Day four (Tuesday 25th) - Homeward bound

All too soon, our tour of the battlefields was coming to an end. We had seen so much since Saturday yet were very aware that it was just the tip of the iceberg. After breakfast we got packed and checked out of the hotel, then boarded the coach with rain falling on our heads - the three glorious days were nice while they lasted! We didn't have far to go before our first stop of the day. The Devonshire Cemetery is 800 metres south of the town of Mametz. This settlement was within the German lines until 1st July 1916. On that day, the 8th and 9th Battalions of the Devonshire Regiments (parts of the 7th Division) attacked from a plantation called Mansell Copse, due south of Mametz village. Losses were heavy and it was in the copse that the Devonshires buried their dead. Six officers and 116 soldiers from the 9th Devonshires lie in a section of their old front line trench. The Cemetery contains 163 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, ten of which are unidentified. At the entrance is a commemorative stone which states "The Devonshires held this trench. The Devonshires hold it still." Our next stop was where I had my most awe-inspiring experience of the whole trip. The Lochnagar Crater was formed on the morning of Saturday, 1st July 1916. It was created when British tunnelling engineers detonated a huge mine placed beneath the German front lines. First they dug a shaft down about 90 feet into the chalk. They then dug horizontally 300 yards under the Germans and placed 27 tons of high explosive in two large chambers 60 feet apart. When the mine was detonated it created the huge crater which is still there today. Debris was flung almost a mile into the air, instantly killing an unknown number of enemy troops. A Royal Flying Corps pilot, Cecil Lewis in his book 'Sagittarius Rising' described what he saw from the air. He says, "The whole earth heaved and flared, a tremendous and magnificent column rose up into the sky. There was an ear-splitting roar, drowning all the guns, flinging the machine sideways in the repercussing air. The earth column rose higher and higher to almost 4,000 feet." The site was bought by a British businessman, Richard Dunning, so that it will be always preserved as a memorial to all the soldiers of both sides who died on that day. The crater has its own website which can be accessed by clicking here. The aerial photographs of the site are amazing! I think I will always remember my first site of the crater. I climbed up a slope towards a wooden cross memorial right on the edge of the crater. When I looked over the edge I gasped and my mouth fell open with amazement! Below me lay the largest hole in the ground I had ever seen. With a diameter of approximately 300ft (91 metres)and a depth of 70ft (21 metres) it has been described as "the largest crater ever made by man in anger". I have placed a short video sequence here which starts with the many poppy wreaths at the memorial and then the crater itself, though it is hard for the pictures to capture the awe that I felt on first seeing the crater!

The very thought of the explosion that caused it was, to me, utterly shocking in the extreme. It is hardly surprising that the site has over 200,000 thousand visits every year - and rising. Our last visit of the tour was at a place called Pozières. This village is on a ridge between Bapaume and Albert, and was of great strategic importance to allies and Germans alike. The village was taken on the 25th of July, and the crest of the ridge eleven days later. The first and second Australian Divisions were the victors, whilst the Australian fourth Division later took Mouquet Farm, not far from here. There were over 23,000 casualties in these actions. On the 5th of August, Douglas Haig recorded, "The Australians gained all their objectives north of Pozières and beat off three counter-attacks. A fine piece of work." Perhaps something of an understatement! At Pozières can be seen a Tank Memorial. It was from here that three tanks set off on the first day they were used as weapons of war - the 15th September 1916. At each corner of the memorial is a small-scale replica of some of the tanks used. Directly opposite the Tank Memorial is one of several sites associated with the Australians who fought in this area. At a time there was a windmill here. The site is flanked by the flags of Australia and France. A walkway leads up to a memorial stone bench with an inscription that records the capture of this site on August the 4th 1916, and states that the Australians "fell more thickly on this ridge than on any other battlefield on the war". After this last stop we headed back towards the Channel Tunnel terminal at Calais. Steve and Susan played a variety of songs from the era of the Great War - some well known, others not so. A brief snatch of video appears here:



As we were all provided with song sheets we were free to join in the singing. It was a very fitting ending to the long weekend.

I hope you have found this blog interesting. I can thoroughly recommend "Guided Battlefield Tours" to anyone interested in visiting this historic region. Steve and Susan were most excellent hosts, very knowledgeable, thoughtful and kind and made us all feel more than welcome guests. Even touches like keeping us well supplied with tea, coffee, biscuits, buns, toffees and chocolates contributed greatly to our enjoyment of the trip. Their website can be viewed by clicking here.

What better way to end this blog than with the words of Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), the poet and art critic, who was born in Lancaster in 1869. The fourth verse of his poem, "For the Fallen" are the very well known:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.