2015 and Barbara, Christopher and I joined a school tour from St Francis Xavier College, Beaconsfield, to visit the Western Front battlefields and cemeteries of the Great War.
There were twenty eight of us including some parents and senior students. The purpose of the trip was to give the students some idea of Australia's role in the terrible events of 1914-18. The rest of us were really "hangers on" with the exception of the teachers responsible for the kids.
We would be travelling pretty solidly for two weeks beginning in Belgium and then down into France..
We arrived in Brussels on a bleak and drizzling Sunday morning, and boarded a bus for the Belgian city of Ypres (known to the soldiers of the day as "Wipers"). We passed the famous Menin Gate where the names of thousands of soldiers who lie in unmarked graves, are commemorated.
Our tour wasn't really to start until the following day, so we settled into our hotel and then enjoyed lunch at a restaurant on the main market square. They served us a piping hot Flemish stew which was very welcome on a chilly afternoon. After that we wandered around the town, watched a local bike race , pressed our noses to the windows of tempting patisseries and visited the Fields of Flanders Museum. It was once the Cloth Hall and you can see what happened to it in the war. This city and the surrounding countryside was the site of four great battles of the war between 1914 and 1918. What became known as the Ypres Salient is now the last resting place for hundreds of thousands of Allied and German soldiers.
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| Wintery Ypres |
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| Tempting |
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| Cake anyone? |
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| Sunday cycle race - Ypres |
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| Where the ceremony will be |
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The Menin Gate
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| The Fields of Flanders Museum |
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| As it was in 1914-18 |
As part of the visit to the various battlefields and cemeteries, each of the students was supposed to research the background of a fallen Australian soldier, so after breakfast on Monday morning we set off for our first war cemetery. It was a relatively small area within Ypres township itself. Here we held our first little memorial service, with one of our group reading a brief eulogy to a fallen digger, followed by the ode....
They went with songs to the battle, they were young
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
And then "The Last Post"
This was to become our mantra for the next couple of weeks.
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| Ypres Town Cemetery |
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| Barbara and Chris |
From Ypres we boarded our bus bound for Fromelles in France and an area called The Australian Memorial Park.
Here the Australians who died in the battle of Fromelles are commemorated. And here we met our guide for part of the day, Pierre. What Pierre lacked in physical stature he made up for in his knowledge of the battles in this region, and the part played by Australian soldiers. We met him at a place called the "Cobbers' Monument" There is a statue of a digger carrying a wounded mate on his shoulders. The title comes from such an event, described here by a witness, a stretcher bearer.
We found a fine haul of wounded and brought them in; but it was not where I heard this fellow calling, so I had another shot for it, and came across a splendid specimen of humanity trying to wriggle into a trench with a big wound in his thigh. He was about 14 stone weight, and I could not lift him on my back; but I managed to get him into an old trench, and told him to lie quiet while I got a stretcher. Then another man about 30 yards out sang out "Don’t forget me, cobber." I went in and got four volunteers with stretchers, and we got both men in safely.
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| Pierre - our guide |
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| "Cobbers" |
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| "Cobbers" at Fromelles |
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| Chris reads the ode |
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| VC Corner |
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| Wall of the Missing - VC Corner |
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| Remains were exhumed here |
A few hundred metres up the road we came to a cemetery known as VC Corner. Here are buried some of the several thousand Australians killed in the Battle of Fromelles. This happened in 1916 and was the first for the AIF on the Western Front. Some historians have described it as "the worst 24 hours in Australia's history." Five and a half thousand Australians were killed or wounded. The memorial lists 1300 soldiers who have no known resting place, the plaques reading "Known unto God"
Not far away is an open field where some of the remains from the battle have been exhumed in recent years, and some have been identified through DNA testing.
Our next stop was a few kilometres away still near to Fromelles. There is a museum which was built by the Gillard Government and only opened last year.
Inside are re-creations of trenches and bunkers, and the debris of war, old rusty helmets, shell casings, bully beef tins and so on.
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| Barbara and me at Fromelles Museum |
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| Debris of war - Fromelles Museum |
Next we drove to a cemetery called Rue Pettilon. War dead were buried here as early as 1914 and because it was next door to a dressing station, the place contains the bodies of soldiers from all over the British Empire as it was then. There are fifteen hundred soldiers interred here.
Finally back to our hotel in Ypres.
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| Rue Petillon Cemetery |
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| Canadian War Graves |
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| Indian War Graves |
A short bus ride from Rue Petillon we came to a beautiful place near a village called Fleurbaix.
This was the Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery. It is surrounded by a moat and shaded by willow trees. There are three hundred and fifty graves here. Two hundred of them unidentified.
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| Barb and Chris at Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery |
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| Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery |
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| A solitary French Grave |
Tuesday morning and we were back on our bus heading this time to Polygon Wood. It was here that soldiers of the Fifth Australian Division fought their first major battle in Belgium. The Australian Fourth was there too.That was in September 1917.
We walked through that same wood, conscious of the fact that nearly a hundred years ago men from our own country, along with their British allies had walked through fog and the smoke of artillery, expecting to die or at least be cut down and cut to pieces as they advanced.
The difference apart from the deadly fire of machine guns and rifles, was that the woods themselves were virtually treeless because of the shelling.And the Germans facing them were firing from re-enforced concrete bunkers which still stand today.
This was all part of the third battle of Ypres. The Allies gained some ground but it cost them 71,000 dead and wounded.
Not far from Polygon Wood is the Buttes New British Cemetery where many Australian soldiers lie.
We stopped to visit various graves and to look at a monument to those diggers who fought here.
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| Buttes New British Cemetery |
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| Buttes New British Cemetery |
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| 5th Division Memorial |
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| By a German pillbox - Polygon Wood |
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| German pillbox |
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| Polygon Wood |
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| Polygon Wood -Pillbox |
Our next location was a place called Tyne Cot or Tyne Cottage, so named apparently because the German pillboxes reminded the Northumberland Fusiliers of Tyneside workers' cottages back home.
We made two visits to Tyne Cot Cemetery. One in pitch darkness and freezing rain, and there we held our own little dawn service. Then we went back to the hotel for breakfast followed by a visit to a German cemetery called Langermark. This was very different from the serried rows of white headstones we were used to. Here lie more than forty four thousand German soldiers who died in the many battles around the Ypres region. They are interred in mass graves marked by black basalt blocks. Very different and looking very solemn.
After Langermark we returned to Tyne Cot where the daylight revealed a huge cemetery with a memorial cross at its centre. Eleven thousand Allied soldiers are buries here, eight thousand of them unknown. Among their number thirteen hundred Australians.
The memorial cross at Tyne Cot was built on top of a German blockhouse and one panel was left open to reveal the concrete beneath.
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| Entrance to Langermark Cemetery |
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| German Memorial Plaque |
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| Cemetery Crosses and Plaques |
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| Bronze statues of German soldiers |
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| Tyne Cot Cemetery |
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| Wall of Rememberance - Tyne Cot |
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| The cross at Tyne Cot |
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| German Blockhouse beneath the monument. |
Returning from Tyne Cot our young students changed into their school uniforms for a ceremony which is performed every evening in Ypres. This was the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate. Firstly all traffic was stopped and the crowd awaited the arrival of the buglers of the Last Post Association. Then silence fell and the stirring notes of the Last Post are heard. Then Reveille followed by the laying of wreaths. And on this particular evening our student group was given the privilege of laying a wreath commemorating the sacrifice of Australian diggers so long ago.
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| Dressed up for the Menin Gate Last Post ceremony |
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| Last Post buglers - Menin Gate |
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| St Francis Xavier College - About to lay their wreath |
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At the Menin Gate Ceremony
Good Friday and we were piling into our bus once again and leaving Ypres for the town of Albert in France. Once again the weather was cold and damp and foggy.
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An hour or so later we were trudging up a sloping path to a massive basilica which loomed out of the fog. This was the dominant feature of the French war cemetery of Notre Dame de Lorette.
This is the largest war cemetery in France and contains the graves of twenty thousand French soldiers as well as the unidentified remains of another twenty-two thousand.
The area was the site of a series of battles between the French and German armies here and nearby Vimy Ridge. We walked to the ridge to look at another monument, this one to the memory of Canadian soldiers who died in the war. It stands in the centre of a battleground park which is fenced off because of the danger from unexploded shells and other ordinance. Even so you can see that the ground, though green with trees and grass, is pitted with shell craters and the remains of trenches.
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| French Graves - Notre Dame de Lorette |
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| Basilica of Notre Dame de Lorette |
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| Vimy Ridge - Canadian Memorial |
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| Canadian Monument |
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| Vimy Ridge Battlefield Park |
From Vimy Ridge we travelled to the village of Hendecourt les Cagnicourt not far from Arras, scene of many battles in the Great War. There we were welcomed by Claude and Colette Durand. This elderly couple, ex local teachers have done a great deal in raising the profile of Australian involvement in the battle of Bullecourt. We were to visit Bullecourt later in the afternoon. In the meantime we enjoyed a delightful lunch with Claude and Colette in the local hall. Our students treated our hosts to a couple of songs and presented them with a book about Australia and the school medallions.
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| Claude and Colette Durand |
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| Lunch with the Durands |
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| Singing for our hosts (left) |
And so to Bullecourt. The battles of Bullecourt, one and two are regarded as the first times that Australian troops lost much of their regard for their British leaders. Here's how one historian described the first disasterous battle -
The plan was to advance some three kilometers north, taking the village of Hendecourt, two kilometers north east of Bullecourt. Operations of this kind were usually supported by a prior artillery bombardment of the German trenches. However at Bullecourt the Australian 4th Division attacked without artillery support, in an attempt to surprise the Germans, but with the assistance of a dozen tanks. In spite of the failure of most of the tanks to reach the German line, the Australian infantry advanced northwards, with Bullecourt on their left flank, and seized two lines of German trenches. There they were halted by increasing German resistance. Let down a second time by the failure of their own artillery to fire on the German counterattacks, the Australians, having held the enemy trenches for several hours, were driven back to their starting line with the loss of over 3000 men. Poorly planned and hastily executed, the first battle of Bullecourt resulted in disaster.
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| Australian Digger Memorial - Bullecourt |
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| The Bullecourt Digger |
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| Imagine advancing from the treeline towards criss crossed enemy machine guns firing low to bring them down. This was Bullecourt. |
Our last visit for the day was to Queant Cemetery where over two thousand soldiers killed between 1917 and 1918 are interred. Most of them came from the battles in and around Bullecourt.
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| Australian graves at Queant Cemetery |
It was early evening by the time we checked into our hotel at Albert. We were now in the region so associated with much of the war; the Somme. The town of Albert is dominated by a very old basilica, Notre Dame de Brebieres. Atop the dome is a statue of Mary and the infant Jesus,known as the Golden Virgin. In 1915 it was hit by a shell which brought the statue to a near horizontal position. Allied soldiers said whoever brought statue down would lose the war. The Germans thought the opposite and in 1918 it was finally brought to the ground.
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| The Basilica in Albert |
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| As it was in 1915 with the leaning virgin |
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| Albert centre |
In the morning we started out for a major site on our itinerary, the Australian memorial and cemetery at Villers Bretonneux. On the way we stopped for a brief ceremony at Adelaide Cemetery where 519 Australian soldiers lie. Four of them are identified and it was from here that Australia's unknown soldier was exhumed in 1993 and brought home to the War Memorial in Canberra.
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| Adelaide Cemetery on the Somme |
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| The Unknown Soldier |
Of all the Great War battlefields and cemeteries on the Western Front, Villers-Brettoneux is perhaps the best known to Australians. Ten thousand Australians died in and around Villers-Brettoneux in 1918, even as the war was coming to a close. It's worth mentioning that among those thousands were many indigenous Australians. We were told that in the first place people of aboriginal background were not allowed to serve. Then the government graciously gave them temporary citizenship so that they could enlist. Needless to say those who did not die for Australia, lost their citizens' rights on their return.
The Germans had taken Villers in April 1918 and the task of retaking it was given to two brigades of the Australian 4th and 5th divisions, along with British troops. They attacked at 10pm against withering fire. When Verey lights burst above them they just stood still until the darkness came. And meanwhile hundreds of them fell where they stood and those not hit swept on towards their objective. One German officer described the diggers as "magnificent." In the end the Allied troops achieved their objectives but at such a terrible cost. We were in pretty sombre mood as we walked around the memorial site. These cemeteries are such beautiful places and so well cared for, but then you remember that for every stone there was a man from our country, who for whatever reason, king and country, adventure, ...gave his life on these bloody fields.
There is a tower overlooking the manicured grounds and on either side a wall, filled with the names of more soldiers who died in this place but whose remains were never found. One of them was John Christopher Nolan, a great uncle of Barbara's. We found his name there amongst so many others, and I've highlighted it on the photo.
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| French Monument to Fallen Diggers |
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| At Villers-Bretonneux |
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| The tower and wall of remembrance - Villers-Bretonneux |
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| Barbara finds John Christopher Nolan |
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| The cemetery at Villers Bretonneux |
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Villers-Bretonneux Memorial Tower
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In the township of Villers-Bretonneux there is a school which was demolished by shellfire and when the war ended was rebuilt. That school is typical of the regard the people of this region have for Australia.It was the money raised by Victorian schoolchildren which enabled its reconstruction. In 1919 the mayor of the town summed it up this way.
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Soldiers of Australia, whose brothers lie here in French soil, be assured that your memory will always be kept alive, and that the burial places of your dead will always be respected and cared for."
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| Villers-Bretonneux School |
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| Hopscotch in the playground Villers-Bretonneux |
From Villers Bretonneux we visited the site of the battle of Le Hamel where the Australians corps fought for the first time under the command of an Australian general, John Monash. It was meticulously planned and went off perfectly with infantry, tanks, artillery and aircraft all working together. It was a relatively small operation but it proved that co-ordination worked and what's more cost less in casualties.
There were other cemeteries around here too, at Beaumont Hamel, Dernancourt and many others as well as monuments to the diggers who fought here.
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| Australian Corps Memorial - Le Hamel |
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| Shell crater near Albert - the steeple on the horizon |
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| Dernancourt Cemetery |
Easter Sunday morning and our first stop was to look at an enormous hole in the ground known as Lochnagar Crater. If you saw the film "Hill Sixty" you will know what caused this hole. It was the result of weeks of tunneling under a German fortification, the planting of tonnes of explosive, and finally on July 1st 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, its detonation. The result was the largest crater ever made in the war. Lochnagar is now a memorial site to all who died in the subsequent fighting.
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| Lochnagar Crater |
We were out on the road again..Dead Man's Road to be exact. This road lies near Pozieres, sight of another series of battles involving the AIF. The road received its name from the intense shelling it received during the fighting. Unfortunately for us our bus driver ran into trouble turning around and we all walked back to the main road while help was sought in Pozieres village. In 1916 the battle of Pozieres was a two week struggle for both the village and the ridge on which it stands. It was primarily an Australian affair. The Australians succeeded in driving the Germans out, again at high cost. As historian Charles Bean put it: "
The Pozières ridge is more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth." One part of the battle for the ridge once featured a windmill. The windmill is long gone, destroyed by shellfire, but the site is part of the land owned by the Australian War Museum. Soil from the Windmill site was scattered on the grave of the unknown soldier in Canberra.
Australians captured a German bunker called "Gibraltar" on the outskirts of the village, and that's where we waited for our bus.
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| Remains of Gibraltar Bunker - Pozieres |
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| Gibraltar German Bunker |
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| The Windmill near Pozieres |
In the afternoon we visited a number of sites where we could pause to remember the various stories of Australian soldiers we had chosen. In my case it was a soldier unrelated but who happened to have the same name as me. He had been killed near a place called Fritz's Folly, a sunken road. According to a mate who was there, Jim Ryan was hit by a dud shell. And he died from a wound to the abdomen. There is no record of where is buried.
After I had read my tribute and planted a small cross of remembrance we walked back to the bus. On the way we found several bits of shell casing evidently ploughed up in a nearby field. This is a common event in these places.
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| Memorial for James Ryan |
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| Leaving a cross |
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| WW1 Shell cases - They are still digging them up. |
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| Fritz's Folly |
On the way back to the hotel we stopped briefly at two more spots. One was a monument near Beaumont Hamel; quite different from the ones we had seen so far. It was a sculpture of an enormous caribou stag and it commemorates the soldiers of the Dominion of Newfoundland who died in the war. The Newfoundland Regiment fought here on the first day of the battle of the Somme, and it was all but wiped out.We also stopped at the cemetery of Delville Wood. This wood was captured by the South African Brigade in July 1916. Three South African Battalions fought continuously for six days and suffered heavy casualties. Most of them are buried here.
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| The Newfoundland Monument near Beaumont Hamel |
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| Delville Wood cemetery |
Monday was to be our last day on the Western Front and we had reached the battlegrounds of the final days of the Great War. First we stopped at a place called Thiepval where there stands a memorial to the missing of the Battles of the Somme....seventy two thousand of them. There are headstones here of both French and Allied soldiers, but the memorial itself bears the names of thousands of missing whose remains lie in unknown locations.
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| Thiepval Memorial |
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| The Anglo French Cemetery |
Finally we drove to a the sites where Australian forces fought their last battles. We went first to Mont Saint Quentin the heights of which were successfully stormed by AIF troops between August 31st and September 4th. From there they overlooked Peronne, a pivotal German defensive position on the line of the Somme. Then to Tincourt British Cemetery to see the grave of Austin Mahony. He was one of three mates
who enlisted together from Melbourne University, There was Harry
Fletcher, Joseph Scales and Mahony,
Mahony and Fletcher were both hit on the same day in the fighting around Montbrehain and they died four days apart. Ironically Montbrehain was one of the last battles fought by the AIF in the Great War.
Scales survived the war and returned to Australia.
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| Digger Memorial - Mont St Quentin |
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| Memorial |
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| Mont St Quentin |
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| Tincourt British Cemetery where Capt Austin Mahony lies. |
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| From left: Capt Fletcher, Lt Scales and Capt Mahoney |
This was our last story of the Great War which we commemorated. To look at the smiling young faces of three friends who joined up together, two of them, served together and died together, you can't help thinking..."What a waste."
Sixteen million men and women died in the 1914 -18 conflict.
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Now it was time to look forward to
less sombre matters.
We were heading for the City of Light - Paris.
But we had one stop on the way, eighty kilometres west of Paris on the right bank of the Seine. It was the town of Giverny which is best known as the location of the artist Claude Monet's garden and home. We arrived
in warm and sunny weather and enjoyed lunch in an open air restaurant.
What can be said about this place created by the founder of French impressionist
painting.
The pictures say it all.
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| The Lake - Monet's Garden |
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| Monet's House |
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| The Kitchen |
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| The Dining Room |
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| Barbara popped in |
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| Monet's Garden |
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| Garden stream |
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| The much painted bridge |
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| Chris, Barbara and me on that bridge |
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| Overhanging willow |
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| Cherry blossom |
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| Daffodils |
And so on to Paris where we arrived mid afternoon. Before we checked into our hotel, our driver and a guide took us on a whirlwind tour around some of the landmarks. We would see some more on the following day. Our itinerary included an evening boat ride on the Seine . The others were to catch a plane home on the day after that, and Chris, Barbara and I would take a train to Bayeux, in Normandy
Once again pictures of Paris tell much more than words.
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| Paris at last |
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| Chris on the Trocadero |
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| L'Arc de Triumphe |
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| The Eternal Flame - Tomb of the Unknown Soldier |
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| The French Tricoleur |
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| Traffic on the Champs Elysee |
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| Les Invalides |
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| Dome of Les Invalides |
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| Art Nouveau Metro entrance |
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| The Eiffel looking up. |
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| Beneath the Eiffel |
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Tulips - signs of spring
And then there are the views from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
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| The Trocadero |
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| The Seine |
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| Les Invalides |
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| L'arc de Triumphe |
.Altogether we had three stays in Paris, once with our school tour group, then another on our return from Bayeux, and finally one night after a few days in Bruges. More on that later. Here's the rest of what we saw in Paris.
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| Place de la Concorde |
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| Place de la Concorde and Cleopatra's Needle |
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| In the Tuileries Garden |
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| Lunch in the gardens |
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| A cheese and meat platter.... |
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| ...and a beer! |
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| L'orangerie art gallery |
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| What's inside..Monet's Nympheas and much more. |
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| Rodin's "TheKiss" |
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| On the Champs Elysee |
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| Champagne.... |
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| ...and chocolate mousse |
And in the evening we cruised down the Seine, watching the lights and sights.
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| Pont Alexandre |
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| Evening relaxation for Parisians |
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| Notre Dame |
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| The Trocadero |
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| All lit up |
Before leaving for Bayeux we visited the Louvre
We spent some time at the Louvre, but not nearly enough. Chris took these.
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| At the I.M Pei Pyramid Entrance |
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| Beneath the Pyramid |
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| Winged Victory |
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| DaVinci's Mona Lisa or La Gioconda |
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| Bonaparte Crossing the Alps- Paul Delaroche |
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| Venus de Milo - Ancient Greece |
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| Athena of Velletri |
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| The Four Captives - Martin Desjardins |
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| Julius Caesar - Nicholas Cousteau |
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| Epic of Gilgamesh - Mesopotamia |
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| Dying Slave - Michaelangelo |
After Bayeux and the Normandy battle sites, we returned to Paris and drove out to the fabulous Palace of Versailles.
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| Versailles Forecourt |
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| A golden door - Versailles |
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| Royal Chapel |
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| Gold is everywhere. |
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| Out in the garden |
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| The palace |
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| Daffodils in Bloom |
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| All Versailles to the horizon |
As I said earlier, on the day our tour group was heading to the airport and home, Barbara, Chris and I were boarding a train to the medieval town of Bayeux in northern France. It lies about seven kilometres from the coast on the English Channel. It is perhaps most famous for the nine hundred year old Bayeux Tapestry which is housed there. But for Chris and I , the reason for coming here was to visit the nearby sites of the D-Day landings in 1944. Over the next two days we followed in the footsteps of the Allied armies which stormed the Normandy beaches and in particular the role played by the American 101st Airborne. If you have seen the TV series, "Band of Brothers" you will know who they were.
Anyway this is what we saw.
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| The German view of Omaha Beach |
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| One of the few remaining German guns |
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| RAAF Squadron 453 flew from here after D-Day |
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| Omaha Beach |
%2BMonument%2BOmaha%2BBeach.JPG) |
| 1st Infantry Div (The Big Red One) Monument |
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| The American Cemetery at Omaha |
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| American Fallen |
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| Chris at the cemetery |
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| Grave of Gen Theodore Roosevelt Jr |
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| Monument at St Laurent sur Mer - Omaha Beach |
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| Omaha Beach from Coleville sur Mer |
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| Pointe du Hoc where the US Rangers landed |
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| Pointe du Hoc - German perspective |
From the beach we moved inland and our next stop was in the town of Sainte Mere Eglise. On the night before June 6th, American paratroopers landed here when they overshot their drop zone.
Many were killed before they hit the ground. One who wasn't killed was paratrooper John Steele who landed on the church roof and hung there for hours. The incident was featured in the film "The Longest Day" and there is a somewhat bizarre monument...i.e. a dummy paratrooper hanging from the steeple today.
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| Church at Sainte Mere Eglise |
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| The John Steele incident recreated |
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| Pvte John Steele - 1944 |
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| Ste Mere Eglise Museum |
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| Monument to the Airborne - "Iron Mike" |
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| To those who didn't make it. |
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| Utah Beach |
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| Utah Beach |
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| Hotel Lion d'Or where Eisenhower stayed. |
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| And so did we. That's our room |
On our second day at Bayeux Chris and I were up early to rejoin Jonathan, our guide. Today we'd be focusing on the exploits of the 101st Airborne.
We stopped to look at a very old system of sluice gates. They're significance was that the after D Day the Germans opened them and flooded a huge area of the surrounding land, impeding the Allied advance. The allies regained control and thus controlled a potential barrier against German counter-attack.
From there we visited Marmion Farm which was occupied by German troops in 1944, until they were dislodged by US paratroopers. The same French family still owns the farmhouse but because a German officer hanged himself from one of the rafters, and because a family member did the same years later, they believe the place is haunted and have moved out.
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| La Barquette Lock Gates on the River Douve |
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| In memory of Easy Co's company commander, Lt Meehan, whose plane crashed killing all aboard. |
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| Marmion Farm |
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| 1944 -Paratroopers attack Marmion Farm |
From Marmion Farm we took a turn down a winding country lane to a place called Brecourt Manor.
In the adjoining fields there was a German battery which was firing down onto Utah Beach. The job of putting them out of action fell to First Lieutenant Dick Winter, now in charge of Easy Company. His textbook attack by twelve men was an unbridled success and is still taught to West Point students today.
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| The field at Brecourt Manor where Winters' team took out a German battery. |
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| Monument to Major Dick Winters and the 101st Airborne. |
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| Brecourt Manorhouse |
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| Winters' sketch of the Brecourt Manor fight |
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Paratroopers after Brecourt
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There are so many monuments and memorials scattered all over Normandy. The next one we visited was at a town called Angoville-au-Plain.
Back in June 1944 paratroopers from the 101st engaged in a three day battle with German forces. Two American medics, Robert Wright and Kenneth Moore set up an aid station in the local church and there they treated the wounded from both sides. The village changed hands several times but when the Germans saw that the medics were treating their men too, they allowed them to proceed.
Today you can still see bloodstains preserved on some of the pews. The memorial stone outside says the following:
‘In honour and in recognition of Robert E. Wright, Kenneth J. Moore. Medics 2nd Bn 501 PIR 101st Airborne Division. For humane and life saving care rendered to 80 combatants and a child in this church in June 1944.’
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| The church at Angoville-au-Plain |
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| Bloodstained pew |
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| Medics Memorial |
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| Medic Ken Moore |
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| Treating a German prisoner - Angoville-au-Plain |
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| Medic Robert Wright |
And then there is the incident at another town; that of Ste Marie du Mont. The Americans drove the occupying German troops out of a church which was being used as an observation post. After the fight, a church vestryman was sweeping up the debris, raising quite a cloud of dust. Suddenly there was a sneeze. It came from the confessional and the deacon huried out to alert the paratroopers. There was more gunfire and the sheltering Germans surendered. You can still see the bullet holes in the confessional and in a glass case containing a statue of St Therese.
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| The church at Ste Marie du Mont |
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| Bullet Holes in the confessional |
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| Saint Therese's near miss |
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| First Mass after liberation - Ste Marie du Mont 1944 |
We heard one more story about individual exploits that day. This was the amazing story of Private
Joe Beyrle, the only American to fight for both his own army and the Soviet army. Joe was trained as a radio operator and a demolition expert. He had parachuted into France to deliver funds to the resistance before D-Day.
He jumped again on D-Day and landed off course on the roof of a church in the town of Sainte-Come-du-Mont.
He lost contact with his group but managed to blow up a power station before being captured by the Germans.Over the next seven months he escaped twice, only to be recaptured. In the second escape he caught a train he thought was bound for Poland. It took him to Berlin where he was picked up by the Gestapo. They beat and tortured him before he was sent to another POW camp from where he escaped again in January 1945. This time he ran into the Soviet army which allowed him to fight with them until he could be returned to his own unit.Joe Beyrle died in 2004.
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| Carentan June 20th 1944 |
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| Carentan today |
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| Place de la Republique - Carentan June 1944 |
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| Place de la Republique - Carentan today |
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| A bank today - Gestapo HQ in WW2 |
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| Approaches to Carentan |
On our way back to Bayeux we stopped at a place called La Cambe. It was originally a cemetery for American soldiers but in 1947 they were exhumed and sent back to America. It was then given to the German government as a war cemetery. Today the remains of twelve thousand German war dead are interred there. Just like the German cemeteries of the Great War, the graves are marked by plaques and black basalt crosses.
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| La Cambe German War Cemetery |
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| Plaques and Crosses |
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| German Monument to the dead |
While Chris and I had been touring the Normandy battlefield, Barbara had been exploring the medieval township of Bayeux, including some of the beautiful old buildings among them the 11th century cathedral of Notre Dame de Bayeux. And of course there is the fabled Bayeux tapestry which isn't a tapestry at all. Actually it is embroidery, but somehow the word tapestry has stuck.
It is nine hundred years old and is said to have been made by Kentish women after the Norman invasion of England in 1066. It is the story of that invasion that the tapestry tells.
The work is safely under glass but you can get close enough to see every woolen stitch in the seventy metre long linen strip.
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| Notre Dame de Bayeux Cathedral |
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| Unwanted babies were put through the convent hatch |
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| A canal in old Bayeux |
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| Bayeux Cathedral |
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| Cathedral Doors |
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| Part of the tapestry (embroidery) |
After returning briefly to Paris, the three of us set off again, by train to Bruges.
This medieval city in northwest Belgium is a beautiful place. It is known as the Venice of the North, and taking a boat trip along those canals is a great way to see the place. It's the capital of West Flanders and its port was one of the most important in Europe for centuries. The city centre, the Markt, featured horse drawn carriage rides and rows of seventeenth century houses, many of them now trading as restaurants. If you saw the movie "In Bruges" you'll recognise the famous belfry tower overlooking the square.
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Markt Centre - Bruges
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| The famous Belfry - Bruges |
HORSE DRAWN TRANSPORT
TWO WHEEL TRANSPORT
BRUGES POST OFFICE
MONUMENT TO THE BELGIAN ARTIST - JAN VAN EYCK
OLD STREET IN BRUGES
17TH CENTURY STEP GABLED HOUSES
BASILICA OF THE HOLY BLOOD
There are also lots of chocolate shops in Bruges
Barbara loose in a chocolate shop
They look like rusty old tools - but they're made of chocolate
On our last day in Bruges we took a boat ride around the city on the canals. You can see why it is called the Venice of the north.
GOOD BELGIAN BEER ENDS THE DAY
Altogether we were travelling for three weeks. We saw a lot and learned a lot, especially about events involving Australians in the Great War, and its sequel in 1939-45. It was an unforgettable experience.
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COBBLESTONES
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