This may be a slightly longer entry than usual. We have spent a very solemn and reflective few days in the north of France, and in particular the Somme region, following the “Remembrance Trail” and visiting monuments, memorials, museums and cemeteries dedicated to the soldiers who were killed or injured during the catastrophic First World War. Fought between 1914 and 1918 along just a 700km front stretching from the North Sea coast to the Swiss border, this pointless conflict cost more than 4 million lives. There were 295,000 Australian volunteers of whom 46,000 died and more than 100,000 were wounded. The Australian War Memorial is engraved with the names of more than 11,000 men whose bodies were never found, and who have no known grave. All of the cemeteries (there are more than 1,000 in this little corner of France) are scattered with headstones of soldiers who could not be identified – they are marked simply “Known unto God”. The scale of this horrific tragedy is really hard to put into words. At the end of our first day we stumbled upon Serre Road Cemetery No.2 unexpectedly. The photograph speaks for itself – there are over 4,000 graves, all meticulously maintained and cared for (as they are everywhere). This is by no means the largest, but something about it really got to us. I am not ashamed to say that we both cried.
