Stele in honour to Four Generals

A Roman town from the first century A.D., Laon was a strategic location in the bids to control the north-eastern area of France. A stop-off point on the way to Paris, the town was well acquainted with troop movements during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the First and Second World Wars. The stele in honour of the four generals was inaugurated on the same square as the monument to the dead on 18 June 2006 by Evelyne Ratte, Prefect of Aisne. It faces the monument to the dead killed during both world wars, in international theatres of war and in North Africa.

A commemoration of the Liberation of the town from German troops, it is composed of a panel into which the Cross of Lorraine has been carved surrounded by biographic plaques of the four French generals, key members of the resistance who contributed to the liberation of a nation and its entry into the contemporary era:  Alphonse Juin (1888-1967), Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (1887-1952), Marie-Pierre Koenig (1898-1970) and Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque (1902-1947).