Sunday 25th April, ANZAC Day, the day when Australians remember the fallen at Gallipoli in the Great War. Two years ago I thought that as I lived in Europe I would take the opportunity to go to Gallipoli. Instead I went to Villers Bretonneau with an Australian friend and her husband. It was the 90th anniversary of a big and decisive battle there on exactly the same date in April but four years later. Like many Australians I knew little of the battles of the Somme except for the trenches and the carnage caused by a new kind of warfare when phrases such as
cannon fodder and
over the top were born. There was some discussion about cars and driving and it was agreed that I would take my car and drive if the could find accommodation in nearby Amiens which already seemed to be almost impossible but which we managed. We spent the first night in Paris in the apartment of Jean’s sister who was fortunately away in Canada. The trip out of Paris redefined the concept interesting, with Jean telling me to go one way and Lorraine another. As we had agreed at the outset that I was the driver I politely requested them to decide who was to be the navigator as my car could only go in one direction at a time. The countryside was that wonderful pale new green which heralds spring in Europe. Whilst in Paris, where we walked in the Bois de Boulogne the Chestnuts were all in full flower, further north they were still only at budburst stage. Arriving in Amiens, we checked into our hotel and went to a bistro recommended by the hotel manager.
Then in order not to get lost on the important day, we set off to find the memorial. What a fiasco. First mistake, we forgot the map, second mistake, we did not follow instructions given to us by a local we asked for directions, thirdly and most seriously some of the major roads were closed in preparation for the service the next morning so getting there depended on our poor sense of direction. The memorial is impeccably maintained by the Australian War Graves Commission but it broke your heart to see those rows of white stones, row on row of them. Unlike American War Graves I once saw in Italy near Florence, which seemed to cradle the fallen in a peaceful timeless silence, these seemed to speak of waste and wanton destruction. Located at the top of a hill, looking across the green fields it seemed simply and achingly sad.
At 2.AM in the morning of the 25th, having not slept a wink we had breakfast and set of for VB as it is fondly called by the locals. We were well rugged up but it was cold. There were about four thousand people there and it seemed that everyone I spoke to was relative of a soldier who had been in the Somme. The places where battles were fought are carved into the walls of the Memorial and those familiar names seemed to bring those days so real and close. I realized again our indebtedness to all who fought in that war and the wars that followed. It rang so true in that eerie dawn light that “whenever we think of them we honour them” We remembered when Australians wore heavy woolen uniforms and called each other cobber. As five o’clock arrived so did the birds with their Dawn Chorus to remind us that life goes on and songs are sung again.
After the service it was back to VB for coffee and croissants. A group of army helicopter pilots who were there to play rugby in the following days started a game of two up and kept the visitors entertained for hours. At 9 o’clock I realized we had already been up for seven hours. We drove to Fromelles later in the day with a young French Journalist who is married to an Australian and lives in Champagne. He had arranged for the curator of the museum to open it especially for us. Before visiting the museum we went to the cemetery and looked across that infamous no mans land to the memorial where the relics of German bunkers have been left as a reminder of that battle. I could not imagine the horror of having to cross it.
The museum was simply amazing, clearly the most important thing in the world to the elderly caretaker. It is curious the things that attract ones attention. Although everything was fascinating and immaculately presented it was the duckboards in the trenches which captured my imagination. I had thought, if indeed I had ever thought about it, that the sappers just rolled them out like carpet. They actually came in lengths about four feet long and were made of extremely heavy timber. A man would not be able to carry more than a few at a time and yet miles of them were laid. The curator took us to the house where Hitler lived for a number of years. There is one story, among many, that the Australians were thirty yards from Hitler at one stage. What a difference it would have made if he had been killed then. Another favourite story is how the infamous Red Baron, whose plane went down in a field near VB died. Many claim to have fired the shot that killed him. The locals say they waited till he hit the ground and then shot him, in other words he died in the crash.
On hearing of our visit, my friend Pixie asked if I had seen the South African graves. Her father fought in the battle at Delville Wood. She said that it was a poignant moment of remembrance for her when she received my email of our visit to the Somme. In the forty years I have known her and she never mentioned it. Looking at the War Graves Commission papers I was amazed to realise the enormity of effort required to retrieve those bodies, record their names, where they had fallen and were buried; thousands and thousands of them rescued while battles raged around them. What a massive task and responsibility; heroic and soul destroying. And it went on for years after the war ended. There are 410 cemeteries in the Somme and 130,000 graves. One of our unknown was returned and interred at the War Cemetery in Canberra where he now symbolizes his many comrades. A matter of weeks after our return from Fromelles a mass grave of some four hundred soldiers was discovered in those same fields.
A friend told me he had been to an Anzac memorial service once in France but was not at all impressed because he thought it just glorified war. For me it was the opposite. It became real and present and brought home to me the stark realization of the terror of war and how grateful I am that my family and friends to have been spared.
