Day 48 10 May 2015 Lille-Peronne-Compiegne-Paris

Day 48 10 May 2015 Lille to Paris

Today we leave northern France for Paris but before we do that we visited the 2^nd Australian Division Memorial which was destroyed by the Germans in WW2 (1940) because it had an Australian soldier bayoneting the Prussian Eagle.  They did change the design when it was remade n 1971.  For a war cemetery the original design perhaps wasn’t appropriate but it was a reference to the 1918 battle of Mont Saint Quentin when they defeated units of the Prussian Guard. 

We visited a WW1 Museum in Peronne that was located in a medieval castle so it had loads of atmosphere and they were developing an ANZAC wing and they had great technology that explained the battle of Mount St Quentin.  We had a tour of Compiegne which was a letdown compared to other tours, it easy like a tour of what isn’t here.  Apparently the best toy soldier museum is located here but it was closed.   It was quite a nice town and a bonus was visiting where the Armistice signed in World War 1 just outside of Compiegne.  It was signed in a railway carriage that Hitler had destroyed We arrived at or hotel in the suburb of La Defense which is the new part of the city to the west.

Below are a picture of the original 2nd Div Memorial, uniforms from the peronne Museum (French and Australian), French memorial battle headstones at Compiegne along with where the railway carriage used to be.

We visited the Australian war memorial at Villers-Bretoneaux a beautiful site but very very large, depressingly so.

As we leave  the battlefields it' interesting  to think that we retraced the steps that these young men did 100 years ago.  We left Albany with them and saw 7600 graves or name of the fallen and allowing for several thousand killed in Palestine, we found 50 000 graves or their names inscribed

on monuments.  It is quite sad and tragic that we followed their footsteps but for these 60000 they travelled no further and would never see home again.  The oldest 1 AIF soldier we saw killed was 50.
It's all very sad for them and their families and this doesn't even count the cost for those who returned. Least we forget.