For many years the Holts have provided tourers to the battlefields with excellent practical mapping for the Ypres Salient and the Somme. This map of the Arras area, following the publication of Verdun in this series of Battleground Europe maps, fills one of the gaps in the coverage of the Western Front. This map of the Arras battlefield is in the same style, using a colour coded system to distinguish the different types of features. It includes over 200 locations of memorials, cemeteries, significant remnants of the battle terrain, remaining fortifications, trenches, and other vestiges of the war.
It provides locations associated with many personalities, including VC winners and of the site of mine craters (some of which still exist) in the Vimy area. The front line at key stages of the war is clearly indicated GPS references are given for the more signifiant sites. Roads and major tracks are shown. High ground that was of importance in the fighting is clearly indicated. On the reverse there are enlarged sections of parts of the battlefield of notable importance, such as Notre Dame de Lorette, the northern end of Vimy Ridge (associated with the Canadian Corps) and the city of Arras.
The map extends from just north of Notre Dame de Lorette to south of Bullecourt. To the east it includes, for example, Vis en Artois and Haucourt and to the west Ballacourt, Maroeuil and Mont St Eloi. The map is bi-lingual (in English and French) so far as is practicable and given the constraints of space. The map is of a manageable size, both in a vehicle and when being used outside on the ground. This is the second (following Verdun) of the maps that Bart has designed and produced of an important Great War conflict zone on the Western Front.
Bart Metselaar has been visiting the battlefields of the Western Front for over twenty years, from his late teens. He has spent much time walking the battlefields of the Western Front and has acquired an encyclopaedic knowledge of the ground and the surviving remnants of the war. An amateur cartographer, he has produced the mapping for a number of Pen and Sword 'Battleground Europe' books. He worked on his first map, on the Verdun battlefield (2020) for some years, painstakingly searching out memorials that have been all but forgotten and working to design a map that could provide and place a wealth of information on the ground. He is now turning his attention to the French Flanders battlefield.
