Day 12: Tuesday 8 April 2014

Coolish and raining on and off today.  But not to be deterred I was out and about early, well early for somebody on holidays anyway.




I decided that I would spend the day having a look at the battle of Mont St Quentin.  This was one of the major battles involving the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) towards the end of the war.  Three severely understrength Australian divisions were involved in this attack.  The 2nd division was tasked with taking the Mont, the 5th division with taking the town or Peronne and the 3rd division, including our friends in the 40th battalion were to take the high ground on the left flank of the 2nd division.




By this stage of TGW the Australian battalions were suffering due to a lack of reinforcemens.  Remember that the two referendums to introduce conscription in Australia had failed and volunteer recruitment had dried up. Many of the battalions were down to 300 men instead of a nominal strength of 1,000.  The battalions that charged up the Mont were told to yell like banshees so that the Germans wouldn't realize that there were so few of them.




The battle was successful at the cost of 3,000 Australian casualties (the 40th Btn lost 30 killed and 129 wounded) and was instrumental in forcing the Germans to fall back to their Hindenburg line.  The British General Rawlinson, told Monash who was commanding the Australian Corps "You have altered the course of the war".




The Australian 2nd Division decided that they would put their memorial at the base of Mont St Quentin.  Instead of the usual obelisk they chose a sculpture of a digger aggressively bayoneting a German eagle.  Of course this disappeared when the Germans came through again in WW2.  The current memorial is a digger in full kit looking across the battlefield.

2nd Division Memorial Pre WW2

2nd Division Memorial Post WW@

Whilst in the area I went to the museum in Peronne, this is the major French museum on the Western front.
 
I also visited a French memorial, chapel and cemetery in the town of Rancourt. 


Now imagine my surprise when on my return to the hotel in Amiens I walk into the foyer and there is an inflatable kangaroo holding an Australian flag.  There was also a poster promoting Anzac Day services in France.  Looks like they are trying to turn that into a circus like Gallipoli.

This is how the Australian embassy thinks that we should promote Anzac Day

Now I have experienced some difficulty loading some pictures for this posting and at one stage I thought that I had lost the lot.  So I will post this sans pics and try and put in the pics later.