Villers Bretonneux

 Villers Bretonneux. The final destination on our battlefields tour, and a town that lives large in the mutual affections between its French inhabitants and we in Australia. We will see that first-hand when we visit the town, but we're beginning at the Australian Memorial a few kilometres out of town. This is the centrepiece of Australian Commemoration on the Western Front, and it's where Anzac Day is commemorated each year. The central tower is a beacon on the landscape, for kilometres around.

The Sir John Monash Centre has been added to this Memorial site, and was opened in time for Anzac day 1918, the final year for commemorations of the centenary years of the First World War. It is built unobtrusively behind the Memorial, and lower in the ground.  Inside, it is a high-tech interactive museum, giving visitors an immersive experience in those war years. The past comes alive as we live with the men and women who served, and those who stayed at home, and understand just what it was like to "be there, then".  It is an extraordinary museum and interpretive centre, and the stories it tells can also be researched on-line. Any Australian traveller through these battlefields, wanting to understand the story, and stories, of Australian involvement in this war, must go there. We have been through a number of very good museums on this trip, and, as expected, the SJMC here at Villers Bretonneux is next level. I've downloaded the app,  have my earphones ready, and spend a good hour plus absorbing the displays. 

Is this a better experience than the more usual museum experience of objects, interpretive panels and some interactive materials?  There's room for both. For self-guiding, this high-tech approach is probably better. But a tour guide, bringing objects to life with stories of  people and events, probably has a more lasting effect. I could well be biased here!!

On a lighter note, the cafe serves an authentic flat white coffee!! A rarity in France, as any traveller knows!!

Rain has set in outside. There's time to climb the central tower. The countryside spreads out in all directions, flat and agricultural. Always, looking at these now peaceful and productive lands, my mind is drawn back to the scarred landscape of trenches, dug-outs, pill-boxes and the devastation of artillery.

The cemetery is bigger than many we have seen, with its own story of bodies brought here for re-burial after the war.

I wanted to compare my 1998 photo. Clearly a sunnier day, and the trees have been replaced at some stage. But it is amazing how much is unchanged, even in the paddocks beyond.

The little car on the road outside the Memorial grounds, was our hire car at the time, a small A class mercedes. Travelling in style!!  

The grassed area in front of the tower is where the Anzac Day commemoration is held . A place of pilgrimage for Australians every year.

A final view back before leaving this special place of commemoration and interpretation.

Ecole Victoria.

There was a concern when the SJMC was opened at the Villers Bretonneux Memorial, that Australian visitors might now by-pass calling in at Victoria School. Not so Mat McLaughlin tour groups, who have retained a commitment to visiting here.  It is an amazing place to visit, a primary school in Villers Bretonneux town, re-built with donations from Victoria, Australia, after the war. No wonder it is called "Victoria School". This memorial plaque at the front of the school, says it all.

Inside every classroom, these words are prominently displayed : "N'oublions jamais l'Australie". "Let us never forget Australia".  And in 2009, this earlier sign was refreshed and re-painted, in the courtyard of the school :

There is one final plaque to look at, in a garden at the front of the school.

A very similar tablet is on display in the AWM. Clearly the special connection between this town and Australia, encompasses more than just Ecole Victoria.

The AWM tablet has an extra word : "Australiens"

"To Australian heroes, who died for the defence of Villers Bretonneux, 24-25 April 1918. The inhabitants (of this town) remember".

The town of Villers Bretonneux was all that stood between advancing German forces and the nearby city of Amiens, with its transport links through to Paris. The 'Spring Offensive' of 1918 saw these German troops break through the allied lines in this section of the Western Front. Villers Bretonneux was captured, re-taken by the allies, and then re-captured by the Germans. The final allied offensive  to re-capture it occurred over the night of 24 April, into 25th. There was little of the town not left in ruins, as this photo shows.

Little is left of this church in Villers Bretonneux, nor of most of the buildings in the town.  Is it any wonder "les habitants reconnaissants", when they ponder the delivery of their town from the hands of the enemy.

This story, of the destruction and then delivery of their town, is told in a very comprehensive museum upstairs in the main school building. In fact, it is called the "Musee Franco-Australien, Villers Bretonneux".  I visited this museum in 1998, and it is much bigger and "more professional" now. I would have thought I might be 'museumed-out' by now, but I am thoroughly engaged in this museum-in-a-school. It is excellent, and certainly deserves to be on the radar of Australians visiting this area. While SJMC tells the bigger picture story of this war and the personal stories that do so much to bring that war alive for contemporary generations, the Victoria School Museum, through its objects, photos and interpretive panels, digs deeply into the battles for this town and establishes a connection with Australia that is quite unique. "Let us never forget Australia".

An Unknown Soldier.

We have two more places to visit. Rob, who is one of our group, has a relative buried in Crucifix Corner Cemetery, not far out of Villers Bretonneux. It's his grandmother's brother, and because of this family connection, Rob was asked to lay the commemorative wreath of behalf of all of us, at the Last Post Ceremony at Ypres a few days ago. We stay on the bus while Rob makes a private visit to the gravesite of his great uncle.

 Fittingly, the final cemetery we will visit is Adelaide Cemetery, on the edge of the town. It's not a big cemetery, but it has become one of our better known ones.

This cemetery was the resting place until 1993 of an un-named Australian soldier, whose remains were then exhumed and returned to Australia. That soldier is now interred in the Hall of Memory within the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The tomb of the "Unknown Australian Soldier" is the centrepiece of commemoration within the AWM. The eulogy delivered by Prime Minister Paul Keating, when the body was re-laid to rest on 11 November 1993, is one of the really memorable Australian speeches.

And here is where that body lay for so many years.

I think of scenes from the ceremony of re-internment in the AWM in 1993. Bob Coombe, an original ANZAC who had fought on the Western Front, was assisted forward to sprinkle soil on the coffin. This soil had been collected from the Windmill site at Pozieres, where Charles Bean recorded that "Australian troops fell more thickly on this ridge than on any other battlefield of the war". As this old soldier Bob sprinkled the soil, he murmured "You're home mate". I tell this story to the tour group, and I know they are moved by it.

The rain is setting in. Jo summarises the journey we have been on, and we thank her sincerely for taking us so carefully and thoroughly through these first world war battlefields and memorials, and for pointing out to us again and again the human stories that bring home the costs of war. For each of us, this has been a journey of learning and discovery, of introspection and understanding. It has been utterly worthwhile, and I am the richer for it.