Why?I blame Els.
There we were, in the summer of 2013, in a small hotel on Bolshoi Solovetski Island in the White Sea, [Wikipedia: “The White Sea is a southern inlet of the Barents Sea located on the northwest coast of Russia.”] Els was due to fly home from St Petersburg, but I planned to cycle home. ‘Planned’ is probably the wrong word, because I had no firm idea what route I was going to take. Els suggested I should go via the Arctic Circle. It was, after all, only about a hundred miles to the north of us, and we had a taste for 24-hour daylight because we were near enough for it not to get dark at night. In the end I took a more more direct southerly route as I wanted to get home in time for LEL, but she had sown the seed. Next year, perhaps.
And indeed the following year (2014) saw me heading through France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark to Sweden, crossing the Arctic Circle just before midsummer, then going as far north as possible in Sweden before retuning through Finland, the Baltic States, Poland, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and France, arriving home after 100 nights away.
Here’s my route in 2014
But that wasn’t enough for lots of people - “You should have gone to Norway”, “Norway has fantastic scenery”, “Why didn’t you go to Norway?” And as I fancied doing something similar again, this year that’s exactly what I did.
Initially I didn’t have any particular timetable, but mmmmartin suggested I take part in the FNRttKust from Brussels to Ostend, so I signed up for that, and I reckoned I could take a week to get to Brussels and visit various WW1 sites in northern France on my way. From Ostend I could follow my non-plan vaguely east then north, and get beyond the Arctic Circle by midsummer.
And here, in installments, is how I got on.
Off I goSo off I set on a Sunday in late April with a preposterously heavy bike, through Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex to the youth hostel between Lewes and Newhaven. Nothing remarkable on that day’s ride, except that I got mixed up with a Wiggle sportive south of Farnham. The sportivistes were heading in roughly the same direction as I was, but using a less direct route, so the same groups passed me several times, passing barbed remarks about shortcuts as they did. There was a little sunshine, but best of all there was a stonking tailwind. The hostel was virtually empty, and I had a dorm to myself.
I had a bit of time before the ferry the next morning, so wandered round Newhaven for a while. I’ve always thought the ferry terminal at Newhaven and its surroundings were a bit of a dump, but I now realise that it’s entirely in keeping with the town centre.
I reckoned it would take about two days to reach the campsite I had earmarked east of Arras. I spent the first night as probably the only customer on a campsite near Gamaches about 20 km inland on the Somme. I was definitely the only tent-camper there.
The following day I reached the campsite near Arras by the early evening. During the day I experienced sun, rain and hail. The only consistent thing was the stonking tailwind.
On the way I took a short detour to visit Moyenville (“Averagetown”), the reason being that it is twinned with Willingham by Stow, the Lincolnshire village where my parents lived for a couple of decades. And like Willingham, there isn’t a lot there, but unlike Willingham Moyenville has a shop.
A pleasant former railway line after Abbeville. A better surface than some of the roads I used that day.
Near my destination I also stopped briefly in the village of Neuville Vitasse. It was here that my grandmother’s brother Harry (“Uncle Harry”) was wounded on the side of his head in 1918 during the
Kaiserschlacht, the March Offensive when the Germans threw everything into a do-or-die attempt to finish the war.
More on Uncle Harry tomorrow.
London Cemetery, Neuville Vitasse. The graves in the foreground are of soldiers who died in the same week that Uncle Harry was wounded.
During the day it had been warm enough to picnic outside, but by the time I reached campsite I was frozen, and stood for ages in the shower thawing. The patron of the campsite seemed a little bemused that anyone would want to camp in such weather, and that night the temperature sank to 1.5º C, but I was prepared for the worst of summer arctic conditions with a 4-season sleeping bag with a fleece liner, and didn’t notice it. The campsite was much busier, possibly because it’s near an autoroute interchange and is a useful stop-off for e.g. British tourists returning from the south of France and The Alps.
I booked in for 2 nights so that I could spend an unencumbered day visiting more WW1 sites.
Uncle HarryThe first place I wanted to visit was Greenland Hill. That’s what it was called on WW1 trench maps, and if you overlay a modern map on the trench maps, it’s pretty much where the autoroute A1 crosses the A26. It was where Uncle Harry suffered his first headwound in an attack on Greenland Hill. His war record was:
August 1914 – joined up (Gordon Highlanders)
1915 – wounded
1916 – commissioned
1917 – (Black Watch) wounded at Greenland Hill (right side of head)
1918 – (Gordon Highlanders - 51st Highland Division) wounded at Neuville Vitasse (right side of head again)
1919 – demobbed
(to which you can add :
early 1920s - emigrated to Canada
early 1960s – showed me the scar on the side of his head and told me how he got it)
There wasn't a lot to see at Greenland Hill. There isn't much of a hill, and the western slope is hidden by the autoroute embankment. But I'm glad I went there.
According to the official report, the attack on Greenland Hill was a total shambles
The moon went down at 3.00 am and the attack started at 3.45 am in pitch darkness. Further troubles were created by all troops losing direction as they were absolutely unable to see where they were going.
The troops on the right had to incline to the right, and we had to incline to our left – both these movements were carried out in too great a degree, with the result that there was a gap between The Black Watch and Camerons. This gap seems to have been partly filled by a Company of the Argylls. The troops on right and left of 26th Brigade also lost direction, with the result that the Camerons came into collision with the 4th Division and the Scottish Rifles charged into The Black Watch. Owing to heavy casualties both in Officers and men, it is impossible to collect anything like a correct story, but it appears likely that only a few scattered parties of men reached the German lines and these were captured or killed.
Greenland Hill in 2016
Greenland Hill in 1918
Poor Little Neville DixonThe next place I wanted to see was Awoingt cemetery near Cambrai, to visit the grave of Neville Dixon, or “Poor Little Neville Dixon” to give him his full title. He had been a childhood friend of my grandmother in Gringley on the Hill in the early 1900s, and died on 10th November 1918. You might thing that he was unlucky in his timing, and that an earlier armistice would have saved him but it was illness rather than battle which killed him. He had been gassed earlier in the year, but recovered enough to go back to the front where he caught flu, which developed into bronchial pneumonia, and he died in hospital the day before the guns fell silent.
Awoingt Cemetery
Part of a letter from my grandmother to my grandfather dated 22/11/1918
That was it for specific destinations for the day, so I made my way through Cambrai back to the campsite, but it’s an area full of reminders of the Great War and I stopped off at several places.
Cambrai
The chapel at the junction which gives its name to Chapel Corner Cemetery.
John Hay WishartThe following day I set off northwards, aiming for Ypres. Again the wind had turned to follow me and my route took me through plenty of post-industrial mining towns near Lens, along a good stretch along canal banks, with some spectacular hailstorms. I also came across a sector of Paris-Roubaix, and managed about 5 yards before concluding that it might be better to find a different route.
During the day I was to visit Fromelles where my great-grandfather's cousin, John Hay Wishart, was killed on 20th July 1916. His was a tragically pointless death, even by the standards of the first world war.
He emigrated to Australia in 1899 and lived near Newcastle. In July 1915 he went with some pals to Sydney to enlist. By November 1915 he and the rest of the 5th Division were on the way to Egypt where the task was to defend the Suez Canal against the expected attack. In June 1916 they sailed to France, and on the July 12th they went to a supposedly quiet sector of the front near Armentières to replace Anzac divisions which had been moved to the Somme as reinforcements.
It was decided to use these inexperienced troops and under-resourced artillery to mount a diversionary attack, and discourage the Germans from moving troops to the Somme. The generals knew that the attack had little chance of success, and several argued against it, but it went ahead. Putting it briefly, the attack was initially partially successful, but the Germans counter-attacked regaining their trenches. Eleven members of the 30th Battallion, including JHW, found themselves in a shellhole behind enemy lines. The official Australian War History describes their daring escape.
Realising that they were cut off, and being eleven in number, they decided – after debate – to make a run for it together rather than separately, and to assist any among them who met with trouble. Leaving their arms, and trusting to surprise, half of them succeeded in crossing two enemy trenches, each containing Germans. In the second trench two of them were seized; but the remainder instantly instantly turned round, as they had arranged to do, scared the Germans, released their comrades, and escaped with them into No-Man's Land, Krinks and three comrades eventually reaching the front of the 60th British Brigade.
Unfortunately for JHW, that wasn’t the end of the story. A footnote in the Official History:
This daring escape had a sad sequel. The men who reached safety with Krinks were Corporal A. H. Mc L. Forbes and Private J. H. Wishart (both of Wallsend, N.S.W.) and Private T. L. Watts (of Huntsville, N.S.W.); but two others, L/Cpl. S. B. Wells (of Wollongong, N.S.W.) and Private E. C. E. Amps (of Coff's Harbour, N.S.W.), had got clear of the German trenches, but in the wire-entanglement Wells was shot down and Amps injured. The 30 th Battalion after the fight was sent to reserve, but Krinks and his three companions returned to the trenches as soon as it was dusk, and, taking a stretcher, went out into No-Man's Land to find their comrades. In this they succeeded, and were bringing in Wells on a stretcher when a sentry of their own brigade, catching sight of their figures, fired, killing Wishart and Watts with a single shot
JHW’s body was somehow lost, so there is no grave, but his name is on the memorial at VC Corner. As an aside, I’ve been in contact with a great niece of Cpl Wells, who was on the stretcher. He was patched up, wounded twice more then sent home to live out the rest of his life.
The memorial at VC Corner
Altogether there were 5533 Australian casualties, and it is thought by some that there was an official cover-up. The official communique published in the Times just stated “South of Armentieres we carried out some important raids on a front of two miles, in which Australian troops took part.”, but the German report in the same paper says “The brave Bavarian Division … counted 2000 enemy corpses in front of them.” Incidentally one member of the Bavarian Division that day went on to reach a position of power in Germany in the 1930s which came to an end in a Berlin bunker in 1945. You may have heard of him.
In recent years bodies have been disinterred from mass graves and identified using DNA, and there’s a new cemetery in which newly identified bodies have been buried. There’s also an excellent museum which has an animated display describing the battle, which explains it better than all the books I’ve read about it.
Nearby is the Australian Memorial Park, with the statue named “Don’t forget me, cobber” showing a wounded soldier being carried back through no-man’s land.
The story behind the statueNot far away is the cemetery named Le Trou Aid Post, in the most beautiful setting for a cemetery I’m ever likely to see (especially on a calm sunny day in late spring).
Back to the bike ride - into Belgium to meet the FridaysIt wasn’t very far from Fromelles to Ypres and I checked into the campsite I had used before just outside the wall of the town. As if I hadn’t had enough WW1 for the day I went to the 8 pm ceremony at the Menin Gate. It was packed and I couldn’t get in, but the haunting playing of the Last Post had its effect.
I had 2 days to reach Brussels and meet up with the Fridays who were departing from tradition (and Brussels) by starting on a Saturday night. Friday saw a short day leaving Ypres in the rain along the road to Menin, where I overshot and found myself in France, although it was largely the profusion of booze and fag outlets which gave it away. I retraced to Belgium and could have done most of the rest of the day by boat, following the river Leie to Kortrijk, then the Bossuit–Kortrijk Canal, then the River Scheldt for a while, before ending the day with a climb to the campsite on the slopes of the Kluisberg. The site is terraced, so pitches are flat, but whoever and designed it didn’t bother with drainage, so it was mostly soggy underfoot.
The road from Ypres
A bridge at Kortrijk supported by a pair of trainers.
The following day I set off along the Scheldt to Oudenaarde, then headed along tiny lanes through archetypal Flemish countryside. As well as the landscape, the names of towns and villages were a giveaway – on one hand distinctly Flemish names like Zottegem, Woubrechtegem, Denderleeuw and Dillbeek, on the other are villages named after obscure saints I’ve never heard of – Sint-Goreks-Oudenhove, Sint-Agatha-Berthem and Sint-Lievens-Esse. I didn’t push the pace as I didn’t want to get to the rendezvous too early, and I didn’t want to exhaust myself the day before an overnight group ride when I would be the one with 50kg+ of bike and luggage.
Eventually in the evening I reached the outskirts of Brussels and stopped for an evening meal at a roadside
friterie in Anderlecht, before heading to the city centre and meeting up with Els at the appointed meeting place in the Grand Place.
To be continued.