Western Front to Normandy Tour September 2018

"All Quiet on the Western Front" at least for the time being.

After welcome drinks the night before and a Pizza expedition to the nearby village of Roissy en France, our group had assembled over the previous two days.

Right on schedule we rolled out of the gates of the Novotel Roissy Convention hotel with Driver Lee at the helm on a glorious morning with bright sunshine (after a day's rain on the 13^th) and a light morning mist with nary a breath of air to turn the most sensitive of the many wind turbines along the Autoroute north.

This part of France has had a long hot summer and the sight of headers trailing a dust plume is more reminiscent of Australian than northern France.

First stop the melancholy Forest of Compiegne where the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, and then 22 years later, the surrender of France to yet another invading German Army. Sadly we struggled to get anywhere near it as it is a construction site in preparation for the Centenary Ceremony on 11 November.

So we headed for Arras. Although not a site with particular Australian significance it is home to two fantastic sites that provide excellent context for the impact on France of two of the three invasions they suffered between 1870 and 1940.

At Arras we visited the Wellington Quarry - gateway to the "Underground War" fought by both sides during the Great War. Chalk soils in northern France lent themselves to tunnelling operations on a scale that have to be seen to be believed. Arras and nearby Vimy Ridge are the best place to see it.

With the ground under the city of Arras riddled with chalk and limestone quarries since the 1600s, the British High Command ordered the New Zealand Tunnelling Companies to join them up. In so doing they created an underground city connected by 20 kilometres of tunnels - an absolute labyrinth which became a haven for 24,000 British and Commonwealth troops in the lead up to the Arras Offensive of early 1917. Now visitors descend nearly 30 metres underground to make their way an amazing complex of tunnels and chambers.

All of us contemplated what the soldiers must have thought as they made their way up the "Stairway to Hell" of the exit tunnels on the morning of the 9^th April into the jaws of the German defences.

The other site that is an absolute must see is the Vauban (French military engineer and architect) designed "Citadel". Until recently a French military barracks, the scale and quality of brickwork in this amazing structure is astounding. In a section of the former mat on the far side of the fortress is one of the most melancholy sites in France; Le Mur des Fusilees, or "The Wall of the Shot". With 218 plaques lining the sloped red brick sides of what was once the moat, each marks a French Resistance member executed by the Nazi occupiers between 1940 and late 1944.

We then headed for home for the next four nights, the beautiful provincial town of Peronne. Our imperative was to meet up with Dominique Frere at L'Historial de la Grand Guerre, just around from the Hotel, for a tour of this most impressive facility housed in a Medieval fortress.

After dinner and reflections on our big day out, time to turn in in anticipation of tomorrow - "The Somme 1916".

Western Front to Normandy Tour 2018

Steve Larkins
Battlefield History Tours.