Day 10 Monday 10 April 2017

Terribly convenient the day of the month and the day of the trip being the same, saves much confusion.

Now here is a coincidence for you, the hire car I have is a Peugot 308 and I am staying in room 308 at the Mercure in Amiens, spooky or what.

Now gentle reader you may wish to avert your eyes for the next paragraph or so.  A concerned reader of the blog has asked if they throw cats off the buildings here in Amiens.  I can only say absolutely not!  The concerned reader, who will remain nameless (how's it going Flashy?) is confused with Amiens and Ypres.  In Ypres, in medieval times they used to throw cats off the cloth hall tower to get rid of witches or something and now for some special occassions they throw stuffed cats from the tower to renact the ceremony.  And it still works, there hasn't been a witch in Ypres for decades.  Pleased to have cleared that up but to be perfectly clear no cats are hurt in the current proceedings.  (phew).

Anyway, back to the really interesting stuff, the military history of TGW and the AIF's (Australian Imperial Force) contribution.  I digress again a little, not matter what anybody tells you there was no 1st AIF.  It was the AIF!

Today I walked the Bullecourt battlefield.  Bullecourt was the scene of two battles involving the AIF, the first a disastrous defeat and the second a rather pointless victory.    Bullecourt was part of the major British offensive known as the battle of Arras, this also involved the Canadians at the battle of Vimy ridge, that I have previously referred to.

A Battlefield (interesting eh?)

Without going into too much detail here, I know disappointing for some of you, but one of the reasons for the failure of 1st Bullecourt (10/11 April 1917) was the plan to replace a good old fashioned artillery barrage with the new fangled tanks things.  This was a disaster as the tanks didn't arrive, broke down, got lost, shot at their own troops, or got shot at by the Germans.  So the Australians were left to attack without any artillery and with the tanks failing to make an impression.  It was a disater.

2nd Bullecourt on 3 May 1917 was successful with the Australians managing to seize, and hold, part of the German Hindenberg Line.  The Germans counter attacked ferociously and massive casualties were incurred on both sides.  Eventually the Germans decided the bit of land gained by the Australians wasn't worth the bother and withdrew to lines further back.  These two battles cost the Australian 1st,2nd and 5th divisions 7,000 casualties.  When the military refer to casualties they mean dead, wounded and prisoners.

The walk of the battlefield was about 9 kilometers, and took me about 4 hours.  I could have driven it in about 30 minutes.  The interesting thing about walking the battlefield is the you see the lie of the land, the dead ground and the exposed land.  A gentle rise when you are driving can turn into significant high ground when it is walked.  The area around Bullecourt is reasonably flat so a ridge or a rise of a few metres can make all the diiference.

It was a colder day today so the conditions were similar to what the Australians experienced in 2nd Bullecourt, in 1st Bullecourt there was still snow on the ground.

The Bullecourt Digger

A whole lot of Australians have just arrived at the hotel, they are on a 11 day tour of the Western front, focussing on the Bullecourt anniversary tomorrow. We are already new best friends.

Photos & more to follow......