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.