Remembering War in France.

Written 23^rd July 2012

The next morning after more sleepy goodbyes we did a few chores. We both got our hair cut too and finally, after packing up we were on our way again. We had left heaps of time to drive down incase of traffic but we didn't encounter any and arrived really early for the ferry. It was a late ferry – it left at 7.15pm but because of the time difference arrived quite late at night (Europe in an hour ahead of Great Britain).

We drove out of Calais looking for a camping sign but before we came across one we found a good place to freedom camp near the beach.

So we spent the night there with the English Channel beyond the sand dunes quietly lapping the shore. In the morning we set off along the coast. We stopped to look at a monument to the Dover Patrol (who patrolled the channel during the war).

The drove on down to a place called Albert where the Battle of the Somme took place in the first world war. We were interested to go there because Steve's Granddad Doug's Dad was an ambulance driver in the battle. We found a campsite and some tea and then set out to find the front line and the grave sites and memorials for the soldiers. The countryside was very nice in that area, with rolling hills full of vibrantly coloured crops. We came across the front line first.

It was so bizarre standing there next to an ordinary road in an ordinary village and knowing that nearly 100 years ago men fought for their lives and the right for others to be free in that very spot. It was very sobering. There were memorials and grave sites scattered all over the countryside with rows upon rows of headstones standing to attention. We looked over a fence at Tummel Street Trench where the landscape was scarred by battle, the old trenches and sites of explosions rutting the ground but overgrown once again with grass.

You couldn't go in there, it looked as though archeologists were digging there – there were little coloured flags marking things out.

We continued on and went to see a massive crater called Lochnagar Crater. It was massive!

This is the information we read about it:

It was formed at 7.28am on Saturday the 1^st July 1916. It was created by the detonation of a huge mine placed beneath the German front line. The mine was packed with 60000 lbs of ammonal. It was the larges of the 17 mines that exploded on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Debris for the explosion rose some 4000 feet into the air. Cecil Louis, then a Captain in the Royal Flying Corps witnessed the explosion of the mine from his aircraft high above La Boissell and is quoted as saying:

“The whole earth heaved and flared, a tremendous and magnificent column rose up into the sky. There was an ear-splitting roar, drowning out the guns, flinging the machine sideways in the repercussing air. The earth column rose higher and higher to almost 4000 feet.” (1220 metres)

The explosion created a creater of 300 feet across and 70 feet deep.

The sector was attacked by the 34^th Division consisting of Tyneside Irish, Tyneside Scottish, Loncolnshire, Suffolk and Royal Scots battalions.

The division lost 6380 officers and men that day.

It is hard to explain how big it really is. Steve went down into it and I took a photo.

He looks like a tiny blue speck down there.

After that somber place we visited another. We went to Caterpillar Valley Cemetery where the memorial for the New Zealand Soldiers who were never found is.

It was a very peaceful place with lovely, well cared for gardens along the gravestones and bountiful paddocks spread out around it. There were nice old trees all around the edges as well. As I stood there starting out over the rows of white headstones I couldn't help imagining that once all those stones were all men standing there.

We wondered the rows reading many of the headstones. There were all different Allied soldiers mixed in together which I thought was nice as they were all fighting for the same cause and many alongside one another.

There were so many graves for unknown Soldiers but they had what information they could on them like what country or rank. There were many with no information on them though which made me think how badly damaged some of the men must have been. So many of them were also so young.

Most in their early twenties or late teens with some a little older. I couldn't help thinking about all the dreams they had that were never fulfilled, all the families that they never had and all the families they left behind. We had picked some poppies and laid them down next to the names of the lost New Zealand Soldiers.

I could imagine that these men were known and loved by our Great grandparents and people they knew and it didn't seem all that very long ago in time at all. At that point I couldn't contain my sorrow any longer and burst into loud sobbing tears which continued to roll down my cheeks for the remainder of the visit. It's brought tears to my eyes just thinging about it again. We walked around there for quite a while paying our respects.

It seems so sad that most of the people that might remember those men in the flesh are all dead now too. We left a comment in the visitors book before leaving. There was a plaque there with information on it.

 Part of it read:

CATERPILLAR VALLEY CEMETERY AND MEMORIAL.

Caterpillar was the name given by the troops to this winding valley. The area for captured from the Germans in July 1916 after heavy fighting. It was lost in March 1918 and recaptured five months later. The men buried in the cemetery fell in those three actions. The cemetery contains the graves of 5229 British, 8 Canadian, 100 Australian, 214 New Zealand and 18 South African soldiers and sailors.

The panels behind the Stone of Remembrance form the Caterpillar Valley Memorial which commemorates by name the 1205 New Zealand soldiers who fell on the Somme Battlefield during September and October 1916 and whose graves are unknown.

After Caterpillar Valley Cemetery we visited the close by Thistle Dump Cemetery.

It was a smaller cemetery with the same peaceful air as Caterpillar Valley.

Part of the plaque there read:

THISTLE DUMP CEMETERY.

The vicinity of Longueval was the scene of heavy fighting in the First Battle of the Somme before it was finally cleared in September 1916. It passed back into German hands for four months in 1918. This cemetery contains the graves of 122 British, 36 Australian, 38 New Zealand and 7 German soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

We stopped briefly at one other cemetery - Pozieres British Cemetery and Memorial.

After that we drove through the dusky air, through the quite countryside, past other grave sites, memorials, and scarred land, back to camp.

The next morning we visited the Somme Museum which was well done with a video to watch, displays of things from the trenches and scenes set up depicting what life during the battle would have been like.

After posting some postcards which we had written ages ago we got back on the road and drove and drove down south until it was time to stop for the night. We found a nice little campsite in a town called Les Ormes and the guy who ran it had been to New Zealand and was stoked for us to visit. It was a cool campsite as it looked like it used to be an old chateau or something.

We had a relaxing night there enjoying the warmer climate and set off again in the morning for another day of driving. We zoomed past fields of perky sunflowers gazing lovingly at the sun.

When we were nearly there we went to the factory shops so Steve could get some new sunnies and I got some new jandals (I've worn through 2 pairs so far on this trip!) and a beach bag (yay it is awesome and pretty!) We arrived at Le Point campsite near Hossegor that night and spent the evening playing 500 again.

 The next day we drove to Biarritz because the Roxy Pro was happening there. We found a campsite quite near to the beach

and then went to watch the best women in the wold surf it out against one another. The day was a boiling hot blazer with a bit of a breeze to take the edge off.

We got to watch heats of both kiwi surfers. Sarah Mason just lost her heat by a whisker but she has pretty bad conditions to surf in. We got some yummy pain ou rasins then watched Paige Hareb win her's and so she got to go through to the next round.

We decided to go for a surf after that so went back to retrieve our boards. It had been so hot we decided to wear rashies. When we walked back down the conditions had gone quite bad. We walked down through were the competition was happening and suddenly I had all these little French girls asking me if I was a pro surfer in French! I was rearing a pink Roxy rash top which was similar to the competition ones! How embarrassing! So I didn't surf long. It was cold – the wind had come up and the sun gone behind the clouds. The surf was rubbish too.