Day Trip: Le Quesnoy

This morning we took a 50 minute train ride to a small walled town in Northern France called Le Quesnoy. With about 5,000 people, Le Quesnoy is important to New Zealand because it is the site of the only NZ military museum in Europe, Te Arawhata, the New Zealand Liberation Museum.

This visit was planned to be one of the high points of our holiday in France, and so it turned out to be - in spades!!

In the last weeks of World War One in 1918, the NZ Division found itself outside Le Quesnoy, facing awesome 12 metre walls, and under orders to capture the town, but without using artillery.

It turned out there was one part of the wall where in 1882 a sluice gate had been built across the moat to control the water flow. This reduced the net wall height at that point to 9m, making it vulnerable to attack with ladders.

The first attempt led to several Kiwi deaths from heavy machine gun fire from several points on the top of the walls, but later Second Lieutenant Leslie Averill led men over the wall. Amazingly, the German gunners had been withdrawn, apparently to fight elsewhere. The town was liberated, on 4 November 1918.

During the liberation, not a single French civilian was killed, and the people of Le Quesnoy have never forgotten! Hence the New Zealand Liberation Museum, Te Arawhata.

This is not a war museum - there are no guns, tanks or planes - this museum focuses on the stories of people who were involved in the action and the broader war. This makes visiting an intensely emotional experience - I was surreptitiously wiping my eyes throughout.

I can’t speak highly enough of Deputy Director Jacob. He met us (on his day off), and guided us through each part of the museum. Weta workshops have provided an amazing model soldier, as well as video and photo program support. There is a Perspex ladder artwork inside the spiral staircase, a tribute to the ladder used by Lt Averill.

After lunch Jacob took us to the nearby Ruesnes cemetery where William Archibald Wilson, a relative of Desiree’s cousin Lee Balsom, is buried. He won a Military Medal during the advance on Le Quesnoy, but died of wounds shortly after.

We then moved on to the ramparts to see the NZ Memorial, and to stand in the place where the ladder was put against the wall. We remember people died here.

Jacob asked me how I felt about what I had seen through the day. I replied that my feelings were confused: very sad for the waste of life (and the undisclosed PTSD of soldiers who returned home), amazement at the insight and expertise of the people who developed the concepts and implemented the exhibits in the museum, but overall admiration for the heroism and perseverance of the soldiers who risked everything.

Then Jacob dropped us back at the station for our train home. Buckeet list ticked.Leer más