The Somme Part 2 - The Australian National Memorial

After visiting the school and museum at Villers-Bretonneux, we then travelled to the nearby Australian National Memorial. Our British guide, who owns a business taking people around the WW1 battlefields, told us that after the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in 1915, the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), as it was then known, fought in the Somme in 1916, on the Hindenburg Line and in Flanders in 1917 and once again in the Somme in 1918.

It was the Australian army that halted the German advance at Villers-Bretonneux on 25th April 1918, thereby preventing the capture of the headquarters of the Allied campaign situated at Amiens. Under the command of General Monash, it then broke the German line at Le Hamel in July and took part in the liberation of an area between Villers-Bretonneux and the far side of Peronne in August and September. 

The war memorial was unveiled in 1938 by King George VI. Sadly, you can see some evidence of damage to this imposing structure where it was hit by German planes in WW2. At least they did not annihilate it. 

As we stood out the front of the war memorial, shivering in the rain, our guide waxed lyrical for quite some time about the battles raging back and forth, and all the tactics and machinery employed. He was almost like an excited schoolboy playing battlefields with lead soldiers, but I am afraid I soon tuned out. We were talking about young men who scrambled in the cold wet mud, fighting for their lives and for every inch of ground, amidst deafening explosions and screams of pain. 

To walk amongst the graves was very sobering, especially when you remembered that there were so many other young men whose graves are still unmarked and whose families still wonder what happened to them - where were their final moments? What horrors did they see and experience? Tragically, most of them innocently thought they were going on a grand adventure! 

So much of my journey has involved hearing stories of battles - from small ones between the residents of neighbouring villages, to huge world wars. And on so much of my journey, I have seen refugees from war zones begging in the streets. When will we ever learn? 

Again, I will not caption the photos. Just view them quietly. Especially read the tribute on the tombstone shown in the second photo. So heartfelt ! So poignant!