It’s been a few days since we’ve blogged, but I’m sure you’ll understand. Things have been very “full”! Where to start….?
Maybe just with Anzac reflections.
On the 24th, in our hire car, we drove from our Ibis hotel in Roye, to Amiens – to check out the departure point for our Dawn Service Shuttle . What a drive! No Working GPS. No Internet connections to our smart phones and traffic, the likes of which we have never seen before. The town itself left very little room for error; cars parked on both sides of small avenues… Tiny spaces to try to fit through. But fit we did. Even if we did make contact once. Driving from the left has it’s intricacies! My nerves were off the richter!
We then set off for Le Havre, in search of the resting place of my great Uncle Francis Leopold Gale (my Dad’s Uncle on his mother’s side), who died near to the end of World War 1. He had a difficult time away serving his country, and then a terrible end, far from home. (Thanks to the Australian War Commission for records). He was only 20 years old when he died in August 1918. Armistice was signed in the November.
We found his grave stone, among the other thousands of Allied Forces on a hill in Le Havre, cared for beautifully by the AWC staff. The grave stone simply records his name, rank, date of death and then an inscription:
“Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling”.
Wow.
It was a powerful experience for us all. The sadness of war, realised for us. Particularly the boys I think.
The dawn service the next day at Villers Bretoneaux was similarly moving. Eerie fog surrounded the hill on which the Australian monument stands. While it was cold, the thousands of Aussies that gathered with us, we’re uncharacteristically quiet. There were speeches, hymns and stories from the journals and letters home of fallen Aussie soldiers. All very moving, but none so much as the speech from a French Government Representative….this one not translated into English like the others had been, but in French. And while we could only pick up a word here and there, his meaning was clear; these were a grateful people. Their ancestors had faced total destruction, losses of men, women and children, homes, all belongings – and those who stood beside them and made the difference in the end, were Aussies. Harley summed it up best when he commented;
“I didn’t understand what he (the representative) said, but I felt it.”
At the end of the service, we found Harley’s two Great Uncles names on the memorial – both from the same family, Dalziell, his mother’s Uncle’s on her father’s side. Walter and Earnest. Two brave brothers, whose bodies were never found. We placed a photo of them each as close to their names as we could get them, so that for one day, they weren’t just a name on a wall, but people could see that these were the names of real young men, handsome and strong, earnest and young.
Proud to be Australian.
Francis Leopold Gale
Looking north from the grave side
The Western Front and La Havre
Walter Edward Dalziell was 21yrs old
Ernest Rhule Dalziell was only 18yrs old. His name was right up the top of the memorial.
Age shall not weary them.
European Adventures 