Soldiers of the Great War

In 2014 we attended the dawn service at the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in France. The ceremony, 100 years after the start of the First World War, was incredibly moving. Scudding showers and a biting wind were forgotten as first light dawned and the final notes of the Last Post faded away. Appropriately, it’s something we’ll never forget.

Recently we returned to the battlefields of the Western Front, this time with our son Tom who’s a member of the Australian Army Reserve. On this trip we had with us information about the battles in which Greg and my grandfathers (Tom’s great-grandfather) had fought. Of course we carried our memories of them, too, both much older men when Greg and I knew them; no longer the boys – two among so many – who left their homes to become soldiers of the Great War.

Our trip started in the lovely French city of Amiens, north of Paris

Amiens Cathedral, a 13th century Gothic masterpiece

The Cathedral's elegant and narrow central nave soars to a height of 43m; testament to sophisticated engineering and construction techniques

The Weeping Angel; this little sculpture became famous when soldiers who had survived battles on the Somme began buying postcards featuring the Angel to send home to their families

The Cathedral includes tributes to the Allied forces who helped defend Amiens

Extensive measures were taken to protect the Cathedral during WWI, including sandbagging the elaborately carved entrance portals

And the Cathedral's stained glass windows were removed and stored off site

Sadly many were destroyed during the war anyway when a fire broke out in the building where they being kept

In the end, very fortunately, the Cathedral survived two World Wars relatively unscathed

The Australian National Memorial, Villers-Bretonneux

At the top of the Memorial's tower

This is also the site of the new - and excellent - Sir John Monash Centre (which has been located discreetly behind the Memorial itself)

Le Hamel, site of one of the most successful Allied actions of the First World War; tactics employed here by General Monash were used as a blueprint for later battles

That's the village of Le Hamel in the distance; it took the Allied forces 93 minutes to sweep up that little hill and capture the high ground from the Germans - in one 10-minute period in that fierce battle, two Australian soldiers earned the Victoria Cross

The Cobbers Memorial at Fromelles, where in July 1916 a disastrous British military operation saw wave after wave of Australian and British troops go over the top onto open ground, in broad daylight, and in full view of the Germans lines

The battle lasted two days; on the first day alone 5500 men of the 5th Australian Division were killed, wounded or went missing

It was the greatest loss in a single day in Australia's history

Just days later, more Australians were sent to join the battle for Pozieres

Though ultimately deemed a success, this 7-week battle resulted in 23,000 Australian casualties (by comparison there were 28,000 Australian casualties in eight months of fighting at Gallipoli)

The cemetery at Dernancourt

And the field on which my grandfather was wounded on 5 April, 1918 in the Second Battle of Dernancourt

The Australian Memorial at Bullecourt

This is where Greg's grandfather was wounded in 1917; thankfully both our grandparents survived the war and returned home

Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery which contains the graves of 250 British and Australian soldiers whose remains were discovered in a mass grave nearby in 2008

As a matter of interest, this is a shot of pages of a street directory for a small part of this area - each blue number is the location of an Allied forces war cemetery; there are literally thousands of war cemeteries in the Somme (for a reference of scale, the distance between the two main towns there - Albert and Bapaume - is 19kms)

Preserved trenches near the Newfoundland Memorial Park which honours Canadians killed during the war

There are also a small number of German war cemeteries scattered around the Somme, but no monuments here, only simple crosses and at least two men per grave

When we visited Austria later we saw this photo of soldiers from the Central Powers in their trenches

And this memorial to the men of a tiny Austrian village who died in battle; a reminder of the terrible impact war has on soldiers and their families from all sides

After the Somme we headed up into Belgium, to Flanders; this crater is what's left of the famous Hill 66

Allied troops tunnelled under the German occupied high ground and blew it to smithereens

The landscape around Hill 66 at the time

And the same area today

The Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres; tens of thousands of allied troops marched into battle through the old city gate here

Every night at precisely 8:00pm, the Last Post sounds to remember those who never returned