16. Brothers in Arms

Polygon Wood

Discovered yesterday that there was a Saturday morning working bee on the Brothers in Arms Memorial from 0800.  Prompt start for me and a morning spent carting concrete blocks for the base of the very large structure. I arrived first and Johan arrived at 0820 with a load of mortar and stayed long enough to task me with carting base blocks with the hand cart (one tyre almost flat) for the right hand arm of the cross then disappeared for nearly an hour for further supplies.  When I finished, four more arrived and I teamed up with Scott the Aussie and using my Disco and a trailer on site carted blocks forty eight at a time around the site.  We couldn't get to the other side as there were, what I thought were ditches.  On enquiring I discovered that they are remaining, undisturbed German trenches for the front line of Polygon Wood - amazing.  They are still deep enough in places for my head to be below the top.  By the finishing time, midday I was stuffed.

Original WW1 German trenches on site

Tyne Cott

Roman and Fyfe take Irksome 

The must see of the Somme is Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery & Memorial to the Missing.  The whole facility is only for those lost in the local Ypres Salient, all twelve thousand of them!

A fascinating feature of this place is that it includes two machine gun pillboxes, named by the Tommies  Indigo and Irksome, a tongue-in-cheek understatement if there ever was one. The Blockhouse, now clad with white marble forms the main memorial with the Cross of Sacrifice on top.

Within the Wall of Sacrifice is a bay for all the Kiwis lost with no known grave.

This bay is actually curved but my pan flattened it.

On the way home we drove through the Menin Gate, an hour before the Buglers sound the Last Post. The crowds were already forming.  

15. Five years later....

Zonnebeke - Polygon Wood

Privacy is important

"Make sure you can't read it"

Friday, 29 Sept, the big push to Zonnebeke, Polygon Wood.  While we were preparing the invasion our soldiers updated their memoirs. 

I first visited, with my Mum, in 2012 and by luck, we met  Johan, the famous WW1 Tunnel warfare expert who took us to the Menin Gate Armstance ceremony and ended up laying a wreath in front of thousands - another story. Last night we watched Johanne's excellent DVD that I purchased at the time, The Underground War.  The children were gagging to meet Johan and I was pretty certain that he wouldn't remember me - may have oversold the relationship!

Beware of Hagrids wand

Mostly Canterbury names on one side

Polygon Wood was exactly as I remembered.  One of the few sites where the graves are where they were buried, between the craters, at the time.  Again, very moving (a common theme). Roman insisted on taking his umbrella.

Then across the road to  the Buttes New British Cemetery (New Zealand) Memorial.  We had stayed clear till now as the Australian official commemoration of the battles was on the 26th and they were expecting thousands. 

Looking toward the Butts from the NZ Memorial with the Australian memorial on top.

Johan's Five

Names in 2012 - Menin Gate

The NZ Memorial lists 378 officers and men of the New Zealand Division with no known grave who were killed between September 1917 and May 1918 while serving in the Polygon Wood Sector.  Jacqueline and Iris sang our National Anthem.  

NZEF Missing Memorial

Roman wins

We visited the five new graves for the bodies that Johan found during local road works.  He is very proud that these names have since been removed from the  Menin Gate - memorial to the missing as they now have commonwealth headstones. 

Walking back to the car a warm breeze was blowing and Hagrid got the last laugh by putting up his umbrella while I did my Chicken Little impersonation while it rained acorns. The others walked through the wood, via the lovely Black Watch Corner, Scottish Memorial.

For lunch we headed to ANZAC Rest, Johan's pub.  On walking in, I introduced myself and Johan remembered me and asked after my Mum - very gratifying and surprising.  Johan projects DVDs and played, while we dined, the TV programme on reuniting two families with the soldiers he found after ninety years.  Quite moving.  He has also established a very impressive private museum upstairs complete with weapons you can handle and an extensive collection of artefacts.

A personal tour with Johan

A WW1 live round, just found

Across the road to Johan's big project, the Brothers in Arms Memorial.  A fantastic tribute to the five Australians he found.  We were able to see a rotting German hand grenade, still in the ground with the damp cordite spilling out of it and picked up a large piece of shrapnel which we will keep.

From the Aussy celebration three days prior.
The large one this end is from the King of Belgium

14. We're here because they're here......

Bailleul - France

Tiny chapel at cemetery entrance

Laundry day.  Late start then into Bailleul with a huge load for three machines simultaneously in the laundrette - all very French and thanks to the local for showing us the ropes.  While the washing was in progress we visited the Bailleul Community Cemetery and Extension.  Bailleul was the headquarters for the NZEF's tunnelling division, where the devastating mines under the German trenches at Messines were directed.  Bailleul was the focus of intensive fighting with over one hundred thousand shells directed at the town during the battles. There was nothing left.  The community cemetery is typically French and charming and the extension typical War Graves, immaculate and moving.  Fascinating conversations with a  number of locals tending graves and a Monumental Mason repainting lettering on a family grave.

Visiting the Extension we focused on one grave to give it some meaning.  Looking up the number we found excellent, moving, information.

Iris, Audrey and I sang We're here because they're here to mark the moment.  We have been enjoying singing it in the car also as it has played a number of times on the BBC Voices from the First World War Podcast.

We also enjoyed poking around the older parts of the cemetery with the various crypts and impressive tombs.

Grabbed some lovely pastries walking back to the laundrette then dropping Jacqueline at the supermarket we went on to a hardware store for some sealant as the bathroom sink is leaking in the, as Douglas refers to it, Giantavan.

This side faces Belgium

The cloche with to gun openings and periscope hole on top

For interest we programmed a different route back to the campsite and discovered, four hundred metres up the road, in a field, a blockhouse?, complete with cloche on top.  I biked to it and ventured through the barbed wire at the roadside and explored.  Above the entrance, steel door gassed off, it said 1938.  Looking up Wikipedia my guess was confirmed that this was part of the Maginot Line,  It was open to explore and there were some 30mm casings but they were earth encrusted so I guess from the local fields.  I was not able to climb into the cloche as the ladder and platform had collapsed but I was able to find a way on top of the structure.

13. Fraternising with the enemy

German War Cemetery of Langemark

Discovered one of the showers has an extractor - joy.

Mid morning the air was filled with the gentle hum of modern farm machinery.  The maze field adjacent to us was harvested with remarkable speed and efficiency.  Proved nice to have our horizons lowered.

Our bakery order was delivered also so it was pain du chocolats for the non celiacs.  Fresh baguettes for lunch with local brie and tomatoes - fantastic.

First stop of the day was the staggering German War Cemetery.

Plaques yet to be installed.  Laminated info sheets taped to the concrete

Outside a beautiful new peace memorial has been added, all very politically correct, modern and beautiful but, in my opinion, it does detract from the start beauty of the previously infrequently visited cemetery.  I will add the information as a comment below.

It is my third visit and the German Cemetery stuns the senses; three thousand schoolboys desperately pressed into service take only a small area.  Disappointingly the mass grave (thirty thousand in the area less than a tennis court) has been altered, the end walled off and the Four Mourners have been moved.  Hard to reason why?  I asked a tour guide that was there and he didn't know why but agreed that it diminishes the impact.

We ended up staying a long time and it was great to be able to do so.

Each grave may have up to 20 names / bodies

On the way home we called in at the beautiful Canadian Memorial on the site of the first gas attack where so many died horribly at St Julian.

The Brooding Soldier is facing the German lines from where the gas came.

12. Education begins

Mesen, West Flanders

First shower at this lovely camp site proved disappointing as not only does the nozzle spray widely with fifty percent hitting its target but also each unit turns into a steam bath which is great if one is a Mollart* but suffocating for the rest of us.

At Fyfe's request I purchased a family login for Maths Buddy and then he spent the next couple of hours happily attacking the Year 8 syllabus until getting bettered by Roman Numerals.  Iris did a

module then got out her piano and had a good session on Yousician.  It was nice to hear her while I carried out various jobs.  

Audrey is quite dog mad and I must admit that as dogs go, she is a goodun. Roman was in solitary mode, explored the site by bike then used the trampoline.

The older two and I biked into Bailleul for supplies, passing by the very

Belgium hills from our French pitch

imposing sight, just round the corner, of heavily armed police,  slinging automatic weapons just over the brow of the road waiting for something/someone.  We coasted past with my best attempt at a confident, innocent, smile.  On reflection it is more likely that they thought, going by my expression, I had a reaction to something I had eaten and was concerned that it might escape me by one, or other, end.  Biking through the town on a 20º autumn day was a joy and we took a slightly longer route on our return and stopped at a tiny crossroads to scoff pain au chocolat. 

Memorial, just behind the German line

Plaque, between the emplacements

One of the two machine gun emplacements

After lunch we headed to the first of the WW1 sites we intend to visit.  Again Voices of the First World War podcast playing but only lacklustre protests were uttered and silenced when it started playing.  It was amazing driving through the actual sites of the 1915 Christmas Truce and Messines Ridge Assault by the New Zealanders as they were being talked about.

Our first stop was the New Zealand Division Memorial which is just behind the German trench and contains two of the machine gun emplacements that they had to overcome.  Standing on the emplacements looking at the sweeping field of overlapping fire that the machine guns had I can't imagine how the Kiwis achieved it.

From the memorial with the two emplacements overlooking the valley.

The Messiness Ridge New Zealand and British Cemetery and Memorial was, as always, very moving.  It is incredible .... graves marked Known unto God, the sheer number of Kiwis beggars belief.  

I first visited in 2012 with my Mum and we were as shocked then, as we are now. One grave had a photo, left by family, which made it particularly poignant.

Our last stop for the day was in the captured village itself where there is a statue of a Kiwi infantryman.  Very simple, very moving.

*Tim has famously spent significant time and fortune installing such a device in his Holyport home.