We will remember them

We were fortunate to stay in Pozieres with Marie and Bernard Delattre at Butterworth Farm. The welcome was as warm as one could hope for: they are exceptional hosts and fine people to boot. Their gite is beautifully appointed and, obviously, smack-bang in the middle of the areas of the Western Front from the first World War that are of such significance to Australia. We arrived in the afternoon before ANZAC Day, and the following are some impressions from April 25th.

....Bernard drives us, in our bleary-eyed reverie, across the dark undulations of the Somme plain. I allow myself the fancy of imagining benign ghosts of the fallen accompanying us, equally eager to reach the memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. After all, it maybe our destination but to them it is now home.

...Standing on the small rise upon which the Australian memorial stands I so much better comprehend the strategic significance of this site. In a land so flat, with horizons wider than the Hay Plain, to stand even ten metres above the plain affords a panorama that extends scores of kilometres. Small wonder that every manouvre of the allied forces was espied, so many attacks anticipated and thwarted. Equally clear is why the allied commanders so desperately craved these high points. Less clear is how anyone could have reckoned the profligate sacrifice of life to be worth the objective.

...Notable during the ceremony is the use of "enemy" rather than "Germans". I muse to myself that deliberately objectifying rather than personifying may be a way to foster reconciliation between combatants and, perhaps even more pertinently, their successors. Given the potential outcome, why risk nurturing feuds?

...Eating lunch in Albert I think to myself: I am only here due to the sacrifice voluntarily offered up by so many. I think in particular of Uncle Frank, a man who was my age (forty) when he embarked for Europe. He was killed in Bullecourt on 2 May 1917. Whose life could he have touched had he survived? Those known and loved by him who survived him? Others unknown - cousins of mine for whom that uncle might have been loved, influential, or a further strengthening block in the supporting construction that is family? And yet, I continue to ponder, his tale is a case of the great tale writ small. One cannot look upon casualty figures without considering each loss as another Uncle Frank.

...At Bullecourt the small town conducts its own rememberance ceremony, following which Tracey and I join the assembly in marching down the road to the nearby Digger memorial. As has been the case all day I'm struck by the dignity with which the French host the occasion. Respect on all sides is obvious.