Battle of Normandy Tours

It was here that the British Army fought its first engagement against the Germans in World War One. The spot where the Royal Irish Dragoon Guards charged a detachment of German Lancers in a classic cavalry action, reminiscent of the time of Alexander the Great, in August 1914, is marked by a monument commemorating this action. But only thirty meters (100 feet) away is a plaque showing the final position advanced to by the Canadian forces when the Armistice of November the 11th, 1918 came into effect at 11am that morning. Between these two events 16 million men died in the fighting of the First World War. Just a few miles away is the site where shortly afterwards in heroic defence of a tactically important bridge, one platoon of men using a machine gun managed to hold up an entire German Army Regiment for several hours allowing the rest of their unit to Escape. This was also the action for which the first two Victoria crosses of World War One were awarded.

Ypres, “Wipers” to the British soldiers fighting there during World War One, was the last large Belgian town still held by the Allies by Christmas 1914. The Germans held the ridgelines running around the town in a semi circle from the north, sweeping around to the east and coming back under the south, where the ridgeline ran south again. General Haig, the British Commander in Chief from 1915 onwards, was convinced that this was the only place that a breakthrough could be exploited by “rolling up the German line from the north”. Despite four years fighting around the town, which was completely destroyed during the battles, no breakthrough was ever achieved, although this never stopped General Haig from continuing to throw men into hopeless battles around the town. From the first battle of Ypres at the end of 1914, through the second battle in early 1915 when the German Army used poison gas for the first time, to the battle of Messines Ridge in early 1917 when the British exploded 19 huge mines buried under the German lines to aid their advance, to the Third battle of Ypres, more commonly known as the Battle of Passchendale in the autumn of 1917. It was here around Ypres that the reputation for mud that World War One was famous for was established.

There are many remnants of these battle still to be seen around Ypres, such as Hill 60, where the Allied and German lines were as close as 30 to 50 feet for most of the war and there is one of the German pillboxes still there, converted by the British to a machine gun post after the successful capture of the position during the Battle of Messines ridge. The craters made by the mines are still visible today. There is also the Menin Gate, one of the largest Memorials to the missing of World War One on which is inscribed the names of nearly 55,000 men who fell during the Great War and have no know grave. The Last Post, the bugle call played at British Army funerals, is still played under the Menin Gate every evening at 8pm in honour of the soldiers who fought. Tyne Cot cemetery, one of the largest British cemeteries in the world is established around a captured German pillbox that was used as an advanced dressing station by British medics during the fighting, with four other pillboxes to be found in the cemetery. There are also still present the bunkers built by British engineers at the aid station where John McRae composed his poem, “In Flanders Fields”, which has come to epitomise the life and death of the fighting men.

Come and see the fields north of the Somme river valley where British and French armies fought side by side against the Germans in the summer, autumn and winter of 1916. Allied artillery fired over 3 million shells at the German lines in the six days leading up to the first attack on the first of July. See why the attack failed so badly that morning with nearly 60,000 casualties falling, most of them in the first two hours of the attack. Visit the 300 foot wide crater at La Boisselle where British engineers had dug a tunnel under the German lines and placed 22,000 pounds of Ammanol explosives to be blown up as the attack started. See the memorial at Thiepval which is built on the 1916 German front line and has carved on it the names of over 72,000 British soldiers who have no know grave. The village of Pozieres, two miles behind the front line, which was captured by the Australians, has been rebuilt and is a good place to get lunch. The village café has the garden made up as two opposing lines of trenches, complete with machine guns, artillery shells, rifles, helmets, bayonets and all the other paraphernalia that made up the armies During World War One. Most of it was found in the Area of the café.

Beaumont Hamel, where the Newfoundland Regiment went over the top on the first of July and lost 808 men and officers out of a total of 897, and where the German and Allied trenches are preserved so that you can see exactly the layout as it was on the day, as well as the “Danger Tree”, less than a third of the way to the German lines across no mans land but which very few men passed on that fateful day in 1916. There is also a monument there to the Black Watch of the 51st Highland Division, the regiment that finally captured Beaumont Hamel four and a half months later. The church steeple that Manfred von Richtofen narrowly missed while chasing a Sopwith Camel in 1918, just two minutes before he was shot down and killed, is still there, with the patched up shell holes from more than 90 years ago still visible in the walls.

Verdun is often referred to as the “the French Army’s Somme”. In February of 1916 the German Army under General Falkenhayn launched an attack at the fortress of Verdun, the right flank anchor of the French lines and the symbol of French fighting spirit and the freedom of France. The last fortress town to fall to the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, Verdun’s fortifications had been significantly boosted in the 1880s to withstand further attacks. In addition, its status as an important fortress since Roman times guaranteed recognition of the name ‘Verdun’ to most Frenchmen. In short, it was of greater value symbolically than strategically. Falkenhayn counted upon this. The Germans knew that the French government would collapse if Verdun fell, and probably the French Army, too. It was therefore decided to “bleed France white” by assaulting an objective that the French would have to protect, no matter what the cost. The fact that Verdun formed a French salient into German lines only served to help Falkenhayn, since it meant that it was open to attack from three sides at once. The fighting continued for ten months until December 1916 making the battle of Verdun the longest continuous battle of World War One.

The remains of the massive outlying forts built to protect the town itself, such as Fort Vaux and Fort Douaumont, still show the scars of the artillery and close quarters combat that raged in the area over ninety years ago. The French Army cemetery at now at Fort Douaumont, which holds more that 15,000 graves, has behind it the Ossuarie, or bone depositary, which contains the remains of more than 130,000 unknown soldiers whose bodies have been found on the battlefield. There is also the “tranchee des baionnettes”, where an advancing German unit came across a very shallow French trench along the length of which protruded rifles with bayonets attached. On excavation, the body of a soldier was found beneath each rifle. They had been buried in the ferocity of the German artillery barrage. Also worth a visit is the underground citadel and tunnel system that runs under the town of Verdun itself. It is now a museum, with maps, artefacts, photographs, etc, with explanations and an English language audio-visual presentation about the battle. Verdun is only 15 miles east of the Argonne, where the American Army were fighting two years later.

The site where on Easter Monday in 1917 in less than 24 hours the 1st Canadian Corps under the command of General Byng managed to capture and hold what was widely regarded as the strongest German position on the whole of the western front. Vimy ridge had defied French and British attempts at capture over the previous two years, these attack costing more than 300,000 Allied casualties at no net gain. The Canadians suffered “light casualties” of 10,000 during the successful assault. Huge preparations had been made, with the Canadians determined not to repeat the mistakes made on the Somme nearly a year earlier. Miles of tunnels, some as much as 30 feet underground, had been dug to transport troops to the front in safety and security, and sections have been preserved and are open to guided visits during the summer months. The opposing front lines at the mouth of the tunnels have also been exceptionally well preserved, and here the trenches lie less than 100 feet apart, separated by a row of mine craters up to 30 feet deep. The shell and battle scarred terrain leading up to the crest of the hill has also been preserved and at the top the Vimy Memorial comes in to view out of the trees. This memorial, unveiled in the 1930’s, has inscribed on it the names of over 11,000 Canadian soldiers who have no known Grave. This is one of the best-preserved World War One sites on the Western Front.

Arguably the best-known First World War American battlefield is the Argonne. Here, just a few miles west of Verdun, the United States Army and Marines went into action during the last year of World War One. During the German spring offensives, the American soldiers found themselves badly off in the fighting against the better trained and much more experienced German Army, but proved themselves quicker to adapt to modern warfare tactics than the other allied Armies had been before them. Here there is the position where Sgt York earned the Medal of Honor in 1918 when during an attack with his platoon he killed 32 German soldiers and captured 132 others as well as knocking out 35 German machine guns, completely overtaking a German controlled hill.

There is also the the World War One American Monument at Montfaucon, an impressive granite tower over 200 feet tall which can be climbed and gives a very impressive view over the battlefield. The monument tower is built on the ruins of the pre World War One village of the same name, which served as an observation post for the German Army and was captured by the 79th Division on the second day of the battle. Seven miles north is the Meuse-Argonne American cemetery, which with over 14,000 graves holds the largest number of American dead in Europe. Most of those buried here gave their lives during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of World War One. To the west there is also the site of the Lost Battalion where, during an attack on the third of October 1918, a battalion of the 77th Infantry Division advanced too far and found itself cut off behind enemy lines. The battalion’s position was under siege for five days but despite repeated German attacks the battalion managed to hold its position until French counterattacks relieved them. While cut off the soldiers were re-supplied by airdrop for the first time in the history of warfare

It was to a hidden railway siding in the forest of Rethondes near Compiegne in eastern France, built for huge French Railway Guns from which they could bombard the German trenches, that the German delegation travelled to in early November 1918. The German government had realised that although their armies stood undefeated on the battlefield, they would not be able to last much longer as the Allies, led by the British Royal Navy, had blockaded German ports since the start of the war and German had been simply unable to buy the raw materials she needed. She had now run out of everything, and the German delegation was hoping to negociate an honourable armistice agreement with the Allies that they could take home with their heads held high. They were to be gravely disappointed. Having been led into the operations carriage on the train of Marschal Foch, the Allied Supreme Commander, the German delegation were presented with the list of Allied terms and told to either sign or the war would continue until the utter distruction of Germany. Faced with little choice, the Germans signed the Armistice papers there and then. It was set to come into effect within the following 30 hours, to give time to notify the front lines of all sides concerned of the impending cease-fire. The time chosen was to be the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month for the guns to fall silent. So ended the First World War.

A lot the ex-soldiers of the German Army felt that they had been sold a Bill of Goods in the treaty of Versailles, the final official surrender of Germany after World War One signed on June 26th, 1919. They had never felt themselves, as soldiers, defeated in 1918 and thought they had been sold-out by spineless politicians at home. As they had been fighting at the front they had never seen the deprevation back home in Germany and few realised that the German soldier at the front in France during World War One got a lot more to eat than the civilian housewife in Germany. Politician's in German fed on this in the 1920's and Adolph Hiter was elected, partly on the basis of his theory that the German Army had been "Stabbed in the Back" by the home politicians in 1918, in 1933. Noisily declaring his intentions to 'tear up the Treaty of Versailles', and heartily backed by most Germans, Hitler wanted to annex parts of other countries and territories that he considered to be rightly German, and thus part of Germany, a lot of which was territory Germany had been forced to ceed to other countries in the Versailles Treaty in 1919. This led to the start of World War Two and Hitler's invasion of France. After the German Armies had sliced through the British and French Armies in less than six weeks, and with the French facing complete collapse at the front, in June of 1940 it was the turn of the French to ask the Germans for an Armistice.

With French resistance having collapsed at the front and the English having been run out of continental Europe, the mood in Germany was euphoric. Hitler's armies had done in less than two months what Kaiser Willheim's armies could not in four years. Even Hiter at times had been scared by his own Army's rapid advance across France. But when he was told that the German occupiers had found Marchal Foch's railway carriage in a museum, Hitler ordered the wall of the museum taken down and the carriage to be taken out to the same place it had stood in 1918. When the French surrender delegation arrived, they recognised it immediatly. As they sat in horror, Hitler, like Foch, simply gave his list of demands to the French to sign, with no option of negociating anything. Hitler's revenge was complete.

It is still little more than a clearing in a forest today, with some monuments put up by the French in the 1920's. It was beside one of these monuments that Hitler did his famous 'Dance of Victory' in the summer of 1940. There is also a museum which was originally built to hold the carriage in which was signed the Armistice to end "The War to End All Wars".  Hitler ordered the carriage removed to Germany in the summer of 1944 after the Allied invasion of Normandy so it would be kept safe during the fighting and could be taken back to France as a German war trophy after his 'Final Victory'. But in the spring of the following year, with imminent defeat staring him in the face, Hitler ordered the carriage burned by the SS. In the museum today there is a copy of the carriage, set up as it looked in 1918, and the museum is open (with rather limited opening hours) to the public. There are also examples of some of the First World War French field guns and tanks on display.