Australians in the Somme by olivier durand

Le Hamel Australian Memorial Park This park was laid out by the Australian government. Apart from a memorial brought from Australia (the Australian Corps Memorial inaugurated on 7 August 1998), the site's panoramic displays and explanatory panels explain the strategic significance of the site during the battle. Some trenches have been preserved here. This site is open all the year round, with free and open access (parking space, toilets, picnic area). Open at all times Close to the church, an Australian

commemorative plaque describes the battles which took place at Le Hamel.

“Never forget Australia” The victorious engagement of the Australian forces, which shortly afterwards were to acquire their own independent command formed the basis of close links between the people of Australia and the inhabitants of this small Picardy commune. The British King and Queen inaugurated the Australian National Memorial in 1938. Anzac Day is commemorated here every year. Celebrated on 25 April, Remembrance Day in Australia, it is dedicated to the memory of Australians who were killed during the First World War. Villers-Bretonneux holds its ceremony on the Saturday nearest to 25 April.

The

TGV Haute-Picardie Station

It was the German attack on Verdun on 21 February 1916 that brought increasing numbers of British troops to France, reinforced by the expeditionary corps from the six Empire dominions. The 80,000 men of the 1st Anzac corps landed at Marseilles in March 1916 on their way to the Somme. After the arrival of the 2nd Anzac corps in June, the two corps fought in France and Belgium until the end of the war. The number of recruits in Australia reached a total of 417,000 out of a population of 4,875,000 in 1914. 331,000 served overseas. The final total of casualties reached 4 215,000, included 59,000 dead.

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The total number of Australian casualties - 64.8 per cent of combatants - was the heaviest of all the dominions. In the Somme there are still today some older residents who recall with great emotion those tall, friendly and warm-hearted young men with their characteristic appearance, wearing the famous hat with the turned-back brim.

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Australians Battlefields Somme in the Somme The

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t the beginning of 1914 Australia was already aware of potential dangers caused by the close proximity of the German colony of New Guinea and the Bismark Archipelago. The German navy’s growing power and activity in the Pacific Ocean were alarming.

Under the terms of the Defence Act the regular army could not be deployed outside Australia. On 8 August, therefore, an expeditionary force was created to serve overseas for the duration of the war. Thus the “Australian Imperial Force” entered history, to be better known as the A.I.F. The recruiting campaign opened on 10 August. From all sides, from the bush and the towns, crowds of young men from all social backgrounds flooded in enthusiastically to the major centres. By the end of August 20,000 applicants had been registered in Sydney.

Battlefields of the Somme

On 28 June Franz-Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian empire, was assassinated by a Serbian student in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzogovina. This led to a sequence of threats and ultimatums between Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Russia, Germany, France and Great Britain. Finally, Germany declared war on France on 3 August, followed by the British declaration of war on Germany on 4 August. All the dominions of the British Empire immediately declared their support for the “Mother Country” : Andrew Fisher, the Australian Labour prime minister, promised that Australia would commit herself “to the last man and the last shilling”. © Australian War Memorial

garance • 03 22 80 08 41 • 09/06

his village and its surrounding area are important feature in Australian military history. On 4 July 1918, with the support of American forces, General Monash launched a spirited and victorious attack which for the first time combined infantery, artillery, tanks and parachute troops - a fore-runner of modern war tactics.

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The first Australian contribution took the form of a small expeditionary corps, set up hastily in response to a request from London. In September 1914 it liberated the German colonies of New Guinea, New Britain and New Ireland. In the same year the famous Anzac corps (made up of Australians and New Zealanders) was constituted in Egypt. After guarding the Suez Canal in 1914, it took part in the Dardanelles campaign in 1915.

The

illers-Bretonneux saw action in August 1914 and the incessant movement of British and French troops over the next four years ; but the name of this large village entered the history of the war on 24 April 1918 when Australian troops finally halted the German offensive of March 1918. Since the construction of the Victoria School in 1927 and the inauguration of the memorial in 1938, public and private links with Australia have grown steadily stronger. The twinning with Robinvale and the exhumation in France and reinterment in Canberra of the Australian Unknown Soldier in November 1993 have sealed this close relationship. Its history, the annual visit of the Australian ambassador to commemorate Anzac day on the Saturday nearest to 25 April, and the many Australian visitors throughout the year, give the village an image and identity in Australia that are not easily grasped here.

Villers-Bretonneux The Franco-Australian Museum The first floor of the school building, “the gift of the children of the schools in Victoria to the children of Villers-Bretonneux”, contains the Franco-Australian museum. It illustrates the role of the Australian troops during the First World War (photographs, models, uniforms, weapons,…). It also has a documentation centre and a video room. Victoria School - 9, rue Victoria 80800 Villers-Bretonneux Tel./fax: +33(0)322968079 www.museeaustralien.com Open: Tuesday afternoon-Saturday, 10.00 - 12.30 am and 14.00 - 18.00; also the first and third Sunday afternoon of each month. Adult: 4 € - Children (6-18): 2.50 €

Mairie (town hall) The mairie entrance hall contains a large number of Australian souvenirs (maps, leaflets, etc).

The Australian National memorial This imposing white stone memorial (on the RD 23 road to Fouilloy) consists of a tall central tower and two corner pavilions linked to the tower by plain walls that bear the names of the missing-soldiers who have no known grave. Inaugurated in 1938, it is the location for an annual celebration of Anzac Day. Open at all times

Adelaide Cemetery In 1993 the body of the Australian Unknown Soldier was exhumed in Adelaide Cemetery and taken to Australia for burial at Canberra. A carved stele commemorates this event. As you approach from Amiens on the RN 29 road, it lies on the left on the outskirts of Villers-Bretonneux.

he name of Pozières evokes two turning-points in the Battle of the Somme: the Australian troops' first major engagement and the first use of tanks in a battlefield.

n 28 August 1914 the retreating French army passed through Péronne.

n 1918 the German General Hindenburg, making use of troops liberated from the Eastern Front by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, decided to launch a major offensive on the British lines and force them into embarkation between Boulogne and Calais.

The failure to capture Thiepval by the west in the offensive of 1 July led to the British army’s move round the second German line, on Hill 160, by the south and therefore through Pozières.

Evacuated by its inhabitants in 1916, the town was shelled by the French artillery during the Battle of the Somme. With the arrival of the British peace returned to Péronne, the front line having shifted further east.

The three German armies, positioned in an arc from Arras to La Fère, attacked on 21 March along a front of 90 kilometres.

This mission fell essentially to the Australians. From 23 July they captured the second line of the German positions and a large blockhouse (“Gibraltar”).

Half a million-men were launched into the assault on 160,000 British soldiers. Albert and Roye fell on 26 March, Montdidier on the 27th, Moreuil on the 30th. Faced with the gravity of the situation, the civilian and military Allied leaders met at Doullens and gave the sole command of the Allied forces to Foch. The arrival of Allied reinforcements slowed down the German advance, which on 4 April encountered the resistance of French troops at Grivesnes.

ie Flament © Anne-Soph

On 4 August the Australians reached the hill-top at altitude 160 m and took the remains of the blockhouses known as “The Windmill”. The Australians field of activity was triangular in outline, with its point at the very heavily fortified Mouquet (“Mucky”) Farm, where they were exhausted before being relieved by the Canadians. The British did not finally capture the farm until 26 September. The farm has been rebuilt on a different site, but a plaque beside the D73 road recalls its original location.

Péronne was abandoned by the Germans in March 1917 when they withdrew eastwards to the Hindenburg Line. The town was next occupied by the British, who were driven out by the German offensive in March 1918. When the town was liberated by the Australians in September it consisted of nothing but ruins.

A final German attempt to take Amiens failed on 25 April at VillersBretonneux in the face of Australian troops fresh from Belgium.

On 15 September three tanks of the Canadian Division set out from Pozières with a sugar refinery as their objective (in modern times the Courcelette glass-houses). Only one tank reached the objective, the other two becoming bogged down.

In his memoirs Hindenburg was to describe 8 August 1918 as the “black day” for the German army: “The battle ended on 4 April… What the English and the French had not been able to achieve, we accomplished in the fourth year of the war”.

Pozières

Amiens

Corbie Plateau

The memorial to the 2nd Australian Division

The memorial to the 1st Australian Division “Gibraltar”

Amiens, the cathedral

The brickworks

Various plaques commemorate the Australian, Canadian, British, American, Newfoundland, South African and New Zealand troops (on the pillars and walls of the south transept); Low on the south wall of the choir, a plaque is dedicated to the memory of Raymond Asquith, son of the British Prime Minister, who was killed at Ginchy in August 1916. Two other plaques here commemorate the colonial troops and the soldiers of the parish of Notre Dame who died for France; The flags of Australia, Canada, Newfoundland, New Zealand, the United States and South Africa hang in the chapel of Saint James the Great in the apse.

On 21 April 1918 the aircraft of Manfred von Richthofen crashed in the field on the opposite side of the road. Hit by the Canadian pilot Brown, this “ace” of German flying, known as the Red Baron, decided to return to Cappy but was apparently caught in the fire of Australian ground-based machine-guns. He was mortally wounded. Buried by the Australians with full military honours in the civilian cemetery at Bertangles, his body was transferred in 1925 to the German cemetery at Fricourt. Later in the same year it was taken back by his brother to Berlin and finally buried in Wiesbaden.

Open every day :

Free open access at all times.

Nothing now remains of this enormous 3-metre high blockhouse-observation point except its foundations. Now the property of the Conseil Général of the Somme, “Gibraltar” has been adapted to give a better understanding of the fighting here (orientation table at the top with a look-out tower; parking space ; information panels, picnic area, etc.).

“The Windmill” A windmill stood here from as early as 1610, but during the First World War a blockhouse was built here which has now almost entirely disappeared. The grassy site now bears a lead plaque, representing a memorial to the 2nd Australian Division, and a bench with the engraved dedication: “The Windmill at Pozières, of which you can see the remaining traces, lay at the heart of the battle which raged in July and August 1916 in this part of the Battle of the Somme. On 4 August 1916 it was captured by Australian troops but on this hill-top they lost more men than on any other battlefield throughout the war”.

The Tank Monument The four bronzes at the corners of this plain obelisk are small-scale models of the thanks that were used in 1916-1918.

Free open access at all times.

Péronne The original monument showed a soldier pinning an eagle to the ground with his bayonet. Dismantled by the Germans in the Second World War, it was replaced in September 1971 with a less belligerent statue; commemorative plaque presented by Ross Bastiaan.

Free open access at all times.

Pozières and Australia A village in the state of Queensland took the name of Pozières after the war, evidence of the evocative power of the name for the Australian people. In a further example of this attachment, a veteran of the First World War threw a handful of earth from Pozières on to the coffin of the Unknown Australian Soldier during the burial service at the Australian War Memorial at Canberra on 11 November 1993.

- from 1/04 to 30/09: 8.30 am - 6.30 pm - from 1/10 to 31/03: 8.30 am - 5.30 pm

Sailly-le-Sec The memorial to the 3rd Australian Division Which distinguished itself at the end of March 1918 by holding back the German advance.