Day 13 Thursday 13 April 2017

If you are ever visiting this part of Belgium remember this, do not ever, and I repeat do not ever stand in the path of a middle aged Belgium riding their bicycle towards you, they will not try and avoid you but will keep on coming at you with a steely determination, leaving it up to you to get out of the way.

For those of you who may be interested in what I had for dinner last night, I had prawn croquettes and sole menuire.  Sole is a fish similar to our flounder and last night's offering was cooked in a very light buttery sauce.  The croquets were, as usual, delicious.  How can you go wrong with something made of prawns and deep fried.

Has anbody noticed what the temperature is going to be in Berlin next week, maximum of 9 degrees for the time that I am there and Prague is similar.  Now thats cold!

Out and about again today.  Visited the Hooge wood crater.  This is a mine crater that was exploded by the British under the German lines in 1915.  The whole area was fought over many times between 1914 and 1918.  This is only about 5 km out of Ypres.
The crater is in the grounds of a hotel and you can walk around a path around it which inlcudes some German blockhouses and piles of battlefield detrius.  Now this is located in an area that was known to the British, and the Australians as Chateau Wood.

Detrius of War

There is a famous photo, taken by Frank Hurley, of 5 Australian soldiers walking on duckboards through Chateau wood, although it didn't exist as a wood at the time, it was just a wasteland of mud and flooded shell craters and splintered tree stumps.  We have an enlarged copy of the photo in the galleries at the Shrine it is one of the things that I talk about to school groups.  So I was inerested in what Chateau Wood looks like now, well there is a bloody big amusement park there and ironically there are a lot of water based rides.

I also went to Polygon Wood, Flashy they havent identified anymore of the 5 Australians that you helped bury.  Still 2 51st btn men, 1 49th (I think) and 2 soldiers of the great war, known unto god.

5th Division Memorial - Polygon Wood

As well as visiting the revamped museum at Zonnebeke I went to the large British cemetery at Tyne Cot.

On previous trips I have been unsuccessful in finding Sgt Lewis McGee's grave.  McGee was a 40th Btn soldier from Campbell Town in Tasmania, he was 29 years old, worked as an engine driver and was married with a small child.  He was awarded the Victoria Cross during the fighting for Passchendaele.  He single handedly took on a German pill box, known as the Hamburger, in front of where Tyne Cot now stands.  He was killed in subsequent fighting in the same area before he knew that he had been awarded the VC.  From memory his wife received the VC from a visiting member of royalty after the war in Central Park in Launceston.

I wonder what delights dinner holds for me tonight, prawn croquettes maybe??

A deer

Day 12 Wednesday 12 April 2017

Dear reader, I have been gently chastised for not providing detailed descriptions of my food and drink.  You may recall that I arrived in Ypres in Belgium yesterday, well Ypres is world renowned for its prawn croquettes.  Some readers may recall that during my last visit to Ypres I became slightly obsessed with prawn croquets.  So last night I decided that I would have prawn croquettes for my entree and they were delicious, two deep fried croquets sharing a plate with a little salad.  The ony unfortunate part is that the prawns themselves are ugly little grey wormy things and the restaurants insist on putting them around the plate as a garnish.

For main course I had a traditional Flemish beef stew, this is served in an iron casserol thing and was accompanied by chips (with mayonaise of course) and another salad.  This also was delicious and extremely filling.  Both courses were accompanied by a V & T for starters and a pitcher of the house red, both most acceptable.

Now that is out of the way lets get back to the real business at hand.  Today I decided that I would revisit the Messines battlefield.  Messines is a great battlefield to visit, because if you are standing on the Messines ridge (the high ground held by the Germans) the whole battlefield is laid out before you.  This is also the first major battle fought by the Australian 3rd Division and most importantly it is a battle that we won.

Now, this is a battlefield

Messines was a lead up to the battles of 3rd Ypres (which turned into a disaster, more of that tomorrow), and used a tactic known as 'bite and hold'.  Instead of trying to achieve a massive breakthrough and gallop all the way to Berlin the British generals decided to attack and advance in small stages.  Attack, hold the territory against the German counter attacks, bring up your artillery and attack again and repeat until you had achieved your objectives.

My grandfather's battalion, the 40th AIF, as part of the 3rd Division was an integral
part of this attack and achieved their objectives with, for the time, minimal casualties.

I followed some of the 40th battalion's advance through Ploegsteert Wood (or Plugstreet to the British and Australians) although it was difficult as much of the wood is in private hands and access is limited.  As I was walking through the forest there was nobody else around and I recalled the description from the 40th btn history of their approach of the front line through the wood.  It was described as a warm and humid night, very dark, and the Germans started to shell the British  support areas.  The shells went plop, plop, plop and at first the Australians thought that they were duds, then they realised that they were gas shells, so they had to put their gas masks on and continue their advance.  The 40th lost a number of men that night even before they reached the front line.

Ploegsteert Wood

I visited a number of other sites of interest in the Messines, Ploegsteert area including the Ploegsteert experience. This is a relatively new museum, oops sorry interpretive centre that has a small but well presented range of audio visual presentations and battlefield artifacts.  The staff were very helpful with some queries I had and happily spent some time with me trying the sort out some discrepancies in places and locations on the battlefield.

Well that is enough for now, have drinks in the bar at the Novotel, Jeffe Blonde, to be exact.

A cow (for no reason)

Day 11 Tuesday 11 April 2017

Sitting in the bar at the Novotel in Ypres preparing today's update for your amusement and edification.

Two things came to mind as I was driving from Amiens to Ypres, the first it is hunting season in Northern France and any hare or pheasant would be fair game.  I have seen a few hares hopping around and by crikey they are big buggers.  The sound of shotguns can be a trifle disconcerting whilst walking around the battlefields.

The second thing was the number of wind turbines, there are turbines everywhere.  I was wondering if they are so popular and so common here why don't we see them everywhere in Australia.  Then this morning as I was driving out of Amiens it was very calm and not a turbine was turning.  Although there was no wind the lights nd things were still working in the hotel, so it is reasonable to assume that the power was coming from somewhere, possibly a dirty ol coal fired plant or heaven forbid a nuclear power plant.  Maybe the wind turbines aren't such a great idea after all!

On the drive to Ypres I diverted to Fromelles to have a look at the new interpretive centre (that is a new word for museum) at the Pheasant Wood cemetery. It is very nicely done and has a number of audio visual presentations.  Reminded me a bit of the Galleries of Remembrance at the Shrine, on a much smaller scale and with more weapons.

I arrived in Ypres at 2.30pm, checked into the Novotel and was having my first beer (Passchendaele) in the market square at 2.55pm, close to a record, even for me.

There are Canadians everywhere here (are there any Canadians left in Canadia?t ).  The Last Post ceremony tonight at the Menin Gate is deicated to the Canadians.  I walked past at 4.00pm and chatted to a Canadian lady who was saving her possie there for the service at 8.00pm.

I will be keeping clear of the service tonight but will attend either tomorrow or Thursday when things are a bit quieter.

I noticed that they are getting things ready for the return of the Amiens Lions, here is some history for ya.  Before TGW two stone lions stood at the Menin Gate to the old city of Ypres.  After the war in recognition of the service and sacrifice of the Australians in defending the city they donated the lions to the people of Australia and since then they have stood at the entrance to the Australian War Memorial (AWM) in Canberra.  Anyway, the AWM has lent the lions back to the city of Ypres and today I saw where they are going to stand, back at the Menin Gate.  I understand that they are on loan from the AWM and are to be returned in due course.

I reckon these plinths might be for the lions

I have to do some homework now, tomorrow I intend to follow the 40th battalion's advance through Ploegsteert wood and their attack in the battle of Messines.  I will have plenty of interesting stuff about that later.

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......

Day 9 Sunday 9 April 2017

I will apologise for the paucity of photos, it is taking more than 5 minutes to upload 1 photo due to the poor quality wi-fi, but still we soldier on.

A couple of interesting observations.  The further you get out into the provences the less English is spoken.  The other thing is the tolerance of animals in the cafes, bars and restaurants.  I was having dinner the other night at a reasonably classy restaurant and a couple came in with a great big hairy german shepherd.......and they had a dog with them as well!  Nobody batted an eyelid, and the dog went to sleep under the table.

For dinner that night I had a pork terrine and guinea fowl.  The guinea fowl had a choice of mustard sauce or raspberry sauce, I chose the mustard sauce which overpowered it a bit.  On Friday night I went to a  restaurant that I had previously been to with Flashy.  I ordered the roast cockerel avec frites and salad......it came out as a whole chook on a plate surrounded by chips and a minute amount of salad, delicious!  I followed this up with profiteroles.

Last night dinner was by the Somme river.  There are a whole lot of restaurants along the river, all different styles and cost.  It was nearly a warm night so it was quite pleasant sitting by the river.  I had stuffed ravioli with a cream sauce and sliced ham on it, and finished with a taster plate of little desserts.  This was accompanied by a pitcher of bordeaux.

Today was another stunning spring day, probably 20 degrees and me without a pair of shorts or even a short sleeved shirt.  I am certainly glad I bought my gloves and wooly hat.

The Federal Govt are building a TGW interpretive centre at the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneaux.  This is the main Australian memorial on the Western front and where they hold the ANZAC day dawn services.  The plan to build this museum/interpretive centre here has been the subject of some debate by the experts in the field, including the volunteers of the Thursday PM shift at the Shrine.  It is only a building site at the moment so it is hard to tell how it will look when completed, hopefully it will be OK.  I will try and attach a couple of photos.

Whilst I was there today there was a school group from Melbourne there as well, probably 20 or 30 kids and teachers.

I'm typing this in the bar of the hotel and six fully armed soldiers just went past.

After visiting the VB memorial I drove to the Australian Corps Memorial at Le Hamel.  I have criticised this memorial in previous blogs.  It is out of the way, lonely, windswept, subject to vandalism and the toilets have been locked and/or out of order for the last 7 years that I am aware of.  Anyway there were 3 Australians there and they were from the Dept of Veterans Affairs (DVA), and they were doing a recce of the area for the 100th anniversary commemoration ceremonies for the Battle of Hamel in July next year.

Donna and Clair, here is the intersting thing, they knew Maurie's wife and had worked with her.  I recall Maurie telling us one night at Geoff and Helen's that his wife did this sort of organising at Gallipoli and mentioned it to them.

After driving back to Amiens, I decided to go for a walk and there was the largest street market I have ever seen.  The entire centre of Amiens was closed off and there were hundreds of market stalls in the main streets and side streets.  Most of the stalls were selling flea market stuff, but there were also food and drink stalls.  The streets were packed with people, must be a big day for the town.

Shaun, I didn't make it to the Paris - Roubaix, not muddy enough.

Off to Bullecourt tomorrow.

Hi Leanne, I just saw the footy scores, how is Evan coping???

Days 7 & 8 Friday and Saturday 7 & 8 April 2017

A bit of bad news folks, due to the wi fi in the hotel being unavailable yesterday I wrote a magnificent piece in Word with the intention of doing a cut and paste to the blog once the wi fi was available again.  The blog for those days is full of interesting information and historical facts about TGW battles and deeds of daring and darstadlyness (is that a word?), however I have been unable to cut and paste it from word onto this site........ don't give up hope I am determined to make it work, even if only for your benefit.  Good news folk, I have managed to copy the blog as below, formatting and pics to follow.

Days 7 & 8 Friday & Saturday 7 & 8 April 2017

The hotel wi fi appears to be playing up so this is being typed in word in the off chance I can cut and paste it later into the blog.  The other weakness in my plan of attack this afternoon is that I am doing the blog in the hotel bar whilst drinking large Heinekens,  thirsty work out in the field, what.

Friday and Saturday have been beautiful spring days, 10 degrees earlier in the morning getting up to 18 – 19 degrees in the afternoon, blue skies although a bit hazy.
First of all I will get the people who have irritated me over the last two days out of the way.  First up the Canadians, or at least the half of the Canadian population that appears to be travelling around the Western front at the moment.  You see it is currently the 100th anniversary of the battle of Arras, now the Canadians fought a big battle as part of Arras called Vimy Ridge.  Vimy Ridge is a bit like our Gallipoli and the Canadians take it very seriously.  So they are here in there droves (or whatever Canadians travel around in) for their various commemorations and services.  There are bus loads of Canadian students, bus loads of Canadian pensioners and bus loads of everything in between.  The roads have been closed off so they can park their stupid buses and so they can wander around without fear of being run over.

I went to the Newfoundland memorial at Beaumont Hamel, this was packed with buses and school students.  The Newfies suffered terrible losses on 1st July 1916, the first day of the Somme battle.  (They also fought with us at Gallipoli, but that’s a different story).   The funny thing is that although the Canadians are keen to claim the Newfies as their own, Newfoundland was still a British dominion during TGW and didn’t become part of Canada until 1946 or thereabouts.

The second national group to irritate me was the Northern Irish, or the one woman that I had some dealings with.  I decided to visit the Ulster tower memorial which also has a tea room attached.  The gate was open so naturally I drove up the driveway towards the tower and tea rooms, and then this woman rushed out at me shouting in French.  I patiently explained to her that I didn’t speak French, so then she rudely told me in Irish accented English that I couldn’t park there and the gates were only open for the gardeners etc.  So after telling me to nick off she then said as an afterthought that I could come back once I had parked the car, of course that wasn’t going to happen.

Friday was spent covering the 1st day of the Somme, as much and as well as I could.  Warning Will Robinson, warning Will Robinson, history content coming up.  On the 1st of July 1916 the British opened their big battle to the north of the Somme river, it was originally intended to be a joint operation with the French but due to the French being heavily involved in the fighting around the fortress city of Verdun to the south they had to reduce their involvement in the battle of the Somme.  So the Somme became predominately a British battle and by the time it wound down in November 1916 it had included the British, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and South Africans.  The British casualties on the 1st day were around 50,000, dead, wounded and missing.  The worst day in British military history.  These losses were incurred for virtually no gains, although the limited French involvement to the South of the battlefield was slightly more successful.

The British Memorial to the Missing at Thiepval

In the past, I like most Australians have tended to focus on the Australian involvement in the battle, namely Pozieres, Moquet Farm (moo cow farm) and later Flers.  But of course the Somme battles were far larger than the Australian involvement.  So driving the whole battlefield from North (Gommecourt) to South (Metz & Fricourt) gave me the opportunity to develop an understanding of the bigger picture of the overall battle.

Fricourt German Cemetery - Southern end of the Somme battlefield

In contrast Saturday’s expedition was revisiting the 40th battalion’s involvement in the defence of Amiens on and around the 28th March 1918.  The 40th battalion was raised in Tasmania and was the only purely Tasmanian battalion in the TGW.  It was part of the 10th Brigade which was part of the 3rd Division commanded at the time by John Monash who went on to command the Australian Corp.

My grandfather Allan Sutton enlisted in the AIF in March 1917 as a 17 year old, under age but with a letter from his mother saying he was old enough to enlist.  He arrived in France as a reinforcement for the 40th battalion in February 1918.

On 21 March 1918 the Germans started their last great push of the war and part of that was to seize the  city of Amiens, split the British and French armies and seize the channel ports.  Who was between them and victory I hear you ask?  The answer……. my grandfather, private Allan Edwin Sutton.  Well, to his credit he did his duty and the Germans never did take Amiens and they didn’t win the war.

Part of the battle of the defence of Amiens was around the town of Morlancourt on the Ancre river and this is where the 40th battalion were involved.  Each time I have visited here I have looked at another aspect of the battle and today was looking at their advance from Heilly and also part of the German aspect of the battle.

I located the copse where the German machine gunners had been firing on the 40th battalion positions and I could see the craters left by the British 4.5in howitzer shells.

4.5in Howitzer Shell Craters (take pot shots at my grandfather at your own peril)

That will teach them to fire at and wound my grandfather!

So I am still drinking Heineken and the Wi Fi is still down so hopefully I can post this and some pics shortly.




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Day 6 Thursday 6 April 2017

Checked out of the Hotel de Seine this morning after another pleasant and comfortable stay.  A quick cab ride saw me arriving at the Hertz depot at Gare de Lyon and collecting my little black Peugot 308.

The Peugot has a built in GPS but of course the instructions to program it are in French so I was unable to put my destination address details into it and the directions would have been in French as well (I will investigate this further as I am certain that I can change all that to English, I just have to find how).  Anyway I have my own GPS machine so I set that up and drove confidently (not) up 4 flights of car park ramps to street level.  When I drove out into the light of day of course it took some time for my GPS to acquire satelites and start telling me where to go.  So here am I in frantic Parisian traffic with not much idea where to go, luckily I spotted a sign that directed me towards Metz & Nancy.  Applying my TGW (The Great War) geographical knowledge I knew that Metz & Nancy were both on the Western front, so if I went in that direction I would be OK.  Eventually the GPS kicked in and everything was right and I was travelling in the right direction.

(A little known fact about the city of Nancy, Rennee and his brother in the TV show Hello Hello were born in Nancy, and he always said that they were a couple of Nancy boys.  It was funny at the time.)

After a couple of hours of driving, getting used to the car and driving on the right side of the road I arrived safely in Amiens.  As I am reasonably familiar with Amiens finding the hotel and car park was  done quickly and uneventually.

Amiens Cathedral

Mecure Hotel from the steps of the cathedral

I am staying at the Mecure in Amiens and although it is a largeish souless chain hotel, the rooms are large (compared to Paris) and clean and the hotel is well located.

Tomorrow will be my first day out in the TGW battlefields.  I bet you all can't wait to hear all about that.