Somme Battlefields 3 - Adelaide Cemetery and Third Division Memorial

Just near the town of Villers Bretonneux is the Adelaide War Cemetery. Compared to other cemeteries we had visited, this one was relatively small mainly because it wasn't started until June 1918. Nevertheless, there are almost 1000 graves of which more than half are Australian.

What is notable about Adelaide Cemetery is that the Unknown Soldier who is now buried in the War Memorial in Canberra was exhumed from this cemetery.

Because we had a car, we also did some touring of our own. Near Sailly-le-Sec (which is close to Albert) we found this Memorial to the Australian Third Division. Grandfie Dwyer was a member of the Third Division.

As we discovered when we were in Belgium, farmers regularly find unexploded ordnance in their fields. This is a photo of what we found propped up against the fence of the memorial.

Finally, we took this photo just on sunset of the flags inside the Australian Memorial Park at Le Hamel. We didn't get inside the park because the gates close at 4pm in winter. However, the park is a memorial to the 100,000 Australians who served in the AIF in France from 1916 to 1918. The flags acknowledge the forces involved in the defense of Le Hamel in July 1918.

POSTSCRIPT

This map gives a good summary of the main battlefields in Belgium and France, the location of the front line and where some of the sites we visited were situated.

Somme Battlefields 2 - Villers Bretonneux and Victoria School

It was very special visiting Villers Bretonneux on Remembrance Day and so heart warming when we were recognised as Australians. We were stopped at a set of traffic lights in the mini bus when a little girl about four spotted our red poppies and Australian flags. She was so excited, she started waving to us as her poor mum was trying to get her safely across the road.

Our tour took us to both the memorial and to Victoria School. This is the view from the memorial down the hill towards the road.

The site at Villers Bretonneux comprises both a cemetery and a Memorial to the Missing.  On the walls of the stone pavilions (which you can see in the photo below) the names of 11,000 Australians who died in France and have no known grave are listed. ANZAC day services are held every year in front of these pavilions. 

One of the names we were interested in finding on the memorial belonged to Private John Hough.

Private John Hough was killed in action at Pozieres on 1 September 1916. He was born in Cowra and his mother Mary Ann was a cousin of Grandfie Dwyer's.

As you can see from the plaque above the memorial at Villers Bretonneux was damaged during the Second World War. There are bullet holes in the stone pillars of the pavilion.

Next stop was the Victoria School which is located in the town of Villers Bretonneux. It was built between 1923 and 1927 with money raised by school children in Victoria - hence the name.

There are reminders of Australia everywhere! The school's hall is decorated with a number of carvings of native Australian animals. These were done by an Australian sculptor and his students from Daylesford Techical College.

Even the school notices have an Australian theme. We found this on the door to the hall!

As well as housing the school, the site includes a museum containing items and photographs from the war. Given the number of cemeteries we visited in Belgium and France we found this recruitment poster distressing but an obvious reflection of the sentiment of the time.

Somme Battlefields 1 - Lochnagar Crater and Newfoundland Memorial Park

We didn't find any poppies in Flanders (if you had seen the amount of mud you would understand why) but we found this lonely one by the side of the road near the Somme River in Northern France.

After the Remembrance Day service at Thievpal we visited the Lochnagar Crater near La Boiselle. Coinciding with the infantry attack on the German front line which commenced the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, the British exploded several underground mines. One of the craters created by those explosions was the Lochnagar Crater. The crater is about 20 metres deep and unlike the Spanbroekmolen Crater in Belgium which filled with water, this crater remains a huge scar on the landscape.

The cross you can see in the distance in the photo above, is made from reclaimed timbers from a church in Durham, England. Many of the men who died in the area on 1 July 1916 were from Tyneside in the north-east of England. The men recruited from Tyneside were generally miners and were often deployed with the British tunnelling companies. The Memorial to the Missing at Thievpal records the names of all those who perished above and below ground and have no known grave. As recently as 1998, the remains of a British soldier were found near the rim of the Lochnagar Crater.

The other place we visited before lunch was the Newfoundland Memorial Park near Hamel. This park is one of the few World War I battle sites which has remained untouched since the end of the war. Newfoundland was not part of Canada at the time and so fought under their own flag. And yes, that is a statue of a moose on a rock!

Unfortunately, the Newfoundland Regiment suffered severe losses when they attacked the German frontline on 1 July 1916. The regiment's commander ordered the detonation of a mine 10 minutes before their planned attack which alerted the Germans to their position. Around 90% of the regiment  (around 5500 men) died in the attack. After the war, the government of Newfoundland purchased the land as a memorial to the regiment. The tree in the photo above, which is known as the Danger Tree, marks the spot in the park where the greatest losses occurred.

The interesting thing about the memorial park is that all the original trench lines and markers have been retained, exactly as they were.

Consequently, you get to see the German and Newfoundland positions and why it was so easy for the Germans to defend their position because there was so much open ground between them and the Newfoundlanders.

After visiting the memorial park we drove a few kilometres down the road to Albert (pronounced Al-bear). This is the Church of Notre-Dame de Brebieres in Albert. On top of the church is a statue of Mary which in 1915 was hit by a German artillery shell. While damaged, the statue hung in an almost horizontal position until 1918 when the church tower was destroyed. In fact, the whole town of Albert was completely destroyed and was rebuilt after the war. We had a French bistro meal for our lunch in a small bar just down the road from this church. 

Armistice Day - Thievpal, Northern France

While staying in Amiens we did a battlefield tour of the Somme which included the Remembrance Day service on 11 November at Thiepval.

The Memorial to the Missing at Thievpal is the largest British war memorial in the world. The memorial records the names of more than 74,000 British and South African soldiers who died on the Western Front in the battles of the Somme and have no known grave.

There is also a small cemetery attached to the memorial. Uniquely this cemetery contains both British and French soldiers - the French burials are on the left and in the photo you can just make out the crosses rather than headstones marking the French graves.

There were about 1200 people who attended the service, most of them British. 

The music was provided by the Hampshire Police Band who apparently come every year. The playing and singing of the British and French national anthems was very moving.

We left a memento on the shrine before the ceremony (a small cross) but some individuals and families laid wreaths during the service. Our cross is just under the photos.

At the end of the ceremony the band and the crowd marched to the little village of Thievpal about 800 metres away to lay a wreath at the town memorial.  

Thievpal was completely destroyed during the war.  On our tour we learned that the French don't commemorate Armistice Day and don't really like remembering the war at all. When you see the devastation and the loss of life and livelihood they experienced, it's not hard to understand why.

POSTSCRIPT

I forgot to mention that we made it onto the local French TV news - in a background shot of the proceedings of the service at Thievpal!

Amiens

Sadly we said goodbye to Belgium and jumped back in the car bound for Amiens in Northern France. The French pronounciation is Ami-ohn because they don't like using the last letter in words!  We actually didn't have much time to explore Amiens because we spent the few days we were there navigating the Western Front battlefields but here is some of what we found.

This is Notre Dame Cathedral in Amiens. We were told by the lady in the tourist office that the cathedral is so big that it can hold two of Paris' Notre Dame cathedral.  Later on another tour guide told us that the French are prone to exaggeration! Either way - the cathedral is enormous.

As you can see from the photos, the outside of the cathedral is covered with carvings.  One carving near the entrance actually shows the cathedral falling down which apparently happened in the 13th Century.

Amiens (and the area surrounding the Somme River) was a hot spot during the First World War.  Miraculously the cathedral survived the war without a scratch. There is a story that the Bishop of Amiens pleaded with his German counterpart to keep artillery fire away from the cathedral. There are several interesting plaques inside the cathedral commemorating the role of Australia in the defense of Amiens.

It was late in the day when we went inside the cathedral so the stained glass windows were not really at their best.

However, there was a beautiful statue in the cathedral called the Weeping Angel. Apparently, this image was used a lot on postcards during the First World War.

This building was in the courtyard next to the cathedral. Apparently at Christmas time they have a laser light show on the cathedral and surrounding buildings.

We stayed in a lovely little hotel called the Victor Hugo which was just down the street from the cathedral. On our first night in Amiens we met an Australian couple from Gloucester in NSW and discovered that they were staying in the same hotel as us. We ended up having a couple of dinners (and quite a few drinks) with them. It was really nice chatting with people who understood exactly what you were talking about!

POSTSCRIPT

I found this photo of the cathedral lit up for Christmas. Apparently this is how the cathedral would have looked originally with all the statues and carvings painted.

Flanders Fields 3 - Ypres and Menin Gate

This is the Lille Gate entrance into Ypres - which in Dutch speaking Belgium is pronounced, Eper. The town was under constant attack during the First World War and was more or less completely destroyed.

Just inside the Lille Gate is a Commonwealth War Cemetery. One of the headstones in the cemetery has the poignant inscription - 'He said farewell. We did not think it would be forever.'

This is a photo taken in 1918 of the Cloth Hall, located in the centre of the town.

This is a photo of the Cloth Hall we took during our visit. After the war they decided to rebuild Ypres exactly as it was, using stone recovered from all the debris. Looking at the buildings today it is hard to believe that they were built in the 1920s.  However, if you look very closely you can sometimes see that the foundation stones are different from those used elsewhere in the building.

The other entrance into Ypres is the now famous Menin Gate. Every Australian soldier who served on the Western Front marched along this road although the actual gate you can see in the photo wasn't built until 1927.

The new Menin Gate is a Memorial to the Missing and honours more than 55,000 soldiers, including 6,000 Australians, who died defending Ypres but whose bodies have never been identified or found. All their names are inscribed on the walls inside the gate. The carved limestone lions which sat outside the original gate are now at the entrance to the Australian War Memorial. They were donated by the people of Ypres to recognise Australia's role in defending the town and surrounding area.

At 8.00 pm every evening the traffic is halted outside the Menin Gate and buglers from the local Fire Brigade play the last post in a commemorative ceremony. Except for a period of German occupation during the Second World War, the ceremony has taken place each night since July 1928. It was a very moving experience and not to be missed if you get the chance. There would easily be three or four hundred people there every night.

The night we visited a school group from England laid a wreath during the ceremony and had their photo taken with the buglers.

Australians (and the British) are held in high regard in Flanders. Perhaps it was because it was so close to Armistice Day and we were wearing our red poppies but everywhere we went people gave us a smile or a wave. We felt quite at home in Belgium!