All quiet on the Western Front (Wednesday 31st July 2013)

Driving through this country today it's so hard to imagine what it must have been like for the men and women who lived the nightmare that was the Western Front. Each of the Cemeteries and Memorials we visited had a plaque with a diagram which showed how the battle lines moved as the war ebbed and flowed over the four years. It is quiet distressing to think of all the lives lost or destroyed just to gain control of one tiny corner of the world.

This was really brought home to me at Fromelles, our first stop for the day. This town was the place of Australia's first engagement on the Western Front on July 19-20 at the nearby Pheasant Wood. In the 24 hours of the battle we lost 1299 men with a further 4000 wounded or missing. One battalion started the day with over 800 men. At roll call the next day only 106 men answered. The Battle of Fromelles was the only battle in the war where not one inch of ground was won by either side. A complete waste of time and life. We walked through Pheasant Wood to try to get a sense of the battlefield, But  all was peaceful and quiet and green so it was difficult to get a sense at all.

We moved on from Fromelles and just a little way down the road came across VC Corner and another small cemetery where the remains of a German bunker forms part of the memorial. In a battle that took place here, where the area of “no man's land” was quite narrow a group of diggers gained a foothold in the German trenches. Unbelievably, they were ordered back to Allied trenches. It took then men six hours to cover a distance no further than the MCG is wide. There is a memorial to the men who risked their lives countless times to rescue their fallen comrades from “no man's land”. One such digger later recounted that as he was carrying one wounded man to safety he heard a cry from mud “Don't forget to came back and get me, cobber”.

The fields are littered with small cemeteries and memorials. It's impossible to stop at them all. We pushed on to Belgium now Just a few kilometres away. Indeed, we crossed the border and wouldn't have known except for the obvious change in the language on the road-signs.

We arrived in Zonnebeke, not far from the Australian 5^th Division Memorial at Polygon Wood. After a quick lunch in a nearby cafe we took the short drive out to Passchendaele, not for any reason other than to say I'd been there. This is a town I had seen inscribed on so many Australian country-town War Memorials I just had to “put a face to the name”, as it were. Like all the towns and buildings therein we had seen so far, Passchendaele looked like a “new” town. In away this actually brought to the front of one's mind the fact that these towns had been completely reduced to rubble and so rebuilt from the ground up. I was flicking through a book about Ypres, just down the road, where the author observed that “a man on horse-back could see from one end of the town to the other”.

We took to the narrow country lanes to Polygon Wood. The Memorial is built on a large man-made hill which had provided a significant vantage point in the flat, and at that time, treeless plain. It was was the objective of the Australian 5^th Division to take this hill which had been held by enemy for two years. In the the end the Australians prevailed and gained control. The Battle of Polygon Wood was considered by the Division as its greatest victory so was chosen as the sites for the Memorial. Pop served in the 5^th Division so the place had special significance for us.

In fact, by the end of our visit, it had even greater significance. While walking through the countless headstones I saw one for a digger who served in the Australian Machine Gun Battalion. Pop was a “gunner”. I noticed that his number “248” was close to Pop's “231”. When I got home I visited the the Australian War Memorial website. Soldier number “248” was Charles Roy White. Charlie joined in February 1916 in Adelaide and was a member of the 8^th South Australian Machine Gun Company, as was Pop who joined in April 1916. Both sailed from Melbourne on the same day on the “Port Lincoln”, trained in Egypt and were sent to the Front from the same place in Britain on the same day. The two would have undoubtedly been mates. Sadly, Charlie was killed in action on September 26^th 1917 the first day of the battle. I wondered if Pop was there with him when he died. Charlie was only 18 years and 8 months old.

Our final destination for the day was Ypres. This is also a name I remembered seeing as a young boy on country-town memorials. I always expected it was somewhere in the Middle East. Ypres is a nice town with a very large cobble-stoned square and a spectacular cathedral. The architecture of the building and houses is very different to that which is in France just a few dozen kms away. Straddling the main street, Menenstraat, is the Menin Gate Memorial, dedicated to all the Commonwealth soldiers who fought to protect the town, died but were never found. The large, tall arch is completely covered in the names of the soldiers. At 8 pm, every single night of the year since 1928 the people of the town perform The Last Post as an offering of thanks to the men who saved their town. It was a short but moving ceremony. The Arch was jam-packed with people, like us, who had come to Ypres specifically to witness the occasion. Probably the next best thing to being at Anzac Cove on Anzac Day, I reckon.

After dinner in Ypres, our last with Emily, Kerry drove us home to Lille.