The Bests Abroad: The Somme

Valentine, our personal guide for the day, is studying history at the University of Amiens. He is specialising in the Battle of the Somme and we were the beneficiaries of his significant knowledge and understandings of this historic chapter in French and Australian history.

We were picked up at the station which has a huge banner - MERCI - greeting you as you enter Amiens. There are posters and pictures all over the city and this is just one example of how the people of this region remember the efforts and sacrifices of the Commonwealth and other countries.

Villers-Bretenneux was quite an experience. Most of us have seen the Dawn Service from this cemetery beamed into our living rooms on ANZAC Day each year, but to see it in person is quite something. Such a place is not unique around these parts. There are cemeteries dotted all over the countryside, hundreds of them, representing the British, French, Canadian, New Zealanders and even New Foundlanders (who fought with the British because they didn't become part of Canada until 1949) but this one is ours, just ours...it is Australian.

The numbers quoted today are staggering. This memorial is for the 11000 missing...yes, the ones they couldn't find and the contrast of the Somme 100 years ago and the peaceful, lush countryside of today could not have been more stark.

We found two of our relatives on the walls of the missing, Walter Allen from Wendy's side and Lionel Plaister form mine and we both agreed we couldn't even begin to imagine the horrors and deprivations they must have suffered.

The main actions of the Australian troops were to take, hold, take again, as many times as necessary the strategic points, the "high ground", that allow an army to have advantages of vision of the enemy and transport of troops and supplies. Both Villers-Bretenneux and Poziers...just up the road (which was our bloodiest battle) are located on slight rises in the landscape and along straight roads first engineered by the Romans. The Australian troops had a reputation for "aggressiveness" (so much so that the Kaiser put a bounty on Australian soldiers) and they took and held these positions at great cost....which has not been forgotten by the French.

We vsited the museum in the village school after Valentine proudly took us around the town showing off all the street names ( eg rue de Melbourne) and the stylised VB in a Kangaroo that they have adopted as the town's logo. The school rebuilding was funded by Australians in the 1920's and is decorated with Australiana. In 2009 they reciprocated with many donations for the Victorian bushfires. They have a part of their curriculum dedicated to learning about Australia which we found quite impressive and we came away with the distinct impression that this is a strong and genuine relationship between our peoples.

We had a very nice lunch in Albert which was a forward staging post during the war, after which we visited the Gibraltar and Windmill sites in Poziers ( a town which has also embraced the Australians). We visited Lochnagar crater where, as part of the July 1916 offensive, the British tunnelled under the German lines and with 27 tonnes of explosive blew a crater so large it is still there today. It exists as a memorial for the British who suffered horrendous casualties in the offensive due to the incompetence of their officers who ordered them to walk into enemy fire. I'm not sure Aussies would have obeyed such an order.

Me in a shell hole.

We visited some remaining trenches preserved in the New Foundlander's memorial area and where you have to walk on designated paths because of the live ordnance ( and bodies) still there.It gives a sense of how the soldiers lived and what they faced.

We visited Mouquet Farm ( the soldiers called it moo cow farm) a famous action where the Australians struggled for over a month with many casualties ( Lionel Plaister being just one) to secure a small strategic knoll. The farm and the knoll still exist as you can see in the photo below.

On the way home we went to a small town to the East of Amiens called Vignacourt which has some significance for our families. Vignacourt, interestingly, is where the photographic plates of Aussie soldiers resting behind the lines were found a few years ago and made into the book by Ross Coulthart called "the Lost Diggers" and it was also the town where my grandfather in the Vet Corps was stationed looking after the horses and animals. It is not far from the Poulainville aerodrome where his brother, a pilot, was stationed and eventually killed in in a flying accident in April 1918. He is buried beside his gunner, Owens who was killed in the same accident. It is a small, well tended cemetery and apparently it was near a hospital where the wounded were taken and, like many, were buried if they died of their wounds.Wendy's relative, Francis Degenhardt was part of the last and successful offensive in 1918...he died in August 1918, exactly 3 months before the end of the war leaving a young family.