Planned Paris airport may disturb some graves of WWI soldiers

CHAULNES, France -- Pvt. Andrew Creasy was killed near the end of World War I during a final, desperate offensive by German forces through the Somme.

The British soldier lies in a small cemetery amid potato and chicory fields. For now.

France's plan to build a futuristic airport in a region full of old battlefields could force the removal of more than 1,000 British, Australian, Canadian and South African war graves -- including Creasy's.

"I'd be horrified to see my granddad's remains moved after all these years," said Mark Adlam, Creasy's great-grandson.

"I don't think anybody can understand the horror of what they went through," he said in a shaky voice. "They were just kids when they died. They must be left where they fell."

The sacred memories of the Great War are clashing with the modern need to alleviate passenger overload at Paris' Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports. The government plans to build a third field at Chaulnes, 80 miles north of Paris, with completion sometime between 2015 and 2020.

French officials say no final decisions have been made about where exactly the airport's terminals and runways will be laid. But they acknowledge that at least one Commonwealth cemetery -- containing 376 graves, at the heart of the site -- will almost certainly have to go.

A total of 1,248 graves of Commonwealth soldiers are within the boundaries of the proposed airport, along with the remains of 7,200 Frenchmen.

The blood-soaked fields of the Somme -- where farmers still find the bones of those who perished -- are considered sacrosanct by Commonwealth countries. One million allied and German soldiers lost their lives in the four-year stalemate in the murderous trenches of the Somme.

Angered by the airport plan, Commonwealth countries point to the words engraved in stone at Bouchoir, describing the cemetery as the "free gift of the French people" for the "perpetual resting place" of the allied armies who fell in the war.