Battle Of The Somme Memorials

May Bank Holiday Weekend 2004

After an overnight stay, we left Calais and headed out to Amiens to check out the Battle of the Somme Memorials and those famous Flanders fields full of blood red poppies.

A short turn off from the A26 and we were there.

Flanders Fields

Here's the my new bike and the poppies that dot the landscape.

It was absolutely fantastic riding through the French countryside along country backroads, through small villages, past hedges, fields and fresh hay. 

Having said that, about ninety years ago, young men were dying by the thousands here.

Dan's Honda Firestorm.

Poppies And Poems

The poem "In Flanders Fields" by the Canadian army physician John McCrae remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written (I certainly remember it from the Australians At War history class I took in Year 9).  It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915.

The most asked question is: why poppies?

Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.

There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.

But in this poem the poppy plays one more role. The poppy is known as a symbol of sleep. The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to this fact. Some kinds of poppies are used to derive opium from, from which morphine is made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and was often used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
 

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
      In Flanders fields.
 

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
      In Flanders fields.

See The Great War website for more on In Flanders Fields.  Their True Face Of War page is one of the most shocking things I've ever seen.

The Canadian National War Memorial at Vimy Ridge

Whereas the French have attempted to erase all signs of the the war and return the Somme region to agriculture and normalcy, the Canadians decided that the most apt way to remember their fallen was to preserve pieces of the crater pocked battlefields.  As a result, the best place in the area to get some sense of the unimaginable hell known as the Western Front is at Vimy Ridge, with it's chilling, eerie moonscape and reconstructed trenches

Of the 66,655 Canadians who died in WWI, 3589 died here in August 1917 taking the ridge, a German defensive line whose highest point was later chosen as the site of Canada's WW1 memorial

Dan and I spent some time around here checking out the memorial, reconstructed trench lines and a long tunnel that lead supplies and reinforcements upto the front line without exposing them to shell fire (that came later).

Canadian War Memorial At Vimy

Memorial and sheep in the background. 

All the land around is pock marked by shell holes still.

Not sure why the Canadians had bare breasted women statues all over the place.  Was it to remind them of what they were really fighting for?  Who knows?

Statue of weeping woman or something.

Actually, I've just read the Lonely Planet Guidebook to France.  Apparently this cloaked, downcast female figure represents a young Canada mourning her fallen.  The base is inscribed with names of 11,285 Canadian MIAs.

The other figures are allegorical as well.

A bouquet of flowers blown around by the wind.

Canadian War Memorial Site

Reconstructed Trenches

Rifle shield.  it's hard to believe but the trenches were less than 10-15 metres apart at times.

The distance between the trenches can be seen clearly here.

Next Page: Verdun