Reconstruction and remembrance

After the Armistice, Combles was among the hardest-hit villages of the Upper Somme. The reconstruction of the 1920s reshaped the village: housing, public buildings, roads and the church were rebuilt, funded by war damages and as part of a wider reorganisation of the front-line communes. Saint-Vaast Church, destroyed during the fighting, was rebuilt. Its present architecture therefore belongs to the post-war period and is a visible sign of the village’s rebirth. The Combles war memorial was probably erected between 1920 and 1923. It depicts a soldier being crowned by a symbolic female figure and bears a dedication to the sons of Combles who died for France. It is part of the vast wave of commemoration in French communes after the Great War. The commune was also awarded the Croix de Guerre 1914–1918 on 27 October 1920, in recognition of the hardships it suffered during the conflict.