THE FINAL PUSH - Phil & Jill

The last afternoon. It will be sad to say goodbye to these folks. With some we have exchanged emails and will meet again I am sure!!

The Battle of Fromelles on the night of 19-20 July, 1916 took newly arrived Australian and British divisions into battle when they attacked a German stronghold known as the Sugarloaf across open fields near the village of Fromelles. These troops had just arrived and it was the first major attack by Aussies on the Western Front. It was a disaster. Catastrophic outcome was 5,500 casualities in one night. Imagine that....in one night!! Its purpose was to stop the Germans moving further south into The Somme. Most historians agree that the attack gained no significant ground....and what a cost!!

Sgt Simon Fraser, a farmer, joined the 57th Battalion and fought in the Battle of Fromelles. His diary shows how, on the following day he ventured out on to the battlefields to help the wounded. The diary said......"and I could not lift him on my back, but I managed to get him into an old trench and told him to lie quiet while I got a stretcher. Then another man sang out "Don't forget me cobber" I went in and got four volunteers with stetchers and we got both men in safely." This was quoted by Charles Bean in his official history of Australia. Fraser's bravery was the inspiration for Peter Corbett's sculpture that is the centrepiece of Fromelles Memorial Park. I think I would be safe in saying, of all the wonderful, majestic, huge memorials we have seen to date, this one creeps right into the spirit of an Aussie. It brought out emotions in everyone. I overheard Tilly say, through her tears, they were only young boys.

Sadly during the Second Battle of Bullecourt in May 1917 Sgt Fraser was reported missing in action. His name is engraved on the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux.

After lots of negotiation a retired school teacher, Lambis Englezos found the 250 graves of Australian soldiers buried by the Germans after the battle. He had them exhumed and began an extensive program of matching DNA with family members. After taking the DNA samples the bodies were reinterred with full honours in a new Commonwealth War Commission Cemetery - the first in 50 years. THe new cemetry stands beside the Musee de la Bataille de Fromelles, a new museum opened in 2014. Among other things it tells the process of the DNA sampling.

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The Le Trou First Aid post was where some of the diggers fell and the Pheasant Wood cemetery is also a cemetery from the Battle of Fromelles.

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Around an hour's drive in increasingly heavy traffic we made our way back into Lille. I think all of us were different people than when we started. To actually have been on the ground where atrocious fighting took place by members of our families whom we may never have met and to better understand the sacrifice they made was grounded in the statistics of the fallen.

I have given my all to recant and record some of what I have heard and learned over the past 4 days. There are many more bits which I haven't talked about, such as the slang words that the Aussies notoriously used to mark things in their language which they well understood and helped with the bonding of mates. For those on the tour who I know are checking the blog, that I have been faithful enough to all the facts and statistics Francis trotted out daily. To those who are reading from home, I hope you have found it interesting. For me I have found it more informative and stimulating than I thought it would be and I thank Francis for his stewardship to make it so. All I know now I have a bucket load of interesting books to read which Francis has recommended.

Once back at the Gantois hotel (where we initally stayed) after a tussle to park the bus near the ststion to let some people heading to England get off, we said our goodbyes to find the apartment we had booked for the next two days for a rest and reflection on where we have been.

So now it is goodbye to the wars and head off into other parts of France and beyond.