, mostly farmers from northern China, enlisted in the British army. Between 1917 and 1919, there were about 12,000 in the camp. They worked on the construction of ammunition depots, railways, and hospitals, cleared the battlefields, and buried the bodies. They were kept far from the local population and could not move freely. Many of them fell or died during the Spanish flu epidemic in the autumn of 1918. Some stayed in France, but most returned to China at the end of 1919. The cemetery has 825 white grave markers with ideograms (Chinese characters). info: http://eplep.free.fr/index.htm

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