FRENCH MILITARY CEMETERY

Inside the cemetery, a marble plaque documents the words of General de Gaulle in London on 18 June 1942: " The world knew France when, at Bir Hakeim, a radius of its revived glory came to caresser the bloody front of its soldiers. " At the end of the main aisle, a Lorraine cross monument bears two marble plates where one can read the story of the fighting conducted by the free 1 st French brigade in Bir Hakeim (80 km south of Tobruk) on 27 May 1942, and from 1 to 10 June 1942. These high military facts are exhibited in a very pedagogic way in the small museum adjoining the cemetery. This cemetery houses the remains of the first four French soldiers killed in Cyrenaica in January 1941, those of eight French soldiers killed in Kufra in 1941 and those of French soldiers previously buried in Bir Hakeim cemetery whose geographical isolation made maintenance difficult. The cemetery was renovated in 2002.