Day 19: Tuesday 15 April 2014

Early start today, for breakfast anyway.  I was on the road and driving out to Polygon Wood at about 9.30am, it was about 9 degrees and another clear cool spring day warming up to about 15 as the day wore on.


Polygon Wood was another in the string of attacks by the British to break the salient around Ypres The part of the battle that interests me was conducted by the Australian 4th & 5th divisions with the 5th division advancing through the wood or what was left of it at the time.  The cemetery at the end of the wood is also the site for the 5th division memorial.  So I have managed to visit all 5 division memorials on the Western Front on this trip.




View of Polygon Wood

The Buttes Cemetery

The Buttes Cemetery from the buttes

This is a good battle to walk as you get to walk through Polygon Wood (now grown back) visit some German bunkers in the wood and the walk finishes at a bar/café called aptly enough the Anzac Rest Café.  Flashy will be interested to know that Johannes the owner of the café is trying to raise money and interest in his "Brothers in Arms" memorial.


As I was walking through Polygon Wood I heard an aircraft flying overhead, on looking up I realized that it was a vintage bi-plane, not TGW vintage, but reminiscent of the aircraft of that time.




 
One of the brigades involved in the battle of Polygon Wood was the 15th Brigade.  The 15th Brigade was commanded by one of the "characters" of the AIF, Brigadier - General Harold Elliot, also known as Pompey Elliot.  Elliot like most of the senior officers in the AIF was a citizen soldier before the war and was a solicitor by trade.  He was raised and schooled in the Ballarat area.  At one of the brigade parades the men turned up wearing a variety of head gear.  Pompey told them that at the next parade they had to all be wearing their slouch hats or they would be put on charges.  Anyway on the day of the next parade Pompey's slouch hat disappeared and he appeared without his hat, the cry went up from the assembled troops, "hey Pompey where's your hat"?  For many years later whenever Pompey turned up at a reunion or meeting of his old soldiers they would still call out "Pompey where is your hat".  Pompey also threatened to shoot any British stragglers during the British retreat in March 1918, of course he had no authority to that, and this order was countermanded by a higher authority.  A final story about Pompey, during his brigade's advance on Peronne, Pompey was crossing the Somme on a makeshift bridge and he fell in.  The 5th division communications network went into meltdown and jammed with the signalers telling everybody "Pompey has fallen in the Somme".


Sadly Pompey carried a huge amount of bitterness over being overlooked for command of a division and committed suicide in 1931.  There is a memorial to Pompey in the main street of Ballarat.

Tyne Cot Cemetary

In the afternoon I followed the battle of Broodseinde ridge.  This was another of the battles to break through the salient.  I was able to closely follow the progress of the 3rd division and the 40th battalion.  This battle was a great success for the AIF with all of their objectives taken, but at a cost of 8,000 casualties.  (Remember, the term casualties refers to all the soldiers who died, were wounded and/or missing and taken prisoner).


Sergeant Lewis Mcgee of the 40th battalion was awarded his VC in this battle, Flashy's great uncle Wally was awarded his MM in this battle as well.  Mcgee died shortly after in another battle, Wally survived the war and made it back to Australia.





German cemetery at Langemark - graveyard of "The Innocents"

On the way back to Ypres I called in the German military cemetery at Langemarck.  There are 10s of thousands of Germans buried here, many of them in mass graves.  Even on a bright sunny day it has a dark and somber feel about it.  As I was walking back to my car I passed a group of English people and overheard a woman saying "they do like Germanic emblems, don't they".  Strange that in a German war cemetery.

































Late afternoon tea was a éclair from the little shop down the road from the hotel and dinner was at a restaurant on the market square.  (Prawn croquettes and entrecote steak with beer & wine).