Earlier today I OSM-stumbled upon a stele marking the western front line of the First World War in Belgium and France. In Dutch we apparently call them demarcatiepalen, a term which I find amusingly technical sounding. In French they’re often called les bornes Vauthier, named after the veteran who took the initiative of erecting them. Carved from pink granite, they stand about a metre tall. There’s a whole line of them, but I noticed that they could use a lot of work, so that became my project for this evening.

After a few hours’ work (including some distraction due to nearby unmapped stables), the 19 extant Belgian steles have all been found, added and homogenised in OSM and referenced to the database of Onroerend Erfgoed, the heritage agency of the Flemish government.

Tada: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1Wtx

In France we’re still missing most. A heritage organisation from France has a list of the 77 steles in France; we have 22. Their list of those in Belgium confirms that we’re complete. They also have a photo album with photos of every single stele that’s still in place! I’ve written to them to ask whether we can start from their list to map the remaining steles.

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Photo credit: modified from a photo by Frans90245 on Wikimedia Commons, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0