I had another day out yesterday, we hopped across to France for the day to check out some WW1 stuff.
First stop was the Canadian Memorial Park at Vimy Ridge:
Much of the land has been left untouched since the war, and is still pock marked with craters and you can also make out the remains of trenches.
Here's something pretty interesting... it's called the Broadmarsh Crater and lies next to the road that runs through the park between the memorial and the preserved trenches and visitor centre:
Very close to the Broadmarsh Crater is the Broadmarsh Mine. About 20 years ago volunteers from the British Army assisted the Canadian authorities in excavating the mine and making safe the 20,000lb of explosives that were still inside - which were laying under the ground right in the middle of the memorial park next to a road travelled by cars and buses full of tourists every day.
Here's the most forward point of the German lines on Vimy Ridge:
Stood in the most forward point of those trenches, the Canadians were just on the other side of the crater -
very close:
These are the preserved Canadian observation trenches that were on the other side of that crater in the last pic:
Heading down the road back towards the memorial we visited the first Canadian Cemetary. Over two thousand graves here including more than six hundred Canadian, covering the entire span of the war:
Walking round this cemetary what struck me was the sheer diversity - English, Scot, Welsh, Irish, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander.... all buried together. The roll call of units and regiments is phenomenal, as was the number of graves with no name. One of the Canadian graves was for a sixteen year old. I also managed to find a couple of Royal Flying Corps graves, including a nineteen year old Lieutenant:
The Canadian Memorial at Vimy Ridge is hugely impressive:
The inscription on this wall reads:
"THE CANADIAN CORPS ON 9TH APRIL 1917 WITH FOUR DIVISIONS IN LINE ON A FRONT OF FOUR MILES ATTACKED AND CAPTURED THIS RIDGE"
One nice detail I liked was how the roads and avenues in the Canadian Memorial Park are all lined with maple trees:
We also visited the Thiepval Memorial, which is inscribed with the names of the 72,195 British and South African men who were lost on the Somme between 1915 and 1918 who have no known grave.
Next to the memorial are hundreds of unknown French and British soldiers buried alongside one another:
It would seem that driving through this part of northern France there are British and Commonwealth cemetaries from the Great War literally every mile or two. We must have passed dozens of them during the day. The main purpose of the day's trip was to visit one of these cemetaries in particular. Near the village of Neuville-Vitasse along a gravel track in the middle of a farmer's field is a small walled cemetary holding the graves of 86 British soldiers all killed on 9th April 1917.
Among them is the grave of my great-grandfather's brother:
My great-great-uncle Albert served in the 2nd Bn Wiltshire Regiment and was killed on the first day of the Arras Offensive in 1917, which saw 288,000 British (including Canadian, Newfoundland, Australian and New Zealand) and German casualties in 37 days.
Unfortunately I didn't have time to find some German cemetaries. I have visited Ypes in Belgium a couple of times and as well as Tyne Cot I also visited the German cemetary at Langemarck which although very different to the row upon row of white British headstones at Tyne Cot was a truly remarkable and touching place.
I thought it was quite fitting that I visited these places the day after the results of a referendum that would have seen the disollution of the United Kingdom. I was also reminded that the bonds between Britian, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are much deeper than just a common language, history and friendship.