Ghost army of the Somme enlisted to fight airport

The Somme's war graves - including those of New Zealanders - are under threat, writes By CATHERINE FIELD.

PARIS - A ghostly army of Allied soldiers buried in the killing fields of northern France, including two New Zealanders, is heading a rearguard action to thwart the building of Paris' third airport.

Despite protests from the British Defence Ministry, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in London and local residents, the French Government has earmarked a 10,000ha site in the Somme, a region whose fields were literally stained with blood from World War I.

The proposed airport would be built just south of Chaulnes, a small town 115km north of Paris, in an area studded with military cemeteries.

Many of them contain the remains of the million casualties from the 1916 Battle of the Somme.

The graves commission in London told the Herald it was deeply concerned about the plan, for it threatens at least six British, Commonwealth and French cemeteries, holding the remains of 8437 troops.

"The French Government has in the past avoided the need to disturb war cemeteries ... and we have no reason to believe that they will act any differently in this instance," said Richard Kellaway, the commission's Director-General.

The commission says one cemetery at risk is Meharicourt, 32km southeast of Amiens, where there are more than 40 World War II graves.

The dead include two Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) flyers - pilot John Armstrong and flight officer Michael Dillon - who died in an operation over Nazi-occupied France on April 11, 1944.

Brodie Stubbs, spokesman for New Zealand's Ministry for Culture and Heritage, said no other New Zealanders were known to be buried in the area but the cemeteries contained the graves of many unknown soldiers. Checks would be made to see if more New Zealanders lay there.

The 10-year saga of indecision about where to site the airport reached a critical phase last November, when the authorities announced Chaulnes as the prime choice.

Initially, the airport's location was to have been north of Chaulnes, which would have entailed razing the area's most populous war cemeteries, including the graveyard at Vermandovilliers, where 23,000 German troops are buried.

As controversy grew, the authorities discreetly shifted the location a few kilometres south.

The Somme region is one of the most fertile farming regions in France, but has suffered from a rural exodus and is sparsely populated.

Local campaigners fear that because they lack demographic clout they could be simply steamrollered by the Government, and so see the phantom army as their saviour.

A campaigner at Vermandovilliers, which has been saved by the revised plan, said the authorities had spared the village simply because they feared opposition from Germany.

For its part, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has vowed to do "everything in its power to safeguard the resting places of those we commemorate".

The consultation process for building the airport is expected to last several years even before ground is broken.

If it is completed, the new airport will be linked by high-speed train to Paris, making it 30 minutes away, and connected to the high-speed rail network to Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and parts of western Germany.

- Additional reporting by NZPA