La Somme

As promised what seems like a very long time ago, I am going to describe my visit to the Australian 1st World War battlefields in the Somme, a region of France north of Paris that formed a major part of the Western Front.  The Battle of the Somme took place throughout 1916, and then again in 1918 when the Germans were finally pushed back to Belgium.

So, first thing in the morning, Greg, my friend from Australia, and I set off first towards Villers-Bretonneux.

Here there is the Franco-Australian Museum, in a school built with funds raised by Victorian school children after the war to help this village that the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) liberated.

We got there on a Monday and combined huge disappointment with it being closed (due to an unforeseen (by us) public holiday) with being very moved by the various dedications.   Across one of the school buildings is written in big letters "N'oublions jamais l'Australie" ["Do not forget Australia"].  Awwwww.

However, we made plans to go on first to the Champagne region, as described last post, and come back and do the Somme a bit more thoroughly later.

Along the way, we stopped off at Adelaide Cemetery, one of many across the area although maybe with a bit more information given its proximity to Victoria House. All of these are maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who frankly must be pretty busy...

This particular cemetery is named after an Australian town but they all contain a mix of British, Canadian, South African, New Zealand and Indian graves (in roughly that order in terms of numbers).

This dedication describing the gift of land to the Australians by the French was particularly moving– I’m going to stop using the word moving here for fear of being repetitive... just assume that absolutely everything we came across was moving. It was just a very moving experience all round!

The graves in these photos are from the National Memorial site, but this is where we first came across the concept. All of the Commonwealth graves follow this format, with a symbol of the particularly force (eg the Canadian forces had a maple leaf I believe), a cross or a Jewish star of david, the battalion, name and some other inscription occasionally. (I think they’re so much nicer than the American style crosses, much more dignified).

I’ve also showed one headstone we saw an awful lot of... “A Soldier of the Great War”.... "An Australian Regiment".  Poor chap, they obviously couldn't even identify his battalian.


Back from sipping champers in Epernay, we started for the History of the Great War Museum in Péronne, also one of the Australian battlefield sites. But along the way Greg wanted to stop at Bullecourt on the advice of a friend.

Bizarrely it wasn’t mentioned at all in any of the literature we had picked up at the tourist office (Aussie specific and general) but it was on the way so I plugged it into the GPS (one day I shall write my ode to the GPS which will probably contain a line like “how the hell did I ever get by without you”).

And when we got there, lo and behold the evidence that Greg’s friend was on the money. Bullecourt was one of the worst and later one of the best battles for the Australians.

Driving through the town I noticed this street sign, so obviously a further detour was necessary.

Along the way we found the “Bullecourt Digger”, a memorial to what must have been one of the greatest cock-ups in Australian military history (including Gallipoli). Not all of the errors were British and so the West Riding division from England also got decimated. More information here... this site takes you through some of the battles and is quite good.

We did finally get to the Museum of the Great War in Péronne, housed in an old chateau which had quite a history of its own, located on the Somme river, was particularly good and so was the big cone of frites that we got on the way out of town afterwards.  As you can see, after days of glorious sunshine this day was suitably atmospheric... cold and grey.

The Australians broke the German line at the Battle of Péronne, one of the decisive actions of 1918 that eventually led to the Armistice.

Next (if I remember correctly, this blog has been a long time coming!) we went back towards Villers-Bretonneux to go to the Australian museum, fortunately open this time. The plan was to try and get to all of the museums or other sites before they closed (once bitten...) and then to the open sites.  However we stopped off along the way at Le Hamel, another tiny village destroyed in the war, now covered in poppies.

Here the Australians fought in 1918 and there is a well laid out set of panels describing the battle. I found the story of John Monash very interesting – it seems like there’s an excellent reason so many things in Australian are named after him. Clearly a competent individual to say the least.  It was here the Americans joined us, and so the battle date was set for

The panel in the picture tells the story of one soldier who didn’t come home (is it time to bring back the word “moving”?).

Then it was finally time to go the Australian museum in Victoria House. Only small but packed with stuff from the war, great information, pictures etc.

Including this one... a while ago I described my mirth on finding in Sicily a picture at a nature reserve of a character with a kangaroo on a leash (to mean don’t introduce non-native animals). I tried to explain to the locals that a) we don’t have kangaroos on leashes so I feel a bit undermined there! Point b) and who would take a kangaroo overseas and let it go might also be under threat... just imagine a whole heap of mascot roos being taken to France and then let go.... (I wonder if anyone’s ever tried to establish kangaroo populations overseas?).

After the museum, we went to the National War Memorial. There were a lot of memorials, I must say, but this one was THE memorial. Immense. The cemetery itself probably held more British and Canadian graves than Australian (everyone was left where they fell pretty much, although the French families were encouraged to come and collect their dead so you didn’t see much of them (and no Germans, not sure what happened to those guys... clearly not only do the victors get to write history, they also get to plant the memorials)).

This is where Anzac Day is celebrated every year, on the nearest Saturday because of course the French don’t have a national holiday. Interestingly, the second battle of Villers-Bretonneux was fought on the 25 April 1918.  The walls are carved with the dead of each battalion; fortunately my grandfather’s name is not amongst them or I wouldn’t be here today!  The various Australian battles are listed around the top.

You can climb up the inside and look over the now lush farmlands and imagine the hellish mud fields they were reduced to during the war. While you’re there you can read Paul Keating’s speech on the return of the Unknown Soldier to the War Memorial in Canberra and I challenge you to keep a dry eye.

This was the last of the Commonwealth memorials to be built, some time in the 30s I think (we’d had a few financial difficulties). The entire French cabinet and the president turned up for the inauguration apparently, and King George opened it, with his words being heard directly back in oz. Of course, this whole area was again under siege during the second world war. So next to the plaque describing the inauguration they’ve left some of the shelling damage.

The Battle of Pozières was one of the more horrendous for the Aussies in the long hard slog of 1916.

Not only is there another Australian memorial, but this battle was so entrenched into the minds of the soldiers that when the 1st Australian Division asked the troops where they should plant their own divisional memorial, the decision was unanimous.

On this site was a wooden windmill. Somehow this little mound was deemed of massive strategic importance.

Very close to Pozières (everything is very close here, about 1.5 million lives were lost in the Somme, an area of about 300 km2) was Moquet Farm where the battle continued. Here I’ve captured a nice descriptive map of the front line.  We are only about 2 km from Villers-Bretonneux and Le Hamel, so you can see just how many lives were lost for such a small area.

Not far from here is Thiepval, where the British Memorial is located (not nearly as nice as the Australian as I might say). It’s inscribed with tens of thousands of names of their missing.

We raced off to the Somme trenches museum at Albert , site of the first battle of the Somme. The whole museum is underground with lots of life sized displays of life in the trenches for each of the nationalities involved. And there were plenty of those. The story of the Mahgrebs (people from French speaking north Africa such as Algeria and Morocco) was particularly interesting, told to us by the curator as he rushed us out (we’d arrived about 5 minutes before closing time, not having kept to the overall plan of the day).

As the gloom was deepening for the day, we made our way to the final site on our schedule... the Newfoundland memorial. For reasons I don’t quite understand they fought separately to the other Canadians, and they decided that the best way to commemorate the war was to keep the site of their worst battle as it was pretty much.

After the war, the French people and their government wanted to put everything back the way it was just as quickly as possible. This is why a lot of the tiny villages like Bullecourt were rebuilt, even though there was absolutely nothing left. This is why you see everything perfectly restored. But one of the gentlemen who fought in this particularly horrible battle for Newfoundland went home, raised a lot of funds and back to France to buy the land over which he’d fought. Then he built a memorial, keeping all of the trenches in place.

I think it would be rather eerie to live in this house.

The moose at the top of the main memorial is a nice touch.

I’ve made quite a bit more effort with this post than normal, often I’ll just link to internet sites that show where I’ve been. But then this was all just too moving....