Sunday, 13 April 2014

Day 16: Saturday 12 April 2014



Another event today nearly as exciting as finding the unexploded shell yesterday, I finally arrived in French Flanders and guess what........prawn croquettes are on the menu.  Dinner tonight was an entrée of prawn croquettes and they were delicious, I also had a veal thing with mustard sauce and that was nice as well.

Today I drove from St Quentin to Bailleul via Fromelles.  You may recall that Fromelles is the battlefield where the Australians who died there were buried in a unknown mass grave by the Germans.  A couple of years ago the mass grave was located and the bodies recovered and re-interred at a new cemetery in Fromelles.  I have been there a couple of times before and didn't really need to go again however the Australian government is building an information centre there and I was interested in whether it was finished or not.......its not!   Anyway as I was there I had a wander around the cemetery and came across two graves side by side of brothers, Sam Wilson and Eric Wilson of the 53rd battalion who both died on the same day, 19 July 1916.

The Wilson brothers

Battalion commander died leading his men at Frommelles
 The battle of Fromelles was the first major battle that the AIF was involved in on the Western Front and the 5th division got a fair old pasting. In a single night the Australians suffered over 5,500 casualties, including 1,917 killed.  The division was finished as a fighting force for some months.


After leaving the cemetery I drove to the Australian Memorial Park just out of Fromelles.  I met an Australian couple there from Warrnambool who were travelling around Europe for 3 months in a camper van. 
"Cobbers" statue - Australian Memorial Park - Fromelles
I was staying in Bailleul overnight as I couldn't get accommodation in Ypres for the night.  Bailleul was behind the British lines for nearly the entire war and was a major supply and logistics depot for the BEF (British Expeditionary Force).  By 1918 the Bailleuleans (I think I made that up) probably thought that they were going to survive the war without their town being damaged.  Not to be, Bailleul was taken by the Germans in their last big operation in March 1918.  The British artillery bombardment and subsequent fighting to recover the town destroyed over 90% of it.


Anyway the town has been rebuilt and serves delicious prawn croquettes.











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3 comments:

  1. Lee_O13 April 2014 at 15:28

    Oh thats so sad about sam and eric :(

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  2. Roger14 April 2014 at 00:45

    Well an exciting couple of days, Major. You know that the Wilson brothers were the uncles of George Mansford;s second wife, Helen Mansford (nee Wilson). I met Helen before she died about 8 years ago and the missing brothers were always talked about. Prawn croquettes eh? I think you need to have them at least four times to decide if they are truly delicious. Cheers Flashy

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  3. Graeme14 April 2014 at 07:30

    It is very sad about the brothers, there were lots of cases of brothers serving and dying, but I don't know how many cases there are of brothers dying on the same day in the same battle. Imagine their poor old mum getting not one but two telegrams.

    Roger, when Helen Mansford was alive her uncles would still have been listed as missing. These bodies were all recovered from the mass grave at Pheasant Wood. I wonder if they were identified from information on the bodies or from DNA testing. (I am determined to continue testing the croquettes).

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