Week 2 – Friday 12 July – Le Cariere Wellington and on to Amiens

As I mentioned yesterday, we are visiting the Le Cariere Wellington this morning.  We’ve just found out that it can get very busy, and we might not be able to go on a tour, if there are bus trips.  In order to offset this, we got down there at opening time at 10am (this is France, of course), and low and behold, the only other people there were 6 other kiwis.  They were all retirees, who for some reason or other had some connection with Dunedin, so that was a bit of a coincidence.  They had watched the 10 minute video about the battle of Arras before we arrived.  They must have heard the same thing that we had, as we arrived on the dot of 10am, and they were already inside when we got there.

The entrance to the quarry exhibition has a large accolade to the work of the New Zealanders, and the whole presentation focused on the work the kiwis had done – it made you feel quite awestruck and very proud.  By the time WWI started, there were already quarry’s under Arras from the extensive mining of stone that had occurred up until the end of the 19^th Century.  The quarries, were however just point digs, and the New Zealand miners dug a further 12 miles (20 Kms) of trenches in just 6 months, that were used to keep the soldiers in safe (but let’s not call it comfortable) accommodation and to escort them secretly to just in front of the German positions, in the township of Arras, at the start of the battle.  The plan worked brilliantly at the start, but an unfortunate decision to delay any further push forward after the first day gave the Germans time to bring up reinforcements.  This along with a poor showing from the French, who were supposed to be the main event in the battle meant that the initiative was called off when casualties hit 4,000 per day.  One of the German generals later commented that their army was all at 6’s and 7’s because of the surprise attack, and had the decision been made not to delay, it could have changed the whole outlook of the war.

The quarry tour takes you down in a lift to a depth of 20 metres below the surface of the earth, to the tunnels that the New Zealand tunnelers had dug in 6 months.  The tunnels were very impressive, for not only did they accommodate soldiers and escort them secretly and safely to the front, they also had running water, electricity, kitchens, latrines, a light railway, and a fully equipped hospital.  The tunnels accommodated 20,000 men for 8 days in the lead up to the 1917 battle of Arras.  The work of building the tunnels was very dangerous, as the Germans were undertaking counter tunnelling initiatives, and in the period of building the tunnels, 41 tunnelers lost their lives and 151 were injured, out of a total workforce of 500 men.

The tour is conducted in small groups, of which there were 12 in ours.  We had a French guide who was very knowledgeable, and very complimentary about the work of the New Zealanders.  There were videos, and we were all decked out with an audio guide as well, so it was a very well run informative tour.

After the tour, we hit the road towards Bapaume, the sight of another major WWI battle, and then went on to Longueval, which has both a New Zealand Monument beside it, as well as the Catepillar Valley Cemetery.  Catepillar Valley is where the body of New Zealand’s unknown soldier was exhumed from a couple of years ago, and now lies in the Cenotaph in Wellington.  They were both very worthwhile visits, and the Monument is set in a very beautiful setting, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but somewhere that from a military perspective was very important – on the top of a hill. 

After that, the fun started, because tonight is our first night of camping.  We go the tent erected no problems – it is self erecting, but then there was the airbed.  Our pump would be brilliant, if it didn’t have European only plugs, and only run on battery, which takes 6 hours to charge, which we didn’t learn until we needed to pump up the airbed.  Anyway, a few red cheeks later, the airbed was all pumped up, and we have now had a very nice picnic dinner in our new chairs, on our new table, with a nice bottle of rose, so everything is good.  We are here in Amiens for two nights, visiting Albert, and Villers Bretoneux tomorrow.