Battle of the Somme - Day 2

19th December

On day two of our Battle of the Somme tour, it was just Wayne and I travelling with Sylvestre.  Even though I had done this tour before, there are so many different sites, that I actually saw lots of different things compared to last time.

At Chipilly we visited a monument which pays tribute to the millions of horses who served alongside the military in World War I.  Sylvestre told us that in France, even a carrier pigeon has been awarded the Legion of Honour for delivering a message that saved over 200 men.

We then visited a South African monument.  The entry is a forest of oak trees which were planted after World War I.  The acorns came from South Africa; however, the interesting thing is that the acorns came from trees that had grown from acorns brought to South Africa by fleeing Huguenots.  There is only one tree (a hornbeam tree) that remains from the original forest and it is fenced off for protection, although Sylvestre told us that at over 100 years old, it dying.

We then visited a New Zealand Cemetery where the unknown soldier of New Zealand was once buried.

At Cobber’s Memorial, we witnessed more feats of German concreting ingenuity.

Just down the road from Cobber’s Memorial is a cemetery called VC Corner.  Sylvestre told us the story of the Wilson brothers.  They had been buried in a “mass grave” by German soldiers after the Battle of Fromelles (I’m sure many Australians reading this will remember that a few years back a site was found at Pheasant Wood with the remains of 250 mostly Australian soldiers).  The bodies were exhumed and many of them have since been identified thanks to DNA.  Sylvestre told us that “mass grave” really has a negative connotation and that in fact, the Germans has buried these bodies with great respect.  Obviously realising that the Wilsons were brothers, they buried them side-by-side.

We later visited the Fromelles cemetery and saw the new graves of the Wilson boys… still side-by-side.

Our last stop before making it to Ypres was over the Belgian border and to the site where my great-uncle George Swalling was killed.  He has no known grave, but if his remains were found, they were probably buried in the nearby Tyne Cot cemetery.

Sylvestre dropped us off in Ypres and we found Uncle George’s name on the Menin Gate.

This town was pretty much totally destroyed during World War I, but you wouldn’t know it; the Cloth Hall (Town Hall) and Cathedral were reproduced from plans that survived and you would swear they are hundreds of years old.

After a lovely dinner of Flemish stew, we finished our evening back at the Menin Gate for the nightly Last Post.  This has happened every night since the end of World War I, with the exception of during World War II.