3 sites to visit today before catching the Eurostar to London. First up was to Larchwood Cemetery for one of Sally's relatives. This was one of the smaller cemeteries you see all over the Somme, usually aligned with a railway siding (casualty evacuation) or battlefield. This one was having a bit of work done on it as its proximity to the farmers paddocks meant it was getting overrun with weeds. Next stop was Hill 60 on the Messines ridge. Here you can see what i...

Final stop today was the memorial at Mont St Quentin, on the Avenue Des Australeins, for the 2nd Division. Whilst it was great to have seen all these memorials I think was probably a couple of memorials too far, especially given that it took us a couple hours to get through Lille on the way back. I was a little bit annoyed that we stayed on the Autoroute and didn't try and find another way around the town. Got back to Ieper around 21:00 and it was a bit of a chal...

Second last stop for the day was the Australian Corps Memorial Park at Le Hamel. This commemorates the unifying of all the Australian Divisions under Monash and his successful attack on Le Hamel that changed the way battles were fought from then until the end of the war. Here was shown the benefits of joint operations between soldiers, tanks, aircraft and artillery as well as thorough and thoughtful planning. Picked up a piece of shrapnel here.

Onto Villers-Bretonneux, first the town and school. It was good to get out onto the school quadrangle and have photos in front of the famous "Do Not Forget Australia" whilst some might think that this relationship with Australia is just for the tourists it still feels somewhat genuine, especially when you here what English tourist say about the French compared to what we experienced. The memorial itself sits high above the surrounding farmland and like Thiepval ...

Based on the information in various Red Cross letters Harold was believed to have made it back to the hospital here. That said most of the information is statements from members of his Battalion and not actual hospital records so it may be that he is still lying out in the fields at Bullecourt or somewhere along the way to Dernancourt given it is a fair distance from the battlefield.