The Maison Blanche or Neuville-Saint-Vaast German War Cemetery was established at the end of the First World War and is the largest German war cemetery in France. It is the final resting place for 44,833 German soldiers of which 8,040 were never identified and were buried in a common grave. The bodies of the dead were originally buried in small cemeteries close to the Western Front, spread over more than 110 villages in Pas-de-Calais. Most of the soldiers had died in the intense fighting in Artois, on the Lorette Spur (1914-1915) and Vimy Ridge. In 1926, the French Government allowed the German War Graves Commission, the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK), to carry out work on the cemetery but under its supervision. The VDK transformed what had until then been just a field into a proper war cemetery. Since 1966 the maintenance of the German War Cemeteries has been the responsibility of the VDK alone. Between 1975 and 1983 the VDK completely redesigned the cemetery and cast-iron crosses replaced the wooden ones, each one engraved with the names of four soldiers, and stone headstones were introduced for Jewish soldiers buried there. There is a monument in "La Maison Blance" with the inscription "ICH HATT EINEN KAMERADEN.EINEN BESSERN FINDST DU NICHT"- "I had a comrade; you could not find a better one". This monument is dedicated to the men of the 164th Infantry Regiment. The words are from the poem by Ludwig Uhland "Der Gute Kamerad."
