The Somme Valley

Dear Family and Friends,

With things at Joe's work slowing down for the summer, we were finally able to take a short summer vacation. In addition to getting our annual fix of the English language in the London area, we decided to explore neighboring Ireland.

Along the way, we stopped in the Somme Valley in north-eastern France. Joe has been learning about World War I lately and the Somme is the site of one of the bloodiest battles ever fought in which over one million people perished.



While much of the battlefield lies beneath fields of wheat, some areas have been preserved over the past hundred years. The Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland memorial is still pock-marked from the intense shelling by both the Allies and German armies.



The First World War is characterized by trench warfare. It was hard for us to try and imagine the kind of suffering that the Canadian troops experienced in these trenches from disease, mud, gas attacks, rats, lice, etc. Here, the Canadian troops would have watched the Germans for months on end until being ordered to go "over the top" at walking pace through "no-man's land" towards the German lines to the right. Unfortunately, so much of the death in the war was due to callous and unimaginative generals who planned to win through attritian alone.



Of all that died in the Somme, only a fraction of the soldiers had proper burials. The rest were either burried in mass graves or had a headstone to an "unknown soldier".



The names of the British soldiers whose bodies were never recovered appear on the walls of this immense memorial.



In addition to trenches, there are also a few remaining bunkers spread throughout the Somme. However, unlike the Normandy bunkers, these are usually fensed off because of unexploded ordinance that is still being found today.



The Somme contains many memorials to the various troops from around the world that participated in the War. Like Normandy to the west, these sites are owned and cared for by their respective governments. However, unlike the Normandy battlefields, they are much less visited today and we were alone at many of the places we visited. This is no doubt due to the fact that the veterans have all died, the fact that it's overshadowed in many respects by WWII, and because the cause of the conflict is not easily understood without an extensive history lesson. Nevertheless, we were glad to have had the chance to remember those who fought in this forgotten war.

Bonne Semain!

Joe, Julie, Nicolas, Elyse, and Nathaniel