Lilly the Land Yacht - May 23, 2019

May 23, 201951 2.01997N 3 33.26039E

It seems like we caused a bit of a panic at home as we have been out of contact for a week, but all is well! We finally have internet again so can get everyone up to date. We picked up our camper van, Lilly, on Wednesday a week ago and had a few issues to sort out....insurance, minor maintenance items and a new house battery required, plus the fridge was playing up. It sounds like the usual issues we have when we leave Aradonna for a while, almost like a protest about us being away. By the time we got to the fridge repair shop after 2 hours of driving, the fridge was working again! Typical. Anyway, all is well and we got underway for our next European journey... Over the last week we have been exploring WWI sites from the western front. Last year we visited many WWII sites, especially in Normandy, so this year we decided to take a look a bit further back in history. The first stop was Peronne in France, liberated by the Australians, which still has a Main Street called “Roo de Kanga”. The war museum here was very interesting too. As we drove through the French countryside we noticed that everything looked so lush and green. Vibrant spring colours sprouting forth on trees and deep green crops growing across the rolling landscape. Beautiful. We visited Grevililers cemetery with 153 NZ graves, drove to Flers where the NZ troops started at the same time as the first ever use of tanks in the war. We also stopped at the NZ Caterpillar cemetery. At Longueval there is a memorial to the NZ men, including the name of Lindsay Parlane - lost, with grave unknown. The very large crater at La Boiselle was worth a look, including reading the stories from survivors of this battlefield. From there we visited the town of Albert where we experienced the Museum Somme 1916 including underground tunnels and a wealth of information. Then it was on to the Newfoundland memorial where well preserved trenches and craters from WW1 can still be seen today. Near the town of Arras is a memorial to the NZ tunnellers and a fabulous museum that has preserved some of the network of tunnels dug by NZ men that housed 24,000 men in safety 20 m underground during the war. We then went on to visit the town of Le Quesnoy (pronounced Kenwaa) which was liberated by NZ troops in September 1918. Here there are streets dedicated to NZ, including Rue Neo Zealandias, Rue Helene Clark and All Blacks Place! This is a fortified town with very high walls and a moat around it. The Germans were occupying the city and the NZ men had to scale the wall one at a time to get in to fight the Germans. An incredible effort and still remembered by the people of this town today. Memorials to the NZ soldiers in several places around town. Yesterday we reached Belgium and visited the war memorial sites at Mesen (Mesinnes) where we found 128 NZ graves and a list of 828 NZ men with unknown graves from battles in this area. At Ypres we walked through Menin gate, with the names of 54,896 soldiers from the Commonwealth that were reported missing in the Ypres region from 1914-August 1917. The gate was designed to hold all the names of the missing but it was not big enough. A further 35,000 names are on the memorial in Tyne Cot including almost 1200 NZ men who do not have graves. We went for a short bike ride to this memorial today, and learned that 2700 NZ men lost their lives in just 4 hours during one battle on 12th October 2017. Incredible. The most memorable site of the week was the Passchendale museum. We spent three hours there today, completely absorbed by the artefacts, stories from survivors and video clips that still exist from WWI. The museum includes reconstructions of tunnels, dug outs and trenches we could walk through to visualise what daily life might have been like for the soldiers - without the fighting of course! There is also a large Maori carving here to commemorate the Maori soldiers from NZ. Another interesting fact was that USA supplied 3.2 million tons of food to Belgium during WWI to help support the people. Who knew? During the third battle of Ypres mid 1917, in just 100 days, the allies had gained just 8km of territory - land that had been turned into sloppy sucking mud by rain and shelling. In this time, 245,000 allied troops and 215,000 German soldiers ended up either dead, wounded or missing. It is all so sad. The countryside around this area is now peaceful, dotted with picturesque villages and fields of wheat. Life goes on and memories fade. I am glad we had this week to look, to feel, to ponder. So many families had an empty chair at their table that would never be filled again. So many family members had to carry on with an empty spot in their hearts. Lest we forget.

Nomads on Android

Nomads on Apple

Nomads Chrome App

Nomads Home

Nomad updates in the last month.

Nomads A-Z