Three months in Europe

Lest we forget the ultimate sacrifice of 60,000 young Aussie diggers, in WW1 when our population was less than 5 million…
So humbling seeing 19 year old grave stones Some numbers I didn’t know
1. 320,000 Australians served overseas in WW1 (all volunteers)
2. Of the 100,000 Aussies who died in overseas conflicts last century 60,000 were in WW1 ( deliberately not saying ANZAC as the NZ numbers are shocking
3. Of the 60,000 Aussies who died in WW1, 45,000 of them were here on the western front,
4. Of the 45,000 that died here, 10,000 of them were at the Battle for a little insignificant hill at Bullecourt where they now have a statue of a digger. (Mind you that number has been contradicted in a another plaque)
5. Of the 45,000 that died here, 11,000 bodies have not been found or are in unmarked graves, or are unknown soldier graves…. 11,000…..
6. Even though we have an Australian memorial with lots of relocated graves, there are over 1000 cemeteries scattered around the battlefield with Australian diggers. We were going down random roads and kept finding offical commonwealth grave sites. After a while I had to stop getting out. The first one I stopped at today only had 1 digger…. But 47 New Zealanders, the next 26 diggers and 57 kiwi’s
I found it an extremely emotional day, and I found myself so emotional I was snapping at poor Christine over nothing…. But I am so pleased I spent the time. In the end I had to rush through the Sir John Monash centre interactive display at the National memorial site. I did also enjoy the small French museum at Bullecourt, dedicated to Anzacs… in fact the whole town had ANZAC stuff everywhere. If you go to the Australian National memorial at Villers Bretonneux, please allow yourself at least 2 hoursRead more