Freezing France - 3 days with the "Internet Girlfriend"

It was freezing when Barbara Legrande picked us up at the Anzac Hotel in Amiens and I mean freezing. Europe is in a cold snap to say the least. The temperature was around zero. Her tour company True Blue Digger Tours is a self operated company taking Aussies around the battlefields of France. Barbara is a walking encyclopaedia on anything World War 1 in France (and probably anywhere).
 Day One we visited The Somme. It is hard to believe that everything that is there today has been totally reconstructed. The photos in the Museums we visited show a landscape that is decimated. Absolutely nothing left. Barbara told us that the German Government finished paying the reconstruction debt in 2010! The cemeteries are everywhere - a stark reminder of the thousands who lost their lives. Standing in these cemeteries on a freezing April day, you get the sense that the diggers must have been absolutely frozen solid both with fear and with the cold.

Barbara and Pete

Day Two and another 9am start. We travelled further afield to Villers Bretenaux and more interesting sites, cemeteries and museums to visit. I thought I would get bored as I am not really into War History but there was so much to see and so much to appreciate - the hardship and the futility.


Snow in the trenches at the Canadian Memorial

Day Three we ventured further afield to Fromelles.. On the way we returned to Pozieres to locate the graves of seven of the men of the 47th Battalion - Pete's Grandfathers Battalion. I really don't know how any of them survived. Charlie Arnall must have been one extraordinary soldier to have made it home! Later we went to the site of the Lost Diggers (Made into a TV series  from which Pete got in contact with Barbara - dubbed the Internet Girlfriend ). There were so many diggers in the mass grave and many  have been identified through DNA testing. There are however many who have not been identified including those that lay in the open fields for more than three years before their bodies were collected.
The 3 day tour ended with the Last Post at the Menen Gate in Ypres. A beautiful and moving ending to a fascinating and very freezing three days.
If you ever consider doing a tour of the battlefields of France, consider going with Barbara - a fabulous tour guide. www.trueblue-diggertours.com

The Lost Diggers