At the crossroads (D937/D49) of LA TARGETTE, 8km north from the centre of Arras and accessible from there by bus, the Musée de la Targette (daily 9am–8pm; €3) contains an interesting collection of World War I and II objets de guerre. It's the private collection of one David Bardiaux, assembled with passion and meticulous attention to detail, under the inspiration of tales told by his grandfather, a veteran of Verdun. Its interest lies in the absolute precision with which the thirty-odd mannequins of British, French, Canadian and German soldiers are dressed and equipped, down to their sweet and tobacco tins and such rarities as a 1915 British-issue cap with earflaps, very comfortable for the troops but withdrawn because the top brass thought it made their men look like yokels. All the exhibits have been under fire; some belonged to known individuals and are complete with stitched-up tears of old wounds.More cemeteries lie a little to the south of La Targette, nominally at NEUVILLE-ST-VAAST, though the village is actually 1km away to the east. There's a small British cemetery, a huge French one, and an equally large German cemetery, containing the remains of 44,833 Germans. If you haven't been to a German war cemetery before, the macabre, skeletal black crosses – each one represents four soldiers – come as quite a shock. So, too, do the handful of individual Jewish headstones that stand out from the rest. In the village itself a Polish memorial – among the Poles that died in action here was the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, in 1915 – and a Czech cemetery face each other across the main street. On a bleak hill a few kilometres to the northwest of Vimy Ridge (and 5km north of Neuville-St-Vaast) is the church of Notre-Dame de Lorette, scene of a costly French offensive in May 1915. The original church was blasted to bits during the war and rebuilt in grim neo-Byzantine style in the 1920s, grey and dour on the outside but rich and bejewelled inside. It now stands at the centre of a vast graveyard with over 20,000 crosses laid out in pairs, back to back, each one separated by a cluster of blood-red roses. There are 20,000 more buried in the ossuary, and there's the small Musée Vivant 1914–1918 (daily 9am–8pm; €3) behind the church, displaying photographs, uniforms and other military paraphernalia. You can reach Notre-Dame de Lorette by bus from Arras, direction "Lens".
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