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Other entries in Albert

To Albert

En compagne: La Somme Part 1.

Left Paris on a day teeming with rain, in a Skoda hire car, big enough, fortunately, to hold all our bags. The previous night we spent in a marathon packing session.

We are now installed in a typical French country inn (logis), which means there is a restaurant with good food, and a not-too uncomfortable bedroom with strangely mismatched furniture and furnishings (in a combination of lime and sea greens, peach, yellow and orange, florals, geometrics and solids, with thin grey carpet, all at a very affordable price.

We are staying in Albert, which has an extremely imposing basilica
style church with a huge gilded madonna and child on top. It can be seen glinting in the sun for miles around. During WW1 she leant perilously towards the ground, a result of German fire in 1915, and looked as if poor baby Jesus was going to be pitched to the ground. It was the subject of many photos and postcards at the time. The original was covered in 40000 sheets of gold leaf, and disappeared after the British forces brought her down eventually.

We are here because it is the centre of the area where Australian
forces, including my grandfather (Gargoo), fought on the Somme in that outrageous waste of life known as The Great War. A little further north is Flanders (Ypres, Passchendale, Menin, Fleurbaix, Fromelles etc).

From piecing together information from surviving "Somewhere in France" letters from Gargoo, official histories, the diary of a soldier in the same Battery available thru Australian archives, and a little family history (the few words Gargoo spoke about the war to Mum; in common with many he never really talked about it, and he eschewed Anzac Day for many years, until later in life, and then he just went to see chums and came home), I have had the names Pozieres, Bullecourt, Villers-Brettoneux, La Boisselle rattling round in my head. The house Gargoo and his wife, my grandma, lived in in Dandenong, Victoria, and where Mum, her sister Nancy, and brother Ross lived as children was called "La Boisselle".
The German and allied front lines faced each other there at the
beginning of the Somme offensive. It is about 3 kms away along the Bapaume Road from Albert. The Bapaume Road is a Roman road and perfectly straight. These days cars whizz along it at a rapid rate, but in 1916-18 it was a potholed and cratered stretch of mud over which Gargoo drove his horse-drawn limbers and wagons dragging the heavy artillery to the front.

He had left Victoria in the 4th Light Horse Regiment, was
despatched to Gallipoli minus horse, and then, back in Egypt was transferred to field artillery as a Driver when most of the LH were disbanded. (The other half of his regiment went to Palestine and were involved in the famous Charge at Beersheba)

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