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.