Then, when we had arrived en France, our guide stood up and I realised it was one of my old teachers from high school - Mr Ford! So odd! But he was an excellent guide the whole day, even handing out sketch maps of the Battle of the Somme so we could follow his explanations and see where we were. I found it all fascinating as I never learned so much about World War 1 at school, and especially not in such detail. The Battle of the Somme began on July 1st 1916 and ended on 18th November of the same year. The first day of the battle remains the worst day in the history of the British army, with 60, 000 casualties and 20, 000 dead. I can't even imagine what that amount of people looks like.
Our first stop was Péronne, where we visited the Museum of the Great War. It was well done, really informative and displayed not only war-time artifacts but also artwork. The cabinets were organised in a way I hadn't seen before too, with French, British and German objects on separate shelves, for each topic and theme.
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| I've never seen exhibits laid out like this, this is the British Front Line |
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| This made me cry, the last line says "I will mourn you all my life." |
After the museum, on our drive to the mine crater at la Boiselle, we stopped briefly at the South African Memorial and cemetery. It is actually the only memorial dedicated to the South Africans who served in the war and is located at Delville Wood - where they were almost completely annihilated by the Germans in 1916. You can read more here.
And then we came to the Lochnager crater, which was terrifyingly big and is in fact the largest man-made mine crater created on the Western Front. It's a really moving memorial, albeit quite unsettling. I had been thinking of the thousands of missing dead all day as I walked on the site of their grave, and at the crater there is a separate memorial to George Nugent. He was found at the crater in 1998(!) by a man from Colchester. As you can probably imagine, and if you've been to any battlefield before, the presence of death is palpable. You can see more pictures and read more about George Nugent on the official website.
We then headed to the Thiepval memorial, which is the largest British war memorial in the world. It remembers the 72, 195 British and South African soldiers that died on the Somme battlefields, who have no known grave. What is also interesting about Thiepval is that both French and British soldiers are commemorated and buried together here, representative of their alliance during the offensive against the German front.
I also found the names of several O'Dwyers and Dwyers in the cemetary register, and I couldn't help wondering if any of them are my distant relatives. I know that my great-granddad fought at the Somme and survived, so perhaps others were there too.
After Thiepval, we drove to the Newfoundland memorial at Beaumont Hamel. This was a really impressive memorial, and the trench system had even been preserved to an extent. They were completely grown over but just walking through them for a few minutes was enough. On July 16th 1916, pretty much the entire Newfoundland Regiment were wiped out, with 710 killed, wounded or missing.
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| The caribou |
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| The trench network |
The Newfoundland Memorial Park was our last stop for the day and we headed back to the tunnel to find out there was a 6 hour delay .... luckily, our drivers got us onto a ferry but that there was an hour delay for that too. We crawled into bed at half past 3 in the morning, but it was such an interesting and moving day. I understand that some people are not interested in war itself but I refuse to believe that anyone could visit these battlefields and not feel so incredibly indebted to these men. The First World War was an absolute atrocity and these memorials will serve as reminders to generations and generations to come of the sacrifice that was made here, and that it must never be allowed to happen again.
