This hashtag sculpture stood outside the Arras train station (Gare d’Arras) in 2019.
The brick building behind #ARRAS was the headquarters of the Imperial War Graves Commission in France from 1929 until 1938, when the headquarters was moved to Wimereux on the coast near Boulogne. The Arras War Graves Commission office became one of the three branch offices in Central Europe — the others were in Albert (Somme) and Ypres (Belgium).
The monument in the center of the plaza commemorates soldiers and civilians from Arras who died in the First World War. After the Second World War, additional panels added the names of new casualties and covered some of the blast damage caused when the Luftwaffe bombed the Gare d’Arras in May 1940.
Photo by Caitlin G. DeAngelis