Europe trip part 40!

Thursday 25 October

 Today we drove to Albert, a small village badly affected by the Battle of the Somme – a famous battle in WW1.

 We visited the underground museum which was fantastic. We sat and watched a 15 minute movie giving us an introduction to what actually happened which was quite interesting then we walked through the tunnels looking at the amazingly detailed displays and reading about them. I learned a lot about what happened as well as what it was really like for the soldiers.

 Winter must have been miserable for them with the snow and the mud. Lots of soldiers suffered from “trench foot” as they hardly ever had dry feet – how horrible! We then drove 10 minutes to the Lochnagar Crater. This was created by Allied soldiers who dug tunnels to almost under the German trenches. They then laid some explosives and blew the tunnels to try to blow up the German trenches. Dirt flew over 4000 feet in the air then landed again burying some soldiers.

 Despite all the hard work it didn’t really work as German trenches were too well built. When the Allied soldiers went over the top they got mowed down as the Germans were just waiting for them. The crater is over 100m wide and very deep.

 After a cup of tea in the “Old Blighty” tearooms we drove to the Thiepval Memorial – it is huge and is for the 72,337 missing British and South African soldiers who died at the Somme. Then we found Caterpillar Valley cemetery – 200 NZ soldiers are buried there and after searching the Cemetery Register, we found the grave of the unknown soldier.

 In 2004 he was excavated and returned to Wellington where he was laid to rest in the tomb of the unknown warrior at the National War Memorial. It was really sad to see so many headstones, especially the ones with no name. There is a huge number of unknown soldiers buried in France from both sides.

Europe trip part 39

Wednesday 24 October

 Today we did a tour of the tunnels at Vimy ridge, guided by one of the Canadian volunteers (a lady called Abigail), who come here to work and show tourists around for a few months every year. We went through a tunnel that took 950 Canadian soldiers directly into battle.

They were trying to win the battle to control the high ground on the ridge that was protected by the Germans. The ridge wasn’t far from the tunnel at all. The Canadian soldiers planned their attack for months and the battle started in April of 1917.

The underground tunnels we saw connected all the trenches and were used for communication but also to move soldiers into position. After that, we drove to Arras to do a tour of Carrier Wellington which is the Wellington tunnels dug under the town.

 It was dug out by 300 NZ miners, so an important part of NZ history. Exit 10 was one of the tunnels they had to use to go into battle and we saw this when we were under the ground. They also named some of the tunnels after places in New Zealand like, Blenheim, Dunedin, Christchurch and Auckland.

 Then we drove to Vimy again to look around the cemetery then back to tunnels to explore the German side. No man’s land, which sits between the two trenches was only 25m apart over a large crater!

Europe trip part 38

Monday October 22

 Today we went to the American cemetery near Omaha beach on the Normandy coast. Omaha was where the largest number of American soldiers landed, where many died and the cemetery had nearly 9,500 graves. First, we went to the museum besides the cemetery. The museum is one of many around the world that tell the story of American soldiers who fought overseas like in France.

The museum had lots of displays to read and a film that told me about the invasion which was very interesting. The cemetery overlooked the coast and it was very clean and well organized. It had a memorial to the dead soldiers with a map of how the invasion of the coast and through Normandy worked.

 We had lunch in a restaurant nearby and I had fish and chips, my first real meal for days. Later that afternoon, we headed back to Caen, had a cup of tea and walked 10 minutes to see the Abbey d’Homme, walked a bit more around the town, bought some groceries and then headed home for tea.

 Tuesday October 23

 Today we drove from Caen to Arras which took a bit longer than we expected. It was a bit of a boring drive at first as the weather was foggy – like pea soup! So we stuck to the motorway. For the last 100km or so, we took the country roads and saw some of the French countryside which was nice.

Mum and Dad made me do some maths and reading because I have a bit of catching up to do after being sick. When we arrived, we met a lovely French couple who owned the house and they showed us how everything worked.

 The sun came out and we decided to visit the nearby WWI Canadian monument and battlefield to have a look around. The monument is at Vimy ridge which was a high ridge that could see all the way to Belgium so it was an important part of France to win back from the Germans in 1917. The area was also important because it has a lot of coal and that would help the war effort. We took some photos and planned what we were going to do the next day.

Europe trip part 37

Saturday 20 October

 We are now into the last two weeks of our trip. Today we are headed for the northwest of France, a long drive to the small city of Caen, which is in Normandy. This area was famous for many fierce battles in WWII, as the Allies invaded this part of France to push the German forces back out of France.

Many NZ troops and those from around the world all helped with this effort, so we want to learn a bit more about what happened over the next few days. When we arrived, we got a map from the apartment and walked into the middle of the town which wasn’t that far away. We visited the tourist office and got some advice about what we should do over the next two days. So we had a plan!

Later we walked into St Pierre’s church over the road from the tourist office. The church looked a bit black and dirty on the outside but they are restoring and cleaning it. The inside of the church was quite nice – we thought a mass might be about to start shortly as the priest was there, but we were tired so we headed back to the apartment as it was late and it had been a long day.

 Sunday 21 October

 Most of our weather on this trip has been very nice but today was cloudy and cool with the chance for a bit of rain. So, we decided to drive to the nearby beach village of Arromanches-les-Bains which wasn’t too far away. After we parked, we went to the museum which told us about D-Day which happened on 6 June 1944.

 This was a very famous day in war history because the Allies (soldiers from Britain, ANZAC’s, Canada, USA, and France) invaded France to try and win it back from Nazi Germany. First, they distracted the Germans with tin foil (fake bombs) and dummy parachutists in order to move most of the Germans up north away from where the real attack was going to happen. The soldiers landed at 5 beaches at 5.30 in the morning to surprise the Germans. The Americans landed at two beaches – Omaha and Utah.

 The British and Commonwealth soldiers landed at two beaches, Sword and Gold, and Canadians landed at Juno Beach. In all, 156,000 troops landed on the French beaches that day. The US soldiers had 23,000 landing at Utah Beach and 34,000 at Omaha Beach, plus there were 15,500 airborne troops that came down on parachutes. The fighting was very brutal. For example, at Omaha Beach the Americans lost 2400 soldiers on that one day alone and the Germans lost 1200 men. There was also a heavy loss of life at Utah Beach. We spent time in the museum watching two videos of the battle. I learned that the Allies knew they would not again try to invade an existing port along the French coast as they were so heavily defended by the Germans.

So, they had to work out how to land on a beach that didn’t have a port, so that they could get all their equipment and troops onto shore. To do this, they cleverly built a temporary port in England over many months before D Day and once they had towed it all the way across the English Channel, they started to put it together on the beaches. They sent over hundreds of engineers to piece it together and it was designed to float and go up and down with the tides. It was a very clever invention. After the museum we walked up the hill to the viewpoint where they had a separate museum with a cinema that had a 360 degree film of the battle which went for 20 minutes.

It was very interesting to watch as a lot of what we had learnt was in it. On D Day all the 5 invasions got to shore and won the beaches. This was the beginning of the progression inland to begin to push the Nazi’s back out of France. Some towns were captured quickly but Caen, where we stayed, was heavily manned by Germans and the Allies took 8 weeks to capture it. Caen was only 30km from the beaches! The video showed us that at least three quarters of Caen was completely destroyed, but some of the old buildings survived.

 It was a long day but I learned a lot and found it very interesting but also very sad to see how many people lost their lives in the battle of Normandy. We had dinner at an Italian restaurant and I had pizza – surprise, surprise!