The Reality of War

Monday 28^th April

I’ll start off with a report on the Quick Palace – it rated quite well on the scorecard with a bigger than we are used to room, comfortable bed, good shower and a good breakfast so we are quite happy to try another Quick Palace if we see one. And I'll give a bonus tick to the staff, both when we checked in and when we checked out. 

We spent the day touring WWI sites between Villers Bretonneux and Ypres in Belgium. We have all read in history books the numbers of men who went to war and the number that didn’t come home, but to see cemetery after cemetery filled with these men all of a sudden makes the numbers real, and we remember that there are still thousands of missing soldiers who don’t have graves. Some of the battles that we read about at the memorials we visited seemed so pointless  - thousands of lives lost for a gain of only yards. We visited mostly Australian memorials which all were extremely well kept, and all the memorials had wreaths that had been laid on Anzac Day. The Australian forces are well remembered and respected by the French and Belgians.

The school in Villers Bretonneux - also a museum.

The Digger statue at Bulle Court.

Lots of unidentified soldiers from all countries.

Cobbers statue
- near VC corner cemetery, near Fromelles.

British Butte cemetery.

Tyne Cot cemetery
- 12000 buried but not all identified.

During our travels in the day we passed into Belgium without ceremony or fanfare – in fact we weren’t exactly sure when we crossed the border but the numbers of Belgian plated cars increased and the town and street names became almost unpronounceable with lots of ‘o’s and ‘e’s in them. We then passed back in to France with the same lack of fanfare.

Dinner – we are usually pretty tired by the end of the day so we look for something close to the hotel. Across the road we could see a bar/brasserie and from the number of trucks parked we figured they were open. They were open and doing a roaring trade. There was only one other female in the restaurant apart from the 2 waitresses. We had no idea what the go was and the waiter was so busy he had no time to explain anything (and I’m not sure he had a word of English) so we just went with the flow and had the Grande Formule – 13 euro for 4 courses and a ½ pitcher of wine each. And the food was great! An enjoyable experience.

 

Dinner with the truckies.