(no subject)
It has taken me forever and a day to upload my photos because my internet is being reeeaaally temperamental at the moment…as in, keeps kicking me offline every few minutes for no apparent reason >: Ghey.
Anyways, I’ve had a very eventful few days; the most exciting of which however was Sunday’s Somme Trip, aka a busy day traipsing around World War One memorials in France :3 Some people at my mum’s work were organising it and she mentioned it to me “to see if I was interested in going”. What a silly question XD
So, yeah. Had to get up at 6am to go and get the coach to get the train (lol complicated) to get to Calais which wasn’t so much fun. You could tell how tired I was though, as I slept for a little while on the way to the first memorial, as well as at the end of the day on the way back. I can never sleep on coaches as they’re so uncomfortable :O
Anyways, onto my day in pictures… (and writing, of course)
First of all we went to the village of Albert. Obviously we were only visiting some of the main places in the Somme area, which was cool ‘cause it meant that most of them weren’t places I’d been to on my last trip. Didn’t really know much about this place, although I did find out that about 95% of the village was destroyed during WW1, and apparently the 5% that wasn’t were just the foundations. Wow. Also, it was rebuilt between 1924-1928. I also discovered that it was Albert that had the statue of the Virgin Mary:
I already knew the story about the statue, so it was fascinating to actually see it. During the war the statue actually ended up getting hit by shellfire and semi-knocked off its perch, so that it was hanging off the church. The French were really superstitious about it and thought that it the statue was completely knocked down, it would mean the fall of France, so they sent some guys up there to chain it to the building, so it was suspended at a 90º angle, but wouldn’t fall. When it eventually did fall, the War ended 10 days later. The original statue was made of gold, but no one knows if the one that’s there now is gold too or not, because the French won’t say XD
We visited the ‘Somme Museum 1916’ next, although I don’t have any pictures of that seeing as I don’t think you’re meant to be take pictures inside museums. Which is a real shame because dfghjkl this was the most amazing museum EVAR! Well, there are other good ones too, but this one was just. Wow. Firstly, the entire thing is actually underground, in what used to be tunnels used as air raid shelters in the Second World War. It’s difficult to explain and really you have to have been there, but it just really set the atmosphere. After you’ve bought your tickets you go down these really uneven steps, then at the bottom you can either turn left which leads to a little video room, or right which leads to the rest of the museum. Me and mum did check out the video room quickly, but didn’t watched the full video because one) lol it was in French and we couldn’t understand it, and two) we only had about an hour and a half until the coach was due to leave.
Anyway along the wall was a display case with all sorts of things that have obviously been found on the fields over the years: identity tags, random personal belongings, bits of shell casing, grenades…ahahhaha oh yeah. We were looking at these bits and pieces, and suddenly my mum was like “…[Laney]…*nudgenudge* Those two grenades don’t have the pins in… D: ” LOL. I’m not entirely sure how grenades work, but they wouldn’t have been stuck in a display case if there was any chance of them going off. >_> And everything was so rusty, which was fascinating…I’m used to seeing stuff that families have donated to museums and whatnot, but everything here was so rusted and old it must have been stuff that’s been dug up.
There were more display cases of various items throughout the other tunnels, as well as letters and some posters from the time (or possibly just replicas, I’m not sure) and general information about the Battle of the Somme. And and and they had all these like, wartime scenes or something. Bit difficult to explain, but basically they’d built sections of dugouts and had mannequins or something dressed as soldiers and in different tableaux. IT LOOKED REALLY COOL *___*
The last tunnel was made to look like an actual trench, and the lights were flashing and it had the noise of shellfire going overhead. It was kinda spooky but really cool. And very loud! And cold, too XD;; It was probably how the trenches would’ve actually been like, so that was pretty interesting.
We also saw the coolest mural on the side of a house:
Isn’t that amazing!? I was like *__* Oh and it shows what the statue looked like after it had been hit by shells, and in the background is the actual statue again.
Next stop: Peronne. This village was apparently built by the Romans, but I’m not sure why we were told that lol. We visited the ‘Historial de la Grande Guerre 14-18’:
the outside of which kind of looked like a castle:
I had to cross over to the other side of the street and walk really far away to actually fit it in the picture >_>;; Then I realised I was actually standing in the middle of the road, not the pavement, like I thought. What is it with the French and Belgians paving their roads in the same way as they do the pavements!?
Random cannon outside the museum.
Heh, we got to the museum for about 1pm-ish, and were told that the coach would be leaving at 4:20pm. We were like “eh? That’s like, over 3 hours away!” but we soon realised why. It took over 2 hours to look around the museum (huge museum was HUUUUGE) and we didn’t even stop to look at everything D: But it was really cool; it had different rooms for different times, so the first room you go into is pre-war, then it had a specific section for the Battle of the Somme, plus one for the whole war, and then one for after the war. As well as war artifacts and information, they had loads of posters that would’ve been around during the war (including a German one that proclaimed the war was the fault of the British. I’m sorry, what?? We only joined in because of the Triple Entente or whatever! Gah.) and newspaper articles from various months from about mid-1914 until November 1918.
They also had lots of short videos of actual footage from the war. I didn’t watch most of them ‘cause it would’ve taken too long, but there was one that just really shocked me. It was in the post-war room, and was a five minute (ish) video on how life went on for the soldiers, even if they were disabled. To start with it just showed men who’d had amputations with metal limbs lol automail and how they still managed to do their work. The display case also had one of the metal hands that would’ve been used; it looked more like a pincer, but they could pull a little lever thing to get some movement with it. The video also showed men who’d had amputations but didn’t have replacement limbs doing races and stuff. It was so sad…they all still looked so happy, it’s so strange to imagine that they could possibly still enjoy life after what they’d been through.
The most shocking part was at the end though, when it showed men who suffered from shell shock. Men would be smiling and talking to someone, then the camera would pan down and their hand would be shaking uncontrollably. Another clip showed a man with a walking stick walking down the middle of a street, then all of a sudden he started walking in a circle, taking really jerky steps and twitching his head to the side. And then finally, this last one was a bit strange, the last clip showed a group of men all walking in a big circle naked and every so often their bodies would just jerk. It was really scary. Even thinking about it now to write about is making me really sad :(
By now the weather had gone from warm but looking kind of grey to omg boiling, so me and mum sat under a tree and ate our very late lunch. And I had a giggle at my mum’s OCD tendencies. We had a packet of party rings because I’d decided I wanted some in our lunch, but they come in really long packets so mum had taken them out and put them into a little tupperware tub so it would be easier to carry around. She’d stacked them by colour, and after we’d had a couple, I was too busy talking to take another one and she was like “will you take another biscuit!?” to which I replied, “you could just help yourself, you know.” But no, she was waiting for me to take one each time so that she could take one of the same colour “so that it was fair”. Wtf. And then because I’d already eaten loads of other stuff I was like “okay I’m full up now, if you don’t want anymore I’ll put the tub away” AND SHE MADE ME EAT ONE MORE SO THAT WE’D EATEN THE SAME AMOUNT OF THE DIFFERENT COLOURS, AND SO THAT THE LAYERS WERE EVEN. My mother is insane. It did however give me something to laugh at her about for the rest of the day. Every time she laughed at me, I would just be like “OCDeeeee~~” XDD Good times.
We were meant to go to Rancourt next (anyone know how to pronounce that? The guide said ‘Rancoo’ but I don’t know if that’s correct or not) but because it took so long to go around the Peronne museum we had to skip Rancourt and go to the next place, so that after that we could get to Thiepval before the visitor’s centre closed.
So next was Lochnagar Crater:
I’m not sure if this one was bigger than the one I saw with my school a couple of years ago or not, but to say it was still pretty freaking huge is a bit of an understatement. The Lochnagar mine was packed with 24 tons of explosives which was detonated on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
It’s a shame you can’t really get a sense of it’s size from the photos and you probably can’t imagine the sheer scale of it just from me telling you, but it was 100ft wide and 30ft deep. So yeah. Pretty big. It took over five minutes to walk all the way around it, and that was walking at a pretty fast pace. It looked like it would have been fun to roll down the sides though…lol.
This picture is probably the best one for understanding the scale of the crater. I think you can see some people at the top of the picture, so you can see how tiny they are from where I was standing on the other side of the crater.
Fun fact about this crater: the French wanted to fill it in back in the late 1970s, but a British guy, I’ve forgotten his name now, actually bought it to prevent this from happening, and to ensure it got preserved. I’m glad he did, but really. What a random thing to buy, lol.
This was at the front of the crater. The poppy wreaths all have messages like “in memory of _____, presumed to be buried in the crater.” :(
You can’t see the exact wording of this one which is a shame, but it was something like “In memory of ______, who died here on July 1st 1916 and whose body was found 1998”. That’s just…wow. 80 years after he was killed they finally found his body. Geez.
Next we went to Thiepval Memorial. I’d been to this one before, but although I knew what to expect, it was still kind of weird seeing just how big it is:
I think it’s the biggest WW1 Memorial in France, but I could be wrong.
I like this picture. Even though it was really sunny, it kinda looks like I took it in the dark or something.
A snippet of the 72,000 names that can be found on the Thiepval Memorial.
There was a small cemetery behind the memorial with 300 British soldiers and 300 French soldiers buried next to each other.
I think this must be French for “Unknown” or something similar. Only a few of the graves actually have named soldiers buried there.
An unknown soldier from the Battle of the Somme. Again, the majority of the gravestones in the cemetery were like this. Oh and the 72,000 names listed on the memorial itself? They’re all soldiers whose bodies were never found.
Finally we went to the Newfoundland Memorial at Beaumont Hamel. Again, I’d been here with the school a couple of years ago, but we had more time to look around this time so I got to look at everything properly.
This picture looks pretty funky because of the strange lighting. It was actually taken in broad daylight, but because the sun was in the wrong place it made the picture quite dark.
A slightly better quality picture of the moose (or whatever it is >_> ) statue memorial for the Newfoundland Regiment.
The Newfoundland Memorial is particularly well-known for its trenches; obviously they’re all overgrown now and it’s hard to imagine what they used to look like, but it’s really cool that they’re real trenches that have just been left, so people can see what they were like. At one point you can see the British front line and the German front line, and they’re only something like 20 yards away from each other. I didn’t get a picture of that though as I wasn’t entirely sure where abouts it was. Pretty cool though, ne? Most of them are roped off but there is one section with a proper duckboard-type floor that you can walk along. It’s strange how narrow the trenches were…and they’re not that high either :S Although back in the early 20th Century people weren’t as tall as they are now.
A reconstructed…something. I think it might have been a dugout entrance once, seeing as it looks like it might lead underground, but I’m not sure. It’s cool, whatever it is though.
Most people probably won’t understand the point of this picture XD;; I took it because of the metal spikes which have loops on them. The Brits used to send working parties out at night to set up barbed wire in front of the trenches to stop the Germans from attacking easily, but obviously the Germans would be able to hear them hammering the metal posts into the ground and the snipers would shoot them. So someone came up with the genius idea of these corkscrew posts which could just be screwed into the ground, and then the barbed wire could be threaded through the loops. I was very impressed when I was told this fact! However I was geeking it up and explaining this to my mum when a sheep interrupted me by baaa-ing at us : / It was quite strange to look around and see a bunch of sheep in a field next to some trenches o_O I made the stupid comment that they weren’t there last time I came, and mum was like “well, duh, you came in November, of course there wouldn’t be sheep and lambs there.” Oh yeah. Lol.
I didn’t get to see this cemetery last time I came. It’s right at the bottom of a hill, quite a hike from the rest of the memorial. It was really sad too, some of the graves had the ages of the soldiers that were buried there listed, and the oldest one we saw was only 23 years old. ;~;
The Danger Tree! Something else I didn’t get to see last time, although I did remember the guide telling us about it. Not that I could remember what it was called or what the significance of it was when I was trying to tell my mum; I was just like “it’s called the Devil Tree or something like that…and I can’t remember why it was important but something significant happened involving it…” Lol useful. Anyway I’ve looked it up now and I’ve found out that it marks the spot where the Royal Newfoundland Regiment’s casulties were highest. Once they got into No-Man’s Land they were meant to gather around the Danger Tree to be given their next orders, only no one realised that the Tree was in perfect view of the Germans, who just concentrated their fire there and killed all the troops who made it that far. It’s rumoured that no one made it past the Tree alive on the first day of the Somme.
Not so fun fact: on the first day of the Somme, 801 soldiers of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment rose from the British trenches and went into battle at Beaumont Hamel. The next day, only 68 men answered the regimental role call. 255 were dead, 386 were wounded, and 91 were listed as missing. Every officer who had gone over the top was either wounded or dead.
Oh and someone from our group found a bit of shell casing here! Awesome...
After spending about ¾ of an hour here we headed back to the coach to go home. Just as we were getting back on we heard the driver talking to his company and saying something about while he had been sitting there, the coach had randomly turned itself off o_O Me and mum are no strangers to coaches breaking down when we’re miles away from home, but it’s not really what you want to hear when you’re still in France XD;; Luckily (kind of) it was only once we were back in England that it semi-broke down, as in we were driving along when suddenly there was this “pfft” sound (like when someone opens a can of fizzy drink) and the lights went off and we realised the coach had turned itself off (whatever that even means) again. Unluckily we were driving down a hill at the time, so that was fun!
Soooo, yeah. It was an awesome day. Despite the driver getting lost a couple of times and the bus nearly breaking down, I had a really good time!
I also had a very strange dream Sunday night with Rufus, Reno and Elena in it. I’m sure there was more to it then this, but what I remember is that in the dream, I ‘was’ Elena, so I was seeing what was happening from her viewpoint. There was a huge lake or something, which I think was semi-frozen over, and there was a girl that Reno really fancied and who was a good friend of his drowning right in the middle, and he wanted to go and rescue her but Rufus wouldn’t let him. I/Elena didn’t hear the exact reason, but I think it was because he wanted the Turks for something else. Anyway needless to say Reno was not a happy bunny about that and got into an argument with Rufus about it, all the while trying to get to the girl. Him and Rufus got into a bit of a fight, with Reno trying to push past him to get to the lake and Rufus trying to keep him back. While this was going on, I/Elena had climbed into the back of a truck which the Turks had been using to transport some stuff and grabbed a gun, then got out again. Rufus ended up shooting Reno, and I’m not sure why but I/Elena shot my/herself, too. To prove a point, maybe? Although what that point was I have no idea. Anyway then I woke up. Weird dream was very weird.
Anyways, I’ve had a very eventful few days; the most exciting of which however was Sunday’s Somme Trip, aka a busy day traipsing around World War One memorials in France :3 Some people at my mum’s work were organising it and she mentioned it to me “to see if I was interested in going”. What a silly question XD
So, yeah. Had to get up at 6am to go and get the coach to get the train (lol complicated) to get to Calais which wasn’t so much fun. You could tell how tired I was though, as I slept for a little while on the way to the first memorial, as well as at the end of the day on the way back. I can never sleep on coaches as they’re so uncomfortable :O
Anyways, onto my day in pictures… (and writing, of course)
First of all we went to the village of Albert. Obviously we were only visiting some of the main places in the Somme area, which was cool ‘cause it meant that most of them weren’t places I’d been to on my last trip. Didn’t really know much about this place, although I did find out that about 95% of the village was destroyed during WW1, and apparently the 5% that wasn’t were just the foundations. Wow. Also, it was rebuilt between 1924-1928. I also discovered that it was Albert that had the statue of the Virgin Mary:
I already knew the story about the statue, so it was fascinating to actually see it. During the war the statue actually ended up getting hit by shellfire and semi-knocked off its perch, so that it was hanging off the church. The French were really superstitious about it and thought that it the statue was completely knocked down, it would mean the fall of France, so they sent some guys up there to chain it to the building, so it was suspended at a 90º angle, but wouldn’t fall. When it eventually did fall, the War ended 10 days later. The original statue was made of gold, but no one knows if the one that’s there now is gold too or not, because the French won’t say XD
We visited the ‘Somme Museum 1916’ next, although I don’t have any pictures of that seeing as I don’t think you’re meant to be take pictures inside museums. Which is a real shame because dfghjkl this was the most amazing museum EVAR! Well, there are other good ones too, but this one was just. Wow. Firstly, the entire thing is actually underground, in what used to be tunnels used as air raid shelters in the Second World War. It’s difficult to explain and really you have to have been there, but it just really set the atmosphere. After you’ve bought your tickets you go down these really uneven steps, then at the bottom you can either turn left which leads to a little video room, or right which leads to the rest of the museum. Me and mum did check out the video room quickly, but didn’t watched the full video because one) lol it was in French and we couldn’t understand it, and two) we only had about an hour and a half until the coach was due to leave.
Anyway along the wall was a display case with all sorts of things that have obviously been found on the fields over the years: identity tags, random personal belongings, bits of shell casing, grenades…ahahhaha oh yeah. We were looking at these bits and pieces, and suddenly my mum was like “…[Laney]…*nudgenudge* Those two grenades don’t have the pins in… D: ” LOL. I’m not entirely sure how grenades work, but they wouldn’t have been stuck in a display case if there was any chance of them going off. >_> And everything was so rusty, which was fascinating…I’m used to seeing stuff that families have donated to museums and whatnot, but everything here was so rusted and old it must have been stuff that’s been dug up.
There were more display cases of various items throughout the other tunnels, as well as letters and some posters from the time (or possibly just replicas, I’m not sure) and general information about the Battle of the Somme. And and and they had all these like, wartime scenes or something. Bit difficult to explain, but basically they’d built sections of dugouts and had mannequins or something dressed as soldiers and in different tableaux. IT LOOKED REALLY COOL *___*
The last tunnel was made to look like an actual trench, and the lights were flashing and it had the noise of shellfire going overhead. It was kinda spooky but really cool. And very loud! And cold, too XD;; It was probably how the trenches would’ve actually been like, so that was pretty interesting.
We also saw the coolest mural on the side of a house:
Isn’t that amazing!? I was like *__* Oh and it shows what the statue looked like after it had been hit by shells, and in the background is the actual statue again.
Next stop: Peronne. This village was apparently built by the Romans, but I’m not sure why we were told that lol. We visited the ‘Historial de la Grande Guerre 14-18’:
the outside of which kind of looked like a castle:
I had to cross over to the other side of the street and walk really far away to actually fit it in the picture >_>;; Then I realised I was actually standing in the middle of the road, not the pavement, like I thought. What is it with the French and Belgians paving their roads in the same way as they do the pavements!?
Random cannon outside the museum.
Heh, we got to the museum for about 1pm-ish, and were told that the coach would be leaving at 4:20pm. We were like “eh? That’s like, over 3 hours away!” but we soon realised why. It took over 2 hours to look around the museum (huge museum was HUUUUGE) and we didn’t even stop to look at everything D: But it was really cool; it had different rooms for different times, so the first room you go into is pre-war, then it had a specific section for the Battle of the Somme, plus one for the whole war, and then one for after the war. As well as war artifacts and information, they had loads of posters that would’ve been around during the war (including a German one that proclaimed the war was the fault of the British. I’m sorry, what?? We only joined in because of the Triple Entente or whatever! Gah.) and newspaper articles from various months from about mid-1914 until November 1918.
They also had lots of short videos of actual footage from the war. I didn’t watch most of them ‘cause it would’ve taken too long, but there was one that just really shocked me. It was in the post-war room, and was a five minute (ish) video on how life went on for the soldiers, even if they were disabled. To start with it just showed men who’d had amputations with metal limbs lol automail and how they still managed to do their work. The display case also had one of the metal hands that would’ve been used; it looked more like a pincer, but they could pull a little lever thing to get some movement with it. The video also showed men who’d had amputations but didn’t have replacement limbs doing races and stuff. It was so sad…they all still looked so happy, it’s so strange to imagine that they could possibly still enjoy life after what they’d been through.
The most shocking part was at the end though, when it showed men who suffered from shell shock. Men would be smiling and talking to someone, then the camera would pan down and their hand would be shaking uncontrollably. Another clip showed a man with a walking stick walking down the middle of a street, then all of a sudden he started walking in a circle, taking really jerky steps and twitching his head to the side. And then finally, this last one was a bit strange, the last clip showed a group of men all walking in a big circle naked and every so often their bodies would just jerk. It was really scary. Even thinking about it now to write about is making me really sad :(
By now the weather had gone from warm but looking kind of grey to omg boiling, so me and mum sat under a tree and ate our very late lunch. And I had a giggle at my mum’s OCD tendencies. We had a packet of party rings because I’d decided I wanted some in our lunch, but they come in really long packets so mum had taken them out and put them into a little tupperware tub so it would be easier to carry around. She’d stacked them by colour, and after we’d had a couple, I was too busy talking to take another one and she was like “will you take another biscuit!?” to which I replied, “you could just help yourself, you know.” But no, she was waiting for me to take one each time so that she could take one of the same colour “so that it was fair”. Wtf. And then because I’d already eaten loads of other stuff I was like “okay I’m full up now, if you don’t want anymore I’ll put the tub away” AND SHE MADE ME EAT ONE MORE SO THAT WE’D EATEN THE SAME AMOUNT OF THE DIFFERENT COLOURS, AND SO THAT THE LAYERS WERE EVEN. My mother is insane. It did however give me something to laugh at her about for the rest of the day. Every time she laughed at me, I would just be like “OCDeeeee~~” XDD Good times.
We were meant to go to Rancourt next (anyone know how to pronounce that? The guide said ‘Rancoo’ but I don’t know if that’s correct or not) but because it took so long to go around the Peronne museum we had to skip Rancourt and go to the next place, so that after that we could get to Thiepval before the visitor’s centre closed.
So next was Lochnagar Crater:
I’m not sure if this one was bigger than the one I saw with my school a couple of years ago or not, but to say it was still pretty freaking huge is a bit of an understatement. The Lochnagar mine was packed with 24 tons of explosives which was detonated on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
It’s a shame you can’t really get a sense of it’s size from the photos and you probably can’t imagine the sheer scale of it just from me telling you, but it was 100ft wide and 30ft deep. So yeah. Pretty big. It took over five minutes to walk all the way around it, and that was walking at a pretty fast pace. It looked like it would have been fun to roll down the sides though…lol.
This picture is probably the best one for understanding the scale of the crater. I think you can see some people at the top of the picture, so you can see how tiny they are from where I was standing on the other side of the crater.
Fun fact about this crater: the French wanted to fill it in back in the late 1970s, but a British guy, I’ve forgotten his name now, actually bought it to prevent this from happening, and to ensure it got preserved. I’m glad he did, but really. What a random thing to buy, lol.
This was at the front of the crater. The poppy wreaths all have messages like “in memory of _____, presumed to be buried in the crater.” :(
You can’t see the exact wording of this one which is a shame, but it was something like “In memory of ______, who died here on July 1st 1916 and whose body was found 1998”. That’s just…wow. 80 years after he was killed they finally found his body. Geez.
Next we went to Thiepval Memorial. I’d been to this one before, but although I knew what to expect, it was still kind of weird seeing just how big it is:
I think it’s the biggest WW1 Memorial in France, but I could be wrong.
I like this picture. Even though it was really sunny, it kinda looks like I took it in the dark or something.
A snippet of the 72,000 names that can be found on the Thiepval Memorial.
There was a small cemetery behind the memorial with 300 British soldiers and 300 French soldiers buried next to each other.
I think this must be French for “Unknown” or something similar. Only a few of the graves actually have named soldiers buried there.
An unknown soldier from the Battle of the Somme. Again, the majority of the gravestones in the cemetery were like this. Oh and the 72,000 names listed on the memorial itself? They’re all soldiers whose bodies were never found.
Finally we went to the Newfoundland Memorial at Beaumont Hamel. Again, I’d been here with the school a couple of years ago, but we had more time to look around this time so I got to look at everything properly.
This picture looks pretty funky because of the strange lighting. It was actually taken in broad daylight, but because the sun was in the wrong place it made the picture quite dark.
A slightly better quality picture of the moose (or whatever it is >_> ) statue memorial for the Newfoundland Regiment.
The Newfoundland Memorial is particularly well-known for its trenches; obviously they’re all overgrown now and it’s hard to imagine what they used to look like, but it’s really cool that they’re real trenches that have just been left, so people can see what they were like. At one point you can see the British front line and the German front line, and they’re only something like 20 yards away from each other. I didn’t get a picture of that though as I wasn’t entirely sure where abouts it was. Pretty cool though, ne? Most of them are roped off but there is one section with a proper duckboard-type floor that you can walk along. It’s strange how narrow the trenches were…and they’re not that high either :S Although back in the early 20th Century people weren’t as tall as they are now.
A reconstructed…something. I think it might have been a dugout entrance once, seeing as it looks like it might lead underground, but I’m not sure. It’s cool, whatever it is though.
Most people probably won’t understand the point of this picture XD;; I took it because of the metal spikes which have loops on them. The Brits used to send working parties out at night to set up barbed wire in front of the trenches to stop the Germans from attacking easily, but obviously the Germans would be able to hear them hammering the metal posts into the ground and the snipers would shoot them. So someone came up with the genius idea of these corkscrew posts which could just be screwed into the ground, and then the barbed wire could be threaded through the loops. I was very impressed when I was told this fact! However I was geeking it up and explaining this to my mum when a sheep interrupted me by baaa-ing at us : / It was quite strange to look around and see a bunch of sheep in a field next to some trenches o_O I made the stupid comment that they weren’t there last time I came, and mum was like “well, duh, you came in November, of course there wouldn’t be sheep and lambs there.” Oh yeah. Lol.
I didn’t get to see this cemetery last time I came. It’s right at the bottom of a hill, quite a hike from the rest of the memorial. It was really sad too, some of the graves had the ages of the soldiers that were buried there listed, and the oldest one we saw was only 23 years old. ;~;
The Danger Tree! Something else I didn’t get to see last time, although I did remember the guide telling us about it. Not that I could remember what it was called or what the significance of it was when I was trying to tell my mum; I was just like “it’s called the Devil Tree or something like that…and I can’t remember why it was important but something significant happened involving it…” Lol useful. Anyway I’ve looked it up now and I’ve found out that it marks the spot where the Royal Newfoundland Regiment’s casulties were highest. Once they got into No-Man’s Land they were meant to gather around the Danger Tree to be given their next orders, only no one realised that the Tree was in perfect view of the Germans, who just concentrated their fire there and killed all the troops who made it that far. It’s rumoured that no one made it past the Tree alive on the first day of the Somme.
Not so fun fact: on the first day of the Somme, 801 soldiers of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment rose from the British trenches and went into battle at Beaumont Hamel. The next day, only 68 men answered the regimental role call. 255 were dead, 386 were wounded, and 91 were listed as missing. Every officer who had gone over the top was either wounded or dead.
Oh and someone from our group found a bit of shell casing here! Awesome...
After spending about ¾ of an hour here we headed back to the coach to go home. Just as we were getting back on we heard the driver talking to his company and saying something about while he had been sitting there, the coach had randomly turned itself off o_O Me and mum are no strangers to coaches breaking down when we’re miles away from home, but it’s not really what you want to hear when you’re still in France XD;; Luckily (kind of) it was only once we were back in England that it semi-broke down, as in we were driving along when suddenly there was this “pfft” sound (like when someone opens a can of fizzy drink) and the lights went off and we realised the coach had turned itself off (whatever that even means) again. Unluckily we were driving down a hill at the time, so that was fun!
Soooo, yeah. It was an awesome day. Despite the driver getting lost a couple of times and the bus nearly breaking down, I had a really good time!
I also had a very strange dream Sunday night with Rufus, Reno and Elena in it. I’m sure there was more to it then this, but what I remember is that in the dream, I ‘was’ Elena, so I was seeing what was happening from her viewpoint. There was a huge lake or something, which I think was semi-frozen over, and there was a girl that Reno really fancied and who was a good friend of his drowning right in the middle, and he wanted to go and rescue her but Rufus wouldn’t let him. I/Elena didn’t hear the exact reason, but I think it was because he wanted the Turks for something else. Anyway needless to say Reno was not a happy bunny about that and got into an argument with Rufus about it, all the while trying to get to the girl. Him and Rufus got into a bit of a fight, with Reno trying to push past him to get to the lake and Rufus trying to keep him back. While this was going on, I/Elena had climbed into the back of a truck which the Turks had been using to transport some stuff and grabbed a gun, then got out again. Rufus ended up shooting Reno, and I’m not sure why but I/Elena shot my/herself, too. To prove a point, maybe? Although what that point was I have no idea. Anyway then I woke up. Weird dream was very weird.