The Somme - sheer bloody madness!

First stop, the Australian War Memorial at Villers Bretonneux. This is the location for the Anzac Day dawn service each year. APT had organised a wreath and four people who had relatives who had fought here, laid it at the cross of sacrifice in front of the memorial. Our two guides sang La Marseillaise and then we sang Advance Australia Fair. One guide then played a recording of the last post through our earpieces. A very moving touch. The weather was appropriately sombre.
A close look at the tower of the memorial shows lots of bullet marks - seems the germans were peed off with us so shot at it during WWII.
At the rear of the war memorial is the Sir John Monash Centre. Open for a year, it's a modern museum of the Somme campaigns. Through an app, it uses digital technology to show and tell the stories and battles.
Like all military cemeteries, there are rows and rows of headstones. Occasionally there are two close together signifying they are buried together. There's no set order - the graves are totally random - those with names, those unknown - sailors, soldiers and airmen. There are 2,100+ buried here of whom 600 are unidentified.
As you drive around there are small cemeteries with their rows of white headstones everywhere among the fields of crops. Besides this, there are many servicemen buried in church graveyards.
Farmers are still finding bombs and shells in their paddocks. When the war finished, the government didn't want the farmers to return to their land because of the danger of unexploded bombs. The famers did return and, indeed, some were killed - some not that long ago.
In 2016, while widening a road, workers found the bodies of three soldiers. Their remains have been moved to a small cemetery near where they were found.
Next, into Villers Bretonneux town to eat our lunchpacks provided off the ship.Read more