N.France emails

From: damag@bigpond.net.au
To:
Sent: 09 May 1999
Subject: A letter from the Somme

Having left the bluebirds flying over the White Cliffs of Dover (well we left the White Cliffs anyway), a pleasant 90 minute ferry ride for us (and for the van) saw us arrive in Calais wondering where the ??? to go. We knew the town we wanted, Arnold coped magnificently driving on the wrong side of the road with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the van, but we somehow ended up going in the wrong direction. I know, blame the navigator! Well, that would be acceptable had there been signs on the road that matched the road numbers in the map. (You know it would never be my fault!) Anyway, we made our first overnight stop in France a little later than expected but still with plenty of time to go to the local bar for our couple of glasses of red with the locals. All the locals are very friendly - not bad for the French. A little man came into the bar, shook our hands (and those of everyone around us) and then walked out again. From the reaction of the locals, this was normal behaviour.

Having enjoyed our first night in France, we set out this morning to the area known as the Somme. This, for those who don't know, is the area where 1.2 MILLION men were killed during the First World War. I plan on writing the remainder of this email tomorrow (or the next day) so that details of this place can be told - don't really know how we (more particularly I) will cope with memorials and cemeteries. Spine tingling stuff just reading about it.

The weather - it would not be an email from us without some comment about the weather. Well, it is fine. The locals are in shorts, singlets or no shirts at all and we are still wearing our long sleeved shirts and, on occasion, our jumpers. Right now as I am sitting inside writing this, every van that has someone at home has those someone outside, reading, drinking, playing with the dog (or the kids - fortunately not noisy ones), or just generally soaking up the atmosphere from the rather grand chateau that is behind the largish brick wall behind us. There are a couple of horses in the field on the other side of the park and they seem to be very pleased that it is sunny too as every now and then they go running round the paddock making a hell of racket.

Well, it is not tomorrow but the next day (8 May). We awoke to an overcast sky and a very threatening looking day. So much for French sunshine. Our first port of call yesterday was to the bread man who delivered fresh croissants and large bread sticks virtually to the van door. It was really tough having fresh coffee and croissants for breakfast. Well, we needed it. It was good fortification for the harrowing day ahead. The Australian War Memorial for WW1 was awesome. Set in a huge green meadow, the white stone from which the memorial and headstones were made was an impressive sight. We were the only ones there and, apart from the sound of the rain (heavy, drenching) and the occasional bird, the quiet was amazing. It is a very haunting place and, needless to say, tears mingled with the rain. I don't think we are being biased saying that the Australian memorial was the most impressive of the ones we saw. The stark white against the green was so much more powerful than red or grey bricks as are some of the others. We went to the Newfoundland Memorial. It is here that the trenches have been retained only now there are sheep grazing on what was once a muddy hell hole. Quite symbolic really as the young men who died here were certainly lambs to the slaughter as they went up over the top of the bunkers. We stood in both Allied and German trenches, saw their advantage points and experienced just a tiny bit of the mud - it was raining again. It rained three times yesterday, on two of those occasions we were standing in war cemeteries. At this site the majority of the Newfoundland platoon was wiped out in a single day; 800 men attacked only 68 returned for the next offensive. The figures kept coming out of the mouth of the young Canadian guide. You could only shake your head in amazement and at the futility of it all. It took five months of this sort of trench warfare to gain approximately 400 metres of ground. Bunkers were used as the site of mass graves (indicated by the tombstones being placed without a space between each). Sometimes a headstone indicated that two people (or bits of people) had been buried in one grave. It just went on.