I went to France for a 4 day weekend with some friends to spend Anzac day at the small village of Villers-Bretonneux in the Somme region of Northern France.
Melinda was due to come with us but unfortunately she was sick and couldn't make it. So I met up with Gabe, Liz, Dom and Nat at St Pancras and zapped over to Lille in France at 300km/h! We hired a car and went to a small town called Arras where we found our hotel. After a feed we went for a drive to the Beaumont-Hamel memorial to Newfoundlanders. There is a big monument there as well as a couple of cemeteries (there are many of them in this part of France). The trenches weren't filled in at the end of the war and you can still see them today, grown over with grass but still there . In the middle of no mans land you can see craters everywhere which I assume was from artillery.
From there we went to Thiepval, a memorial to over 72,000 missing British soldiers 'to whom the fortunes of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death'. From there we made a stop at the New Zealand national memorial which is quite small and isolated.
The next morning we were up at 3am and in the car to drive to Villers-Bretonneux, to the Australian National memorial. We parked about 1km away and walked up the hill and found a spot to watch. There were heaps of media there and most of the crowd looked like they had flown over from Australia as opposed to the Wallabies jersey wearing, flag draped dickheads you see at Gallipoli now as if we were celebrating some annual footy match, not remembering the dead. So from that point of view, it was a pretty good crowd.
The service was good and soon enough we all sauntered over to some little tents where the locals (yes the French!) put on tea, coffee and croissants. I had hoped for some rum to go with the coffee (gunfire breakfast!) but it was still good. We went in to the town to wait around for the march. By 9am we ended up outside a little bar which was doing a roaring trade and a big circle of Australian Army rugby team guys were there playing two up. So as not to be rude, we all got a beer and I resisted two-up! The march went and so we drove back to Arras.
After a snack we decided it was time for another beer. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and it so happened that the Aussie Army rugby team was staying in Arras too! They were a top bunch of blokes and soon enough the night turned in to a blur and next thing I know, I woke up fully dressed, with my shoes still on laying face down on the bed in my hotel room!
The next day we went off to Ypres where we spent the night as well as looking at some battlefields including Tyne Cot cemetery where a large number of Australians are buried. Ypres is a nice little town with big medieval walls. Needless to say, we had a bit of a low key evening!!
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