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smallhobbitOur third and final day of our trip was spent on the Somme.
We began by visiting the Historial de la Grande Guerre, a new museum in Péronne. It's a really fascinating museum and I would have liked to spend much longer than the hour and a quarter allocated. (Throughout the trip time was short in order to fit everything in. Which was understandable, it was necessary to cover a lot of ground to get sufficient appreciation of everything we saw). There were a number of exhibits from the pre-war era which I would have liked to examine in greater detail, as well as sections looking at the responses to loss and the home front in general. There was also a bookshop, in which I restricted myself to two books (plus one for TD), one pencil and a model of a nurse (also for TD).
From there we stopped briefly at another memorial with a view across the battlefield:
and to admire the Welsh dragon:
After a packed lunch we went onto Serle Road Cemetery:
And from there to the Newfoundland Memorial, with its caribou emblem:
Our final stop of the trip was the Thiepval Memorial. The Museum there is part of the Historial which we visited in the morning. It's smaller but still very interesting. It contains a 60 foot cartoon style mural by Joe Sacco graphically illustrating the events of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. It also has a room dedicated to the flying aces, including a full-scale reproduction of Georges Guynemer's aeroplane.
The Thiepval Memorial commemorates more than 72,000 British and South Africen troops who died at the Somme:
In the second picture the TD is in the white shirt at the left of the centre arch.
The memorial flies both French and British flags, and there are two cemeteries side by side:
TD found four potential relatives, two of whom were listed side by side, and I found one of my father's from the Royal Sussex Regiment, which is where his family were from at the time:
I have one more post which I shall be making tomorrow, but that will be more of a personal reflection.
We began by visiting the Historial de la Grande Guerre, a new museum in Péronne. It's a really fascinating museum and I would have liked to spend much longer than the hour and a quarter allocated. (Throughout the trip time was short in order to fit everything in. Which was understandable, it was necessary to cover a lot of ground to get sufficient appreciation of everything we saw). There were a number of exhibits from the pre-war era which I would have liked to examine in greater detail, as well as sections looking at the responses to loss and the home front in general. There was also a bookshop, in which I restricted myself to two books (plus one for TD), one pencil and a model of a nurse (also for TD).
From there we stopped briefly at another memorial with a view across the battlefield:
and to admire the Welsh dragon:
After a packed lunch we went onto Serle Road Cemetery:
And from there to the Newfoundland Memorial, with its caribou emblem:
Our final stop of the trip was the Thiepval Memorial. The Museum there is part of the Historial which we visited in the morning. It's smaller but still very interesting. It contains a 60 foot cartoon style mural by Joe Sacco graphically illustrating the events of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. It also has a room dedicated to the flying aces, including a full-scale reproduction of Georges Guynemer's aeroplane.
The Thiepval Memorial commemorates more than 72,000 British and South Africen troops who died at the Somme:
In the second picture the TD is in the white shirt at the left of the centre arch.
The memorial flies both French and British flags, and there are two cemeteries side by side:
TD found four potential relatives, two of whom were listed side by side, and I found one of my father's from the Royal Sussex Regiment, which is where his family were from at the time:
I have one more post which I shall be making tomorrow, but that will be more of a personal reflection.
