WW1 Trail |

The War that did not End

The loss of life as the allied soldiers pushed back the Germans is heart-breaking. My great-great uncle Robert Grant (the brother of John Grant) was killed in action at Grandcourt (not too far from Pozieres) in October 1918, posthumously receiving the Distinguished Conduct Medal for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. We visited his grave at Prospect Hill Cemetery in Gouy.

George Dalziell (my great uncle) was the only one of three brothers to return from the Western Front and died in 1986. He was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for gallantry, during an operation to take back the town of Le Verguier (close to Prospect Hill) from the Germans in September 1918.

Our WW1 Trail

Derek’s grandfather served on the Western Front in 1918 toward the end of World War One. He had just turned 18 and was one of the few survivors of his battalion. He went to hospital firstly by being wounded in his hands, and then succumbing to dysentery.

Two of my mother’s father’s uncles and three of my father’s uncles served in the Western Front. Only one of the five returned.

Over four days, we followed the Australian Remembrance Trail along the Western Front, staying in Ypres, Doignies, and Villers Bretonneux.

Towns on the front lines in France and Belgium suffered greatly. Armies of both sides lived among the people. When the German armies retreated to form a shorter line across the front, with more defensible concrete bunkers, they burned everything in the towns in their wake, taking boys of the towns as young as 14 as prisoners of war. Many of their own soldiers were conscripts of this age.

Australia had the only major army in the war comprised of volunteers. As the war drew on, this war of attrition was losing men. Conscription was voted on twice in Australia via referendum and rejected. The fortunate soldiers were coming home, and some sense of the carnage was making its way into the Australian consciousness, despite the public relations spin of their governments.

Over 46,000 Australians died on the Western Front, many buried where they fell. In total, over 10,000,000 soldiers and 7,000,000 civilians died. Most Germans believed they were fighting a defensive war and in Germany, there were over 700,000 deaths from starvation.

With a fuller knowledge of the politics and leadership behind this horrific carnage, I now have more understanding of the British and French policy of appeasement which allowed the rise of Hitler and the Nazis.

Villers Bretonneux

Australian flags fly high throughout the small town of Villers Bretonneux, where the Australians drove out the Germans in April 1918. The names of Walter Dalziell and Ernest Dalziell (two of my father’s uncles) are inscribed on the Australian National Memorial, two of the thousands of Australians who lie in unmarked graves.

Adjacent to the Australian National Memorial is the excellent Sir John Monash Centre, opened in April 1918, with a grass ‘foreign field’ as a roof. John Monash was born in Melbourne to Polish-Jewish parents. He studied civil engineering and arts and was one of the administrators behind the success of the battle for Villers Bretonneux. A soldier, historian and accomplished pianist, he was highly respected by the British and Australian command, and the Australian troops. The centre is typical of recently created museums with outstanding use of video and interactive exhibits.

I was moved by the older Franco-Australian museum, built by the people of Villers Bretonneux, at the Victorian school. The love behind the exhibits was obvious, including letters and exhibits donated by individual Australians, and projects created by the children of the school. Through the window, we could see the children playing happily.

Australian soldiers helped to rebuild the town of Villers Bretonneux and Victorian school children raised money to build the Victoria School, completed in 1927. After the Victorian bushfires in 2009, the people of Villers Bretonneux raised money to rebuild Strathewere Primary School in Victoria. The Australian soldiers are remembered here every day in signs and flags. At our bed and breakfast accommodation, we stayed in a large house where our hosts, Francois and Francoise, raised ten children, some of whom were still at home and were very friendly. Interestingly, Francoise told us that until they moved into the area and their children attended the Victoria School, they had heard little of the history of the conflict and the sacrifice of Australians in the region.

Bullecourt

Ernest Dalziell, my great uncle, died of wounds in the second battle of Bullecourt in April 1917, at the age of 19. His story was told at the Australian War Memorial in 2017 and is contained at https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C2278444, including a video of the service. He has no known grave and his name is inscribed on the memorial at Villers Bretonneux.

John Wesley Grant, my great-great uncle died from wounds following the second battle of Bullecourt, at the age of 22. He died in an English hospital.

Tragically, there were over 10,000 Australian casualties in the two battles at Bullecourt with no significant advantage gained. Most soldiers were buried where they lay in unmarked graves. As a result, many Australian (and British) soldiers lost confidence in British command and were bitter about the futile waste of life. General John Monash wrote “Our men are being put into the hottest fighting and are being sacrificed in hair-brained ventures, like Bullecourt and Passchendaele…”

Prior to WW1, Bullecourt was a very pretty town with 396 inhabitants. It was reduced to a pile of brick and timber. Long after the war farmers found many weapons, human bones and other objects. The magnitude of the findings indicated there had been a major battle and yet there was little available information. A local teacher realized the number of dead accounted for in the area did not come close to reported casualties. Over many years, the mayor of Bullecourt, Jean Letaille and his wife Denise collected objects such as weapons and soldiers’ personal belongings found in the fields and surrounding countryside.

Bullecourt 1917 Museum is a local museum created by the town’s people. It has existed in various forms since 1980, when local people investigated the story of Bullecourt and questioned the absence of a memorial in the region. Funding from the Australian government enabled the museum to be constructed in its present form in 2012. Of the museums visited, we found Bullecourt 1917 Museum the most moving. Compact, the museum’s power comes from the humanity, and love with which it has been put together. It contains the donated collection of Jean and Denise Letaille, and tributes and personal belongings from families in Australia.

Unexploded bombs are still found by farmers today. Just last year, a bomb was found by an Australian tourist (and then thrown away in terror….)

The Australian Memorial Park was opened in 1993, just outside Bullecourt amidst tranquil farmland. There’s a bronze statue of an Australian Digger, with the inscription, Sacred to the memory of 10,000 members of the Australian Imperial Force who were killed or wounded in the two battles of Bullecourt, April – May 1917, and to the Australians and their comrades in arms, who lie forever in the soil of France. Lest We Forget.

The region is full of war cemeteries and memorials. There is now no possibility of forgetting here.

Ypres – A town of spirit

Destroyed during WW1, Ypres has all the appearance of a medieval town, as the proud and resilient citizens decided to re-create all the buildings as close to possible to their originals.

The Memorial to the Missing is located at the Menin Gate in honour of the British and Commonwealth soldiers who left for the front line through the Menin Gate and whose graves are unknown. The Last Post Ceremony has been held here every evening since 1928 (over 30,000 times), except for the four and a half years the town was occupied by the Germans in WW2. The service was resumed on the evening Ypres was liberated by Polish forces, despite heavy fighting continuing in parts of the town.

On the day we arrived in Ypres, we went to the Flanders Field museum, walked along the old walls marking the perimeter of the town and then attended the Last Post service. Traffic was stopped, and the area fell quiet for the ceremony, led by a cadet group.

The Christmas Day truce of 1914 was marked in an exhibit at the museum. Pope Benedict XV called for a Christmas truce, but it was officially rejected. However, over two-thirds of the soldiers on the front-line participated in the non-official truce, in most cases initiated by German singing of carols and crossing into No-Man’s Land. The command in both sides ensured future mingling of troops was not repeated, as it would undermine the morale (i.e. willingness to kill each other) of the soldiers.

We self-catered most meals on this holiday but couldn’t resist the excellent Captain Cook Restaurant. Derek left his beloved hat here and (though not nearly so sorrowful about this event as Derek) I did not contribute to this event through any action, or non-action.

We were delayed leaving the next day due to the excellence of the chocolate and necessity of sampling a variety of produce.

Pozieres

Walter Dalziell – my great uncle, died in the Battle of Pozieres in August 1916, aged 21. He has no known grave and his name is inscribed on the memorial at Villers Bretonneux. 6,800 Australians died at Pozieres in 42 days, to gain just a small, devasted area. 17,000 Australians were wounded or taken prisoner.

At Fromelles, near Pozieres, 5500 Australians and 2000 British were killed or wounded within a 24-hour period in July 1916.

The Windmill site, an Australian memorial to unidentified soldiers in Pozières marks “a ridge more densely sown with Australian sacrifice than any other place on earth.”

We left a cross here, containing the names of our relatives who did not return from the Somme.

Passchendaele

The Battle of Passchendaele is one of the major battles of WW1, first edged on my consciousness through the harrowing war poetry I studied in school.

“I died in hell –
(They called it Passchendaele).”
Siegfried Sassoon

More than 300,000 allied soldiers died in the 2017 Battle of Passchendaele, many drowning in mud. Other soldiers returned without feet. Tyne Cot Cemetery is at the site of Passchendaele and is the largest Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery in the world. Passchendaele was the first WW1 site on our trail and I immediately realised we would have to revise our itinerary to allow more time for reflection. (We ended up missing Versailles. It was going to be hard to stomach the self-aggrandisement of the ‘Sun King’ and subsequent French kings, after thinking about the suffering on the trenches).

The trenches of Passchendaele have been replicated at the near-by museum and it is possible to walk through, giving an idea of the otherwise unimaginable living conditions of the soldiers.

Tyne Cot Cemetery, Passchendaele Museum and other sites are part of the ‘Legacy’ cycle route and we talked to a Belgium couple doing the route at our accommodation over breakfast. It is easy to hire bicycles and if we were to do the trip again, we would probably include time for this.