The Somme

 "The Somme". Are there any two other words which speak so strongly to us of the horrors of the Western Front?  I've already seen some of the major Australian battlefields of the First World War - Fromelles, the Ypres Salient, Bullecourt. Each of these, and other places as well, have lived large in my imagination for years, and my experiences as a volunteer tour guide at the Australian War Memorial have sharpened my understanding of what was lost and gained in these places.

But there is something about The Somme that somehow sits deeper. It's probably because my first learnings about the Western Front are rooted here. "The Somme", for me, for years was shorthand for all the horrors of trench warfare and suicidal attacks on the Western Front. It's only in recent years that I understand where the various battles that we call ":The Somme", fit in the overall scheme of things. I'm about to learn a whole lot more.

We're beginning our exploration of the Somme at Thiepval. I know of this place, but I haven't previously spent any time researching it. It's the main British Memorial on the Western Front. Our historian / tour guide Jo wants us to visit it to help us understand more clearly that Australians not only fought under overall British command, but fought WITH British units. While the Somme is horrendous for Australia, with 23,000 casualties over the seven weeks of the 1916 summer, and that number including 7000 dead, for the British it was absolutely calamitous with 57,000 casualties on the very first day, and nearly a third of those killed. The most costly day in British history.  By November 1916, with the winter weather slowing all advance, that number had grown to near 420,000 casualties, which included more than 108,000 killed. Thiepval remembers these losses, and is sacred ground for Britain.

The red brick in the Memorial symbolises the blood shed in these battles, and the archways point to the voids in the lives of families back in Britain, where fathers, sons, husbands, brothers would never return home.

The Memorial was not without controversy in its substantial cost. Further controversy with the French was avoided by building this Memorial 5m shorter than the Arc de Triomphe!

The Memorial walls are inscribed with the names of 72,000 British and South African soldiers who died in the years of fighting around the Somme, and who have no known grave.

The cemetery at Thiepval is not a large one. Many of the graves here are of soldiers "Known unto God" alone. The battlefields of the Somme, that peaceful countryside in the distance, are themselves the burial grounds for thousands of these missing.

Thiepval is so big it can be seen for miles around. It is a useful reference point for understanding the terrain over which the battles of the Somme were fought. Shortly we will view it from Pozieres and understand the ridge lines that link places strongly resonant for Australians - Pozieres, Windmill, Mouquet Farm. I am gaining an increased appreciation of the Somme.

Jo points out to us that the battles of the Somme, from July to October 1916, in fact issued in changes in how this war was being fought. Preparatory - "softening-up" - artillery barrages were used at night, the strategy of a "creeping barrage" was introduced, and the first use of tanks was seen. But these were early days and these tactics would take some time to bear fruit. A "creeping barrage", where troops advance behind artillery shells fired from behind, over their heads and into enemy positions, could be disastrous if the guns couldn't be calibrated correctly and either didn't help advance the position for the troops or even fell among those troops. I hadn't realised these tactics had begun so early in the war, even in a rudimentary way.

I've bought some excellent maps from the museum shop at Thiepval, showing the movement of the front lines over the years of the war. Current scholarship counts German losses at the Somme as  around 230,000 - and the French as 200,000 - and I want to check on my maps what happens next.  I know that Germany was shocked at the extent of these losses, and this led to the creation of The Hindenburg Line, and also to the policy of unrestricted submarine war. The Hindenburg Line, including those indestructible cement pill-boxes I've already seen, integrated into a system of deep dug-outs and heavily fortified trench systems occupying the best strategic positions, is not close by, but we've already visited a small segment of it earlier to day at Bullecourt.

For Australians, there are three significant sites in this area, and we are now moving to the first one, Pozieres village.

Pozieres seems bigger than what I remember from my 1998 visit, but is today surprisingly absent of people. It's a sombre place, or so it seems to me. Perhaps the shops and other places of gathering are elsewhere, away from this main road which runs straight and uncompromising into and out of the town. We're following that road to the western end of the town, where Australians are first involved here.

On one side of the main road, another road heads off at a sharp angle, "Dead Man's Alley". Not it's current name, but it was the track Australians took from their safe positions behind the lines in "Sausage Valley" and "Mash Valley".

"A busy scene in Sausage Valley during the fighting near Pozieres. Communications with Pozieres led through this valley, which was a very busy thoroughfare in July and August 1916 during the battle to capture the village from the Germans. Beyond the Rolls Royce Phantom motor vehicle, and in the middle distance, are several field kitchens, with numerous men waiting around them."  (source. AWM)

"Dead Man's Alley" arrived at Pozieres just near the "Gibraltar Bunker", or "Blockhouse".

Covered in the re-growth of 100 years, when you get close to this fence and look inside, there is still something menacing in these ruins. 

It was captured in July 1916 by soldiers of the 2nd Battalion. "Dead Man's Alley" was now safe passage from "Sausage" and "Mash Valleys" up to the front lines of the fighting at Pozieres.

This photo, taken several years after the war, gives a better impression of the size of Gibraltar Bunker and its dominating position on the landscape.

Behind it, is the Memorial to the 1st Division.

Each of the 5 Australian Divisions has their own Memorial, erected at a place significant in the history of their fighting in this war. This Memorial to the 1st Division commemorates the enormous losses of her soldiers in the battles of the Somme.

We now travel back through Pozieres, to the other side of the town, to the second site significant to Australians. The Windmill. It's on the summit of a gentle ridge, giving a clear view of the land below. Already, it's strategic value is obvious.

Like every Memorial Park and Cemetery we have seen, the Windmill is perfectly maintained. Green grass, carefully laid-out path. An air of calmness and serenity.

There's an interpretive panel at the entrance to this park, telling the story of this place. Its simplicity now almost belies the drama of that story.  But the grassy mounds at the rear of the park unmistakenly take us back to what happened here in 1916. Under these mounds can be seen the ruins of yet more German pill-boxes, silent witnesses to the effort and bloodshed required to capture this ground.

In my mind's eye, I see the diorama in the Australian War Memorial : "Pozieres". This Windmill site was selected as the one to take visitors into an understanding of the Somme battles and the enormity of Australian losses in this area.

Under this diorama at the AWM are inscribed the words of Charles Bean which I am now reading in this Windmill Memorial Park. Here they are chiselled into a stone plaque resting at the end of the path, before the pill-box ruins.

"How thickly?" I ask my tour groups at the AWM. "Over an area of a few hundred acres, in those seven weeks in the summer of 1916, there were 23,000 casualties, including 7000 killed."  It was soil from this site that was taken, in 1993, to be sprinkled on the tomb of the Unknown Australian Soldier when his body was re-interred in the AWM on 11 November 1993. The old soldier given the privilege of this sprinkling, was heard to murmur "Now you're home mate."

I remember all of this today, and the Pozieres diorama where I picture David Twining in his shell hole here, somewhere, just below the ridge line and looking to the paddocks below.

Yes, this is sacred ground for Australia.

Our final stop is close by. Mouquet Farm. It's between Pozieres and Thiepval, following that ridge line around.

Mouquet Farm is still a farm. Sheep graze in paddocks, there's a hay shed and other sheds and the modest farmhouse looks like what you might find on any Australian farm. The countryside here is not as flat as elsewhere around Pozieres, gentle rolling rises feed into gullies. It reminds me very much of Australian farming land in the area between Cowra and Yass, without the bigger hills.

I keep saying it, but you can't help thinking about the bodies still buried here. I'm also thinking about a young Irish immigrant to Australia, Martin O'Meara, who joined the AIF in Western Australia. Over these paddocks in front of me, he brought in 25 wounded men over 3 days, taking each to a casualty clearing station. The fighting here was fierce and the land churned up by artillery, as in the diorama above. Martin O'Meara received the Victoria Cross for his heroic actions. Physically unscathed, he returned to Western Australia after the war, but was shortly afterwards committed to a mental asylum. He was both suicidal and homicidal. Every night  for the rest of his life, until he died in 1935, he had to be restrained in a straight-jacket. I met a relative of his in the AWM, who heard me talking about Martin to my tour group. This relative was able to tell me a little more about Martin, including that on leave in Ireland, his family thought then that he was already showing signs of mental strain. It's a sad story, and these now peaceful fields only serve to heighten that sadness.

There's another intriguing connection with Mouquet Farm . A nearby farm to where our farm was in Canowindra is actually called 'Mouquet Farm'. It was owned by my neighbour David Cullane. David's grandfather had fought in this battle, and after the war was granted a soldier settler block, to which he gave this name. That original block was expanded over time into a large and prosperous farm.

There's much to think about, looking at this memorial plaque, and the farmlands beyond.

Another long and utterly fascinating day is drawing to an end, and Phillippe is taking us to Amiens, tonight's rest spot.  The road takes us through the Morlancourt district heading towards Corbie, and Jo points out a particularly interesting paddock as we drive past. "That's where the Red Baron was shot down".

Debate has raged about who actually shot down this German air ace, in April 1918. Baron Manfred Von Richthofen is credited with shooting down 80 allied aircraft, his confidence in his flying ability perhaps reflected in the red colour he painted his planes. It's now accepted that he was shot in his plane by an Australian anti-aircraft gunner, and crashed into this paddock.

This is part of the wing plane, cut from the wreckage of his Fokker triplane, and on display in the AWM.

As Von Richthofen had predicted, his death caused great mourning in Germany. 

A popular song of my youth was "Snoopy and the Red Baron" Chase it up on Spotify - apparently the credit for his shooting down really belongs to the flying-eared beagle, Snoopy!!

Amiens is our first taste of a big city in several days. But it will be a quiet night, dinner with some of the group, and a good sleep. Too tired for exploring this interesting city.