Why it's so nice to be home

For some reason jet lag is particularly debilitating this time. I find myself hand-washing a cardigan and repotting a plant at 2:30am in the morning, something I've never done before. And although Ross manages to sleep (for Australia this time), even he finds himself watching Star Trek reruns in the middle of the night to begin with. 

But it's so nice to be home. Despite the numbness of jet lag, post-travel digestive upsets, minutiae of household chores and, all too soon, the soul-destroying ennui of weekdays, this is what it's all about... the Sunday sunrises and beauty of my park. The park with all its gorgeous spring colours, golden light, moody river views framed by foliage, peace, calm and the cure for the nature-shaped ache that I've unknowingly carried around these last few weeks.

Some of the amazing colours of Kings Park (Sept 2018)

And the image which, for me, just sums up why it's so nice to be home is this....

Enough said.

The draw of Home

We wake up feeling decidedly tired as we have had some pretty long and exhausting days. There's no time to lie-in though as we have a 9am train to catch. Manchester seems like it was ages ago but in other ways seems like yesterday, yet somehow our holiday has sprinted by. We have our last hotel breakfast before closing up our suitcases one final time and shutting the hotel room door behind us. As we cross the lobby to check-out I think to myself that it will be around 28 hours before we reach home... a very long journey lies ahead but I think we're both excited and ready to be going home today.

It is only a short walk to the station and then the first of our two train journeys. Fortunately the transit through Lille-Flandres is only 20 minutes this time - just enough time to find the right platform and settle into our TGV carriage for the direct journey to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. 

Watching the fields flash by from the TGV

Our flight to Doha does not depart until 4pm so we are absurdly early but we wanted to catch a direct train to the airport rather than lug suitcases around train stations in Paris. It is the right decision in the end even though we reach the airport so early that the airline counter hasn't even opened for check-in. So we find a seat in the bustling departures hall to wait. There is nothing to do for 45 minutes except watch with some bemusement while a group of Chinese tourists takes turns photographing each other (individually and in every permutation with other members of the group) on a particular flight of steps. The locals are obviously equally puzzled as they try to navigate their way past the beaming and selfie-snapping tourists on the stairs. All the more bizarre because there is nothing especially aesthetic about the staircase and the airport terminal itself is grey and featureless. 

We're happy when we can finally check-in our luggage and make the most of our Business Class perks...! Like getting fast-tracked through Immigration and wonder of wonders, sitting in the absolutely stunning and serene surrounds of the club lounge until it is time to board the plane. When we arrive in the lounge, we are the only passengers there so we get spoilt with personal service in the rooftop restaurant ... including a lunch buffet just for us. 

Enjoying the airy lightness of the Qatar Airways Business Class Lounge at CDG Airport

When boarding time does eventually roll around, we settle into our seats for the 6.5 hour flight to Doha and look forward to peace and quiet... until the large group of unaccompanied children rolls into the cabin higgledy-piggledy. Not really unaccompanied as they have with them several nannies and also male minders (Security? Valets?). Maybe their parents are sitting in the very pointy end of the plane in the peace of their own suites but it takes an age for the kids to finally settle and it is only after tears and lots of shouting, including stern words from various adults, before they are sufficiently secured in their seats for take-off. Ross and I look silently at each other with fear in our eyes for the hours ahead, but fortunately the kids are reasonably well behaved during the flight. They only start getting fidgety again and excitedly stomp up and down the aisles a little while before we land.

Settling in for the long journey

The 2.5 hour transit in Doha in the middle of the night is testing as we desperately try to stay awake until the Perth flight at 2am but soon we're on the last leg of our journey home. The hours pass in a haze of broken sleep, movies, and lots of food... We are looked after extremely well but it is nonetheless a welcome feeling to finally commence our descent and feel the enticing calm and familiarity of home getting ever closer.

***

When we do finally collapse through our front door, tired and unsure whether it's night or day, it's with a happy sigh. My stomach is as unhappy on arriving home as it was when we left, but we're home. Home! After a very fulfilling and wonderful, wonderful trip, we are Home. 

Our last day part 2 - Ypres and the Last Post

It is only a short drive to Ypres and we enter the town through the famous Menin Gate. It's a massive structure and marks one of the main routes out of town (it is literally the gate on the road to Menin). The Lille Gate is the other. We will return here later but for now, Phil parks the car near the main square and we're free to roam about for 90 minutes until we meet up again at the gate.

Entering Ypres through the Menin Gate

We're all quite awed by the buildings around the main square. Ypres is a beautiful place. It seems to have all the medieval landmarks of other places we have seen over the last week ... a grand trading hall, a cathedral, a belfry... 

Cloth Hall, Belfry and St Martin's Cathedral

Ypres Cloth Hall (Lakenhalle)

Buildings in Ypres

Yet what makes it all the more remarkable is that, like Arras, Ypres was in the red zone and was essentially a pile of rubble at the end of WWI. Only a handful of buildings were left untouched while the majority of medieval and renaissance buildings lay in ruins. The destruction was so complete that some believed it should never be rebuilt and instead remain a monument to the terrible cost of the war:

"I should like us to acquire the whole of the ruins of Ypres... A more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world."

Winston Churchill (1919)

Fortunately the townspeople of Ypres pressed on with reconstruction. German reparation payments funded the rebuilding of Ypres on a pre-war footprint using plans of the old city as a guide. The painstaking reconstruction took decades. The Cloth Hall for example, was only completed in 1967.

Just as the people of Ypres did not forget their town, they also did not forget the sacrifice made by so many. The Menin Gate is now first and foremost, a memorial to the 55,000 missing in Belgium, including 6,000 Australians. Their names are inscribed on every available surface inside the Menin Gate and the fact that the Gate is so very large, is a tangible measure of just how many names ... how many lives were claimed by just one conflict. And they are remembered. Except for a time during the German occupation of WWII, the Last Post has been performed at the Menin Gate every night at 8pm since 1928.

The sign on the Menin Gate

We are still full from our very late lunch so we don't join the others for dinner. Instead we make the most of our free time and walk around. We head back towards the Menin Gate and walk along the old city walls before heading back to the square to enjoy a cup of tea. Hundreds if not thousands of visitors attend The Last Post every evening and so we make a point of going back to the Menin Gate well ahead of time to find a good viewing spot.

The Menin Gate

The massive interior of the Menin Gate with its lists of names

"Here are recorded names of officers and men who fell in Ypres Salient but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death."

(Inscribed on the Menin Gate)

So many names

When we arrive at 7:15pm there are already people lining the main route but Ross persists and slowly but determinedly edges forward until we are standing at the front. As it gets closer to 8pm, the crowds build and build until there are hundreds of people. Fortunately there are two jovial and chatty Englishmen standing right behind us who provide some humorous and entertaining conversation to pass the time. For us, it is our final night on the Continent, for them their first. We're reminded once again how small the world really is. One of our new friends lives in the Cotswolds and only a few minutes drive from where we stayed last week. 

At 8pm, a hush descends and The Last Post begins.

The Last Post begins

Small groups of civilians lay flowers at the Memorial.

The Last Post Ceremony

Here's a short video of the proceedings: 

In twenty minutes it's over. The crowds disperse, the road is reopened and people filter back towards the town centre.

The Last Post Ceremony marks the end of our tour and also the end of our holiday. Far from being a sombre end to our holiday, it has been the perfect end. For all its simplicity, it is a profoundly affecting service. And the fact that it is performed each and every evening, and hundreds come here to engage in a simple act of remembrance makes it all the more meaningful. It has been such a privilege to visit the battlefields, and the graves, and bear witness to those who fought, and we are both immensely glad we came here.

Lest we forget.

******

We rejoin the rest of our group and squeeze uncomfortably back into the van for the hour's drive back to Arras. It is close to 10pm by the time we get back to our hotel. Perhaps fatigued from the long day and contemplative from what we have seen and experienced today, we are all very quiet on the journey back. As we zip along the motorway, I take one last backwards glance at Ypres and see the belfry spire silhouetted against a blood red sunset. It is a fitting way to remember this landscape that has witnessed so much bloodshed and yet has reinvented itself. Darkness may fall but the land patiently waits until it can renew itself afresh tomorrow with the rising sun.

Our last day part 1 - Fromelles and Passchendaele

We use the quiet time after breakfast to pack our suitcases given we travel home tomorrow and it will be late by the time we return tonight. The phone rings and it is the tour operator with a questionable story about not being able to take us today. Her car is not safe, and a tyre needs replacing, and it will take several hours, and, and... Fortunately another battlefield guide has agreed to absorb us into his group at the last minute. The operator promises to call me at lunchtime to make sure everything is going okay... it's a call that never comes.

After Ken's quiet and measured delivery yesterday, it is a bit of a shock to the system when we meet Phil. He's loud, extremely ocker and very much a showman. It's a bit grating at first but he proves himself just as knowledgeable and has amazing energy to look after such a big group for what turns out to be a 12-hour day. Yesterday our group of four spread out in an 8-seater van. There is no such luxury today. The van is the same size but it is full so we are squeezed uncomfortably into the back and must clamber in and out over seats all day. The car is followed by a coach with three generations of an Australian extended family. At every stop our group swells to around 20 people so it gets a bit noisy and crowded. 

It is a full day, we cover plenty of ground and familiar place names and events finally assume greater meaning as we witness the landscapes for ourselves. Our first stop continues on from the sites in the Somme that we saw yesterday. At the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial, the trench lines and battlefields have been preserved. Unlike elsewhere in the region where the ground has been filled in and levelled, the extreme undulations from artillery bombardment are still evident even though the forest is reclaiming the ground. 

Pockmarked earth is all that remains of this WWI battlefield

It's still possible here to see just how close the enemy lines were. I expect to feel misery, hurt or some other lingering negative presence from the hell that happened here, and yet surprisingly there is only peace. It's a feeling that pervades all the sites we visit and is what I end up taking away with me from these two days touring battlefields. Perhaps it is the great deference with which the dead are remembered and tended, or the way Nature is reclaiming all of these sites, but there is only peace now. In the morning sunshine, the trench remnants now dance with only wildflowers and butterflies.

The earth doesn't entirely forget though and there are still plenty of reminders of WWI littered across the landscape, even though a century has passed. Phil stops the car near a paddock and we walk across the ploughed field to what is left of a concrete bunker. As we see throughout the day, the landscape is littered with concrete bunkers, old field hospital sites, overgrown tracks and shrapnel. Apparently millions of unexploded munitions still remain buried in the soil here. Constantly ploughed fields have largely been cleared over the decades but new machinery digs deeper and in recent years close to 300 tons a year has been unearthed. Farmers have become blasé about it and accept it as part of farming in this region, but there are still fatalities every year from unexploded WWI bombs. You can read more about the lethal relics of WWI here.

At the Pheasant Wood Cemetery

We continue the drive north and stop at the Pheasant Wood Cemetery near Fromelles. It was here in July 1916 that British and Australian forces attacked a German stronghold in the hope the 'diversion' would stop the Germans sending reinforcements to the Battle of the Somme. It failed dismally and German machine gunners wrought terrible devastation. The Australian Fifth Division suffered over 5,500 casualties in a single day. For what? The Germans continued to supply the front lines in the Somme unimpeded.

In more recent times, in 2007, an amateur Australian historian discovered the burial sites of 250 mostly Australian soldiers in Pheasant Wood. They were reinterred at the cemetery. Now more than half have been identified and have a named headstone. Hopefully the others will soon find their names too. 

'Cobbers' by Peter Corlett

We travel to VC Corner where 410 lie buried in two mass graves, and the names of the Fromelles dead with no known grave are etched onto the wall. At the adjacent Australian Memorial Park, stands the beautiful bronze statue, 'Cobbers'.

It commemorates the days right after the Battle of Fromelles when hundreds of Australians lay wounded in no-man's-land. Their mates risked their lives to retrieve them, often carrying them back behind the lines on their shoulders. Sergeant Simon Fraser was one of the soldiers who heard a man cry out, 'Don't forget me cobber' on one of these missions. He went back out again to rescue the man.

Our lunch keeps getting pushed back because Phil learns that there is another tour group at the cafe, and so we visit a couple more sites. We see the site of the famed Christmas Truce of 1914, when the war was supposedly 'going to be over by Christmas'. For a few hours at least, everyone put down their weapons and there was a friendly game of football, Christmas carols and goodwill.  

In a small unobtrusive clearing I find a poppy - that enduring symbol of remembrance. And what a perfect place for it.

We also get the chance to walk through Polygon Wood, where Australian forces fought and died, again in heartbreaking numbers, during the Battle of Passchendaele. On our way there, the van pauses near a locked gate. Here on private property is the entrance to an underground bunker, which served as a field hospital for Australian soldiers fighting in Polygon Wood. One member of our tour group, a lady from Queensland, is following the story of her ancestor. It's believed he was treated here when he was wounded. Phil tells us we can't really venture onto somebody's land and in any case the gate is locked... but then Ross notices the padlock hasn't actually been secured. In a flash, Phil and the lady discreetly enter the site and take some photos inside the bunker. It's a moment of profound meaning as she gets to bear witness to his final journey a hundred years later, and she is very appreciative.

Australian Fifth Division Memorial near Polygon Wood

Polygon Wood is eerily silent. This area was razed to the ground a century ago but now it is dense and forested. Yet no birds sing. The fighting was heavy here and at one point, there were 11,000 Australian casualties in a week. Once through the wood, we stop briefly at the Australian Fifth Division Memorial before rejoining the van. 

It is nearly 2pm by the time we pull up at the cafe. It is rustic and confusion abounds while figuring out what every member of our 20+ person group wants to eat. The food, when it does finally arrive, is very welcome!

The rest of the afternoon is very much about Passchendaele. First we witness the aftermath with a visit to the Tyne Cot Cemetery. We have seen so many cemeteries in the last two days. There are literally thousands dotted across the region - the uniform white headstones marking out the Commonwealth dead, rows of neat white crosses for the French, and the unadorned black crosses marking the mass graves of German soldiers. Tyne Cot is in a whole different league. It is the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in the world and it's impossible to fully grasp the sheer numbers that lie buried here. Row on row of headstones - 12,000 in total, of which 8,000 remain unidentified. 

Tyne Cot Cemetery

The location was originally a nursing station and the graves near the centre are quite ad hoc unlike the neat rows that radiate outwards from there. These were the burial sites of the men who died of their injuries at the hospital. After the Third Battle of Ypres, which became known as Passchendaele (after the village that was its final objective), the cemetery grew exponentially. And after the war, burials from many smaller surrounding cemeteries were relocated here.

The Tyne Cot Memorial sweeps around the boundary and bears the names of 35,000 British and New Zealand servicemen who have no known grave. There are so many headstones bearing the inscription, 'Known Unto God' but they are looked after just as well as their fellows. Vibrant roses grow between the headstones, planted with a frequency that ensures that every grave is touched by the shadow of a rose at some point each day.

Tyne Cot Memorial

A simple but thoughtful gesture - roses at the grave of an Unknown Soldier

Our final stop for the afternoon is an old chateau that has been transformed into the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917. It's an extraordinary and necessary collection of military memorabilia and stories, and includes a reconstructed bunker and network of trenches. In summer 1917, desperate to force a break through the front in Flanders, the Allies launched a major assault. But in 100 days of fierce fighting, nearly 500,000 soldiers died for a territorial gain of only 8km. We have heard so many numbers in the last two days - casualties and death tolls. We saw the 12,000 graves at Tyne Cot and yet all that pales in comparison at the thought of half a million dead in only three months. 

Reconstructed trench - much more sedate than the real thing 

Over the parapet. Visible on the right is one of the posts used to hold up barbed wire. The cork-screw tip meant they could be twisted into the ground rather than hammered in. As they generally had to be put up in a hurry at night, hammering would have given the position away to the enemy. 

Passchendaele is still symbolic of the utter futility of war and of a massive waste of life for little, if any, gain. And yet, it is also considered decisive in the outcome of WWI. Although the German defences had seemed solid, the sheer magnitude of losses on their side as well meant that they no longer had the resources to advance against the French who were, by that stage, completely defenceless.

When we leave the Memorial Museum, the sun's rays have lengthened and there is a tinge of red atop the trees. We are not far from Ypres now and so we pile back into the van for the short journey to our last stop for the day. 

The Somme - part 2

As if trench warfare was not horrific enough, with mud, rodents, lice, gas and constant bombardment from shells exploding overhead and close by, there was also the threat of being blown up from below. Both sides engaged tunneling crews to quietly creep beyond their own trenches, tunnel beneath enemy lines and lay down a ridiculous amount of explosives. 

Our guide, Ken takes us to Lochnagar Crater in the afternoon. The crater is 30m deep and 100m wide and is the permanent scar left over from a mine (one of 19) that was detonated by British troops on 1 July 1916 - the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Giving trenches 'street' names was a way of organising logistics in amongst the confusing network of trenches. These had to run in a jumble of directions and angles to avoid straight lines which would otherwise channel explosives and gas directly towards the troops. And so the Lochnagar mine took its name from Lochnagar 'Street', the name of the British trench from which the tunneling companies dug. 

One of the most meaningful panels commemorates Private Harry Fellows of the 12th Northumberland Fusiliers, who heard the mine detonate while waiting to attack nearby Fricourt. He wrote a poem reflecting on his war experiences in Mametz Wood in 1916, and added a stanza in 1984 when he returned there to visit (his ashes were later buried there). 

The panel at the Lochnagar Crater Memorial

Here is an excerpt of Reflections on two visits to Mametz Wood 1916 & 1984... the full poem can be read here.

Shattered trees and tortured earth 

The acrid stench of decay

Of mangled bodies lying around 

The battle not far away.

This man made devastation

Does man have no regrets?

Does he pause to ask the question? 

Will the birds sing again in Mametz?

...

As far as the eye can see 

Dead bodies cover the earth, 

The death of a generation 

Condemned to die at birth,

When comes the day of reckoning 

Who will carry the can?

For this awful condemnation,

Of man’s inhumanity to man!

... * ... *...*...*...*...*...

What a wondrous pleasant sight 

Unfolds before my eyes,

A panoply of magnificent trees 

Stretching upwards to the skies, 

Did someone help Dame Nature? 

The sins of man to forget,

Where once there was war, now peace reigns supreme, 

And the birds sing again in Mametz.

Our final stop of the day is at Pozieres, where Australian troops were tasked with encircling the Germans in July 1916 in order to capture strategic high ground. They came under horrific shelling and counter attacks before being relieved by Canadian troops at Mouquet Farm in September. In one battle alone to capture the German stronghold of Mouquet Farm, the Australians suffered 11,000 casualties for zero ground gained. Altogether, the Australians lost 23,000 men in this small piece of France and so Pozieres has the terrible distinction of being the most deadly battle of all for Australia in WWI.

The plaque at Pozieres Ridge

The 1st Australian Division Memorial is sited here too. We come across other Division Memorials in our two days of touring the battlefields and we instantly recognise the shape. It gives us a renewed respect and appreciation for our own War Memorial in Kings Park. Now at least we can better understand the memorials it emulates and the sacrifice it represents.

1st Australian Division Memorial in Pozieres (L) and the Kings Park War Memorial in Perth (R)

Perhaps owing to a combination of fatigue and having been profoundly affected by what we have seen and learnt today, we are all very quiet in the car as we journey back to Arras. Ken has been an excellent guide. His historical knowledge is formidable and his quiet and respectful delivery imbued just the right amount of gravitas to the day's events. We say our goodbyes as we are dropped off at our hotel. A hot meal in the restaurant is very welcome although still very muted and contemplative, and we make it an early night as we have an even longer day tomorrow when we visit Fromelles, Passchendaele and Ypres.

The Somme - part 1

The next two days are so full of history, places, familiar names, words, images, thoughts and emotions that it is impossible to do it all justice in a series of short posts but I will try my best...

Our day begins after breakfast when we are collected from our hotel by our guide for the day, the brilliant Ken Lees. We pile into a people-mover with two other Australians - young women from the eastern states who just finished walking the Coast to Coast in the UK(!) and now visit the Somme to find the grave of a relative. Our first stop is the Franco-Australian Museum in Villers-Bretonneux, a town forever indebted to Australia, first for sacrificing so many to liberate the town in 1918, and second for the generosity of Australia to rebuild after the war. 

Outside the Franco-Australian Museum, Villers-Bretonneux

The museum personalises the war and introduces some truly heart-wrenching stories of loss, grief and remembrance.... like the touching tale of the repatriation of the body of an Unknown Soldier to the National War Memorial in Canberra on 11 November 1993 and his honour guard, from humble air crew while in transit to the handful of remaining veterans waiting to welcome him back to home soil.

The unimaginable grief of a farming family from Western Australia - to have lost two sons less than a year apart

 

In Villers-Bretonneux the kinship between France and Australia is very real. Street names reflect places in Australia, and every day the kids at the primary school play beneath a sign that tells them in big green and gold letters to never forget.

Our next stop is the Australian National Memorial where a central tower emerges from a wall with fringing pavilions ... the length of the wall a terrible measure of the amount of space needed to accommodate the 11,000 names of the Australian missing who died in France. It was opened in 1938 only to be caught up in the terrible years of WWII. We climb the stairs to the top of the tower and see the pockmarks left in the stonework from German bullets from the Second World War.

At the Australian National Memorial

From up here we can also see the 'roof' of the Sir John Monash Centre. This is what we've really come here to see as the Centre was only opened on ANZAC Day this year. Dug into the earth behind the Memorial, it is completely hidden at ground level. 

Looking down at the Sir John Monash Centre

We spend a couple of hours at the Centre and it is quite spectacular. Many of the materials used to construct the building were imported from Australia and it is all richly coloured timbers and high quality finishes. No audio guides here. Rather, an app that uses the GPS location of your phone, and free wifi. Around the walls are huge screens that sync with the app and start playing audio depending on your location. Moving around the screens you get a sense of Australia in the war... leaving home, winter in the Somme, the battles and the aftermath.

High tech inside the Sir John Monash Centre

 

Back outside in the sunshine, we look across the valley of the River Somme. The sedate sugar beet fields belie the area's past. A century on and, according to our guide, the landscape is much the same as it would have been at the start of the war. By war's end, there wasn't a tree left standing and it was more moonscape than pastoral landscape. 

The Somme Valley

A poignant reminder at the Sir John Monash Centre

After some lunch we take our leave of the SJMC and go to Le Hamel, where Sir John Monash won a decisive battle in July 1918 - the first 'modern' battle combining infantry, artillery, tanks and air support. Speaking of airplanes, it is from here that we can also look out to Corbie, where the infamous Red Baron was shot down.

Australian Corps Memorial Park

The words of French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, uttered in July 1918, grace the wall of the Australian Corps Memorial at Le Hamel:

When the Australians came to France, the French people expected a great deal of you… We knew that you would fight a real fight but we did not know that from the very beginning you would astonish the whole continent… I shall go back tomorrow and say to my countrymen, "I have seen the Australians. I have looked in their faces. I know that these men will fight alongside of us again until the cause for which we are all fighting is safe for us and for our children"

Our guide, Ken takes us to a small cemetery, one of thousands dotted across the region. All Commonwealth graves are beautifully maintained by the Commonwealth Graves Commission. After the war, Commonwealth soldiers received uniform white headstones so there would be no differentiation on basis of rank, class, or belief. These were men who fought and died together and so are remembered in death as equals. Those who were fortunate enough to be identified had their names on their headstones and a short personal inscription offered by their families. But there are so many unknown soldiers buried here - identified only by their nationality or army unit, sometimes their resting place marked only as being somewhere in the vicinity. Of all the cemeteries, today we visit this particular one because the combined efforts of Ken and our fellow tourist have revealed it to be the final resting place of her relative. She visits the grave and Ken tells us a bit about her ancestor's service record. It is a touching, personal tale of WWI that brings today's tales of epic battles down to a more relatable level. 

And so on a beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon, four Australians and an English war historian remember a young Australian man who fought and died on the other side of the world, decades before any of us were born and could ever fully grasp the magnitude of what he, and so many others, did so that we might live free.