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T he T rusty S ervant
German advance stopped. From the
top we had a panorama of the Somme
battlefield of two years earlier, which
showed us how the more mobile battles
of 1918 passed back and forth over
earlier killing fields; we were haunted
by the earlier campaign as many of the
participants must have been. We were
privileged to see it from this angle, as
few at the time would have had more
than a worm’s eye view. The tower was
completed in 1938 just in time to be
used as an observation post in the next
war, which explained the scars and bullet
holes. We were blessed with excellent
weather which made it hard to imagine
how the lovely rolling farmland was ever
the site of such grim slaughter.
11,000 missing Australian soldiers are
commemorated here. A wreath was laid
by Captain Christopher Pawson of the
Scots Guards below the name of one
of them, Private Robert Bickersteth.
He was an unusual OW who chose
to remain an enlisted man in the
Australian Forces despite being offered
a commission in British Army. He died
with his mates in the final push, albeit in
defence of the country of his birth.
We visited the recently completed
Monash centre named after the
fascinating Australian General Sir
John Monash, a successful Jewish civil
engineer from a German-speaking family
who rose to command the Australian
Corps as one of the most effective and
creative commanders of the war. The
opening of the centre this year shows
that interest remains strong and visitors
will continue to come for many years.
On Thursday there was another intense
day of visiting cemeteries, starting with
the British cemeteries of Beacon & Dive
Copse. Here we saw the grave of Captain
Richard Hunter, killed in the advance in
August, and one of two brothers to whom
the cricket pavilion Hunter Tent was
dedicated in 1930. David Fellowes laid
a wreath and read the words inscribed
around the top of War Cloister: ‘…they
went forth from home and kindred to the
battlefields of the world and, treading the
path of duty and sacrifice, laid down their
lives for mankind.’ There are just over
500 names inscribed in War Cloister from
the First World War out of the roughly
2,500 Wykehamists who served, a mortal-
ity rate of 20%, or a whole generation for
a school which then numbered no more
than 450.
Next to Epéhy Wood Farm Cemetery,
which was designed by Sir Herbert
Baker, also the architect of War Cloister,
and we visited the grave of Captain
Edward Bethell, killed going over the
top in September 1918. Although these
cemeteries are sobering, the genius of
Fabian Ware and the Commonwealth
War Graves Commission who created
such order and beauty out of horror
Christopher Pawson at the
Australian Memorial
and chaos is always inspiring. The best
architects of the day combined with
the writing of Rudyard Kipling and the
garden designs of Gertrude Jekyll to
create perfect permanent memorials.
We also saw the American cemetery
at Bony with brilliant white marble
headstones immaculately tended by
six gardeners and protected by four
security guards in a more formal setting
and by contrast, later in the day and
unexpectedly, the German cemetery
at Maissemy. A more sombre and
melancholy place than the others, there
was a shudder when we realised that
every cross had four names on it in
addition to the mass grave in the centre.
The one patch of colour was the ribbon
on a bunch of flowers left recently by the
local commune.
View from top of Australian Memorial, Villers-Brettonneux
6
Back at the front we walked along the
St Quentin Canal to Riqueval Bridge,