Battle of the Somme

[Matt Harper]

Likewise, I have visited Vimy and Rusty has it right - it is a startling, scary and very sad place - but also pride-filled and now very dignified and proud. What stunned me was how close the opposing trench-lines were to each other - and for how long the slaughter went on there.
I also visited Beaumont Hamel, Thiepval (overwhelming) and St Quentin, killing fields all.
I feel the real criminal was the guy immortalised in bronze in Whitehall (?) - Sir Douglas Haig - I often wonder why we celebrate this total lunatic. He should have been court-marshalled and executed for what he did to a whole generation of brave young men under his charge.
Edmund Blackadder put it fairly succinctly (and blackly comically) when he said that 20,000 would get chopped to pieces by machine-gun fire so that Field Marshall Haig could move his drinks cabinet ten feet closer to Berlin.
It's now hard to imagine that those beautiful rolling fields resembled th surface of the moon 90 years ago.....
 

[Fax]

My post has been removed by self, sorrry I strayed from the original thread, I noticed that some others had deviated slightly from the Somme context and decided to put my two cents in. Its Independence Day over here so felt like putting a word in for my great nation.  Sorry if it offended some
Fax


Thanks Fax, good self moderation - it was in danger of pulling this too far off topic which works in other threads but was not appropriate here. I've also deleted responses to Fax's post, which became out of context. smokie

[Doris]

Reading this thread - especially the things about Vimy - inspired me to visit Vimy Ridge yesterday whilst on my way home from the Classic.  It is truly a sobering experience to see the tunnels and trenches and realise that you are, in essence, standing in a graveyard.  So hard also to imagine what it must have been like 89 years ago when yesterday the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and there were sheep grazing in the field next to the trenches.

[Snoring Rhino]

Reading this thread - especially the things about Vimy - inspired me to visit Vimy Ridge yesterday whilst on my way home from the Classic.  It is truly a sobering experience to see the tunnels and trenches and realise that you are, in essence, standing in a graveyard.  So hard also to imagine what it must have been like 89 years ago when yesterday the sun was shining, the birds were singing, and there were sheep grazing in the field next to the trenches.

I think its been said before but its worth repeating, in todays age of knowledge and information very few of us would go over the top on the order order of an upper class twit 3 miles behind the line to be cut to pieces. But blieving we have that choice and enjoying a summers day in France is their legacy.

[Matt Harper]

Well said, Ian

[paultarsey]

I know that this is about WW1 but last year we took the week off to spend the time in Normandy during the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of D Day.
To say it was moving is an understatement.  There was a lot of pomp and ceremony but the simple bits were the best.  We took a wreath to lay at a cemetary and agreed on Hermanville (for no particular reason).  We arrived at the beginning of the commemoration service and, after the formal bit was finished, we laid our own little wreath.  A veteran, with a chestful of medals, came up and said "what is this one for" at which point I blurted out "It's from a greatful generation' and beat a hasty retreat before I broke down completely.  A humbling and moving experience I wouldn't have missed for the world.
"The Old Git Newbie"

[fagey]

I have also done the d day beaches.. 45,50 & 55 aniversarys, and to see all these famous places in the 'flesh' is a humbling experience. I have seen old german and british servicemen meet at german and british cemetaries and shake hands and then sit and talk for hours.. met ranger veterans at pointe du hoq, drank with para vets at pegasus bridge and met John Steele at his bar in ste mare eglise (he was the guy hanging from the steeple in the film 'the longest day'. in fact everywhere you meet vets (in less numbers each year) and they will always talk about their experiences... those visits changed my outlook on life from being a teenager with attitude...

[monkey]

Partly inspired by this thread my son (18) and I took a day out of a holiday on the Normandy coast to visit the Somme a couple of weeks ago. We spent the day there making our way from the crater at La Boiselle to the point where it all ground to a halt Butte de Warlencourt a few months and many tens if not hundreds of thousands of French, German Irish and British, Canadian and Newfoundlanders lives later. (Sorry if I missed any no offence meant) We visited the Newfoundland Park and I was amazed how tiny it was, the concentration of the battle there on 1/07/16 remains unimaginable very moving. But more so was a visit to the Cemeteries at Serre. You cross a field, and walk perhaps three quarters of a mile from the main road and there are three cemeteries there. One I felt to be particularly moving. It’s one of the 'Pals memorials' and called 'Railway hollow' I went through the gate and looked down the hill into a sparse woodland. The craters made from exploding shells were clearly visible among the trees. When I looked to my right and left I realised I was standing in the remains of the front line trench. It was not pristine like so many of the areas but real. And being so far from any road and given my son and I were the only people there the quiet was extraordinary. I have never felt anything like it, even thinking of it now three full weeks later sends a shiver down my spine.

With the setting of the sun……………….
 

[oldtimer]

I don't really have much to add to this thread.  The sentiments expressed and the accounts of visits to the various war cemeteries and battlefields have been poignant and moving.

All I will ask is that those of us with kids who travel through northern Frane each year en route to Le Mans make a small detour at some time - doesn't have to be every year - to show our children these moving sites and remind them of the collective debt we all owe to the war generations.

When I first started coming to Le Mans with my father he and I made a number of visits to the D-Day beaches and the memory will stay with me for ever.

Welll done Monkey, and all the others of you have made similar pilgrmages, for taking the time out to show your son the scale of sacrafice that was made on our behalf by our recent forebears.  Shortly before his first Le Mans visit this year my 10 year old son was fortunate enough to have a school trip to Normandy principally to learn about the D-Day landings.  It won't stop he and I paying our respects again in the future though.

We must help to keep the memories alive...