Three Days with Benji in Picardy Part 3

Now call me biased, patriotic, or what you will, but for me this was the best bit of architecture to be found in the area.

It's called the British memorial, but it has a large British and French cemetery. I found it impressive that scattered across the countryside of this appealing corner of Picardy there are monuments like this that are kept immaculately by various associations, and obviously treated with the utmost respect by visitors and residents alike. There was something about the design of this one that seemed to me to embody both the horror and the heroism of the struggle - sort of Gothic yet dignified

There is a small museum attached telling the story - this a rather impressive (if that's the right word) montage of pictures of some of the many thousands who simply disappeared and whose remains were never found.

Superb large display boards telling the story of this bit of the struggle

I think a lot of places have this kind of thing - books with lists of names, each one someone's son, father, husband, sweetheart...

... and walls covered with the names of those who were missing by regiment

 

The symmetry was suitably disrupted by the French and British sectors of the cemetery with different style grave markers. I preferred the French version

 

 

Simple stone crosses with nameplates...

 

... or not in many many cases. I think the French version of "unknown" is more poignant

 

than the wordy British "A soldier of the Great War ...

 

Now very late in the afternoon and wanting to visit the Newfoundland memorial before travelling to Amiens I just found myself driving by the Ulster memorial. So I just stopped to take a picture

 

I think it is meant to be a replica of a tower somewhere in Northern Ireland.

 

Now the Newfoundland memorial at Beaumont-Hamel is one of the must-see places.

The mound topped by the caribou is impressive enough, as is yet another story of heroics - a courageous if senseless assault on German positions from which only 68 men emerged unscathed after just half an hour's combat and in which every single officer was killed.

 

But it was here of all places I visited that you could best see the layout of the original trenches

 

No mud, duckboards or military paraphernalia, but you get the idea

Over the top anyone? I was just trying to imagine what those men felt as they looked at the top of this trench before doing something really really stupid.

 

Now in theory this was one of the better ideas of the planners of the Battle of the Somme. Digging under the German lines and planting lots of explosives to be detonated before the assault began. This is at La Boisselle, not far from Albert.

 

Why it is called the Lochnager Crater I don't know, but it is an impressive sight

 

No marked graves, but nevertheless a final resting place for many soldiers, it looks as if visitors really do follow this instruction.

 

It was difficult, with my little camera, to capture the scale of the crater generated by the explosion

 

 

but this might offer some idea.

 

The following attack was, of course, part of the story of disaster.

 

 

An earlier attack by the French in December 1914 in this vicinity was also a disaster with well over 1,000 losses in a very short space of time

 

Now owned by an Englishman there is a service held here every year on 1st July, moving on to Thiepval and Beaumont-Hamel and ending at the German cemetery at Fricourt (which I didn't have time to see. 

 

Time for something other than war - an evening in the delightful town of Amiens, very pretty and very French...

 

 

... in the main!

 

Lovely waterways lined with more restaurants than you could shake a large baguette at

 

A stunning contrast to the story of carnage on the Somme battlefield

 

And a very impressive cathedral.

Well I was missing my wife rather a lot by now, and regard a meal out at a French restaurant to be somewhat inadequate without her company, so I repaired to the McDonalds on the route back to the camp site, before collapsing into bed in my tent. I didn't take a picture of McDonalds - I expect you know what they look like. But here's a funny thing - my French is just about passable in restaurants, supermarkets, shops and camp sites, but not in McDonalds. I think it is the way French versions of the place mix English and French together - "Le Big Mac" for example.

Final part of the story to be posted soon