Revisiting the Past – The Sir John Monash Centre and Thomas Henry Brown
We haven’t seen a lot more of France than these northern parts of the country. In addition to the D-Day celebrations, our original plan for this tour had been to see more of the southern parts of France and then on to Spain however we changed tack to include England instead. We’ll get to the rest of France and Spain another tour !
So not really expecting to visit these parts again, I couldn’t let an opportunity pass to go back to the Somme area from WWI. The Sir John Monash Centre at the Villers Bretonneux Australian Memorial had not been built at the time of our previous visits and I was keen to see it. And I suspect it may probably be the last time I have the opportunity to visit the grave of my ancestor, Thomas Henry Brown.
So this was mainly a long driving day until later in the afternoon when we arrived at Villers Bretonnneux. The museum has been built behind the memorial and mainly underground so that it does not intrude on the landscape. When we arrived there were not a lot of visitors but included a busload of Australians on a Matt McLachlan Battlefields tour – an Australian group who specialise in history tours in the European battlefields where Australians have fought. We first walked up to look at the memorial itself and climbed the tower which had been closed when we visited previously. Then we went on to the museum – down a pathway like entering a trench and with the sounds ofr battle all around – and in the foyer we found former PM Tony Abbott. He was on this tour – and was holding up everyone else on the bus while posing for photos.
The museum is quite extensive and covers the main involvement of the Australian forces in France during WWI. There is an audio tour – which the guide at the entry told us covered up to 6 hours of detail if you listened to everything ! Unfortuntaely we had a school group in with us and instead of the kids being rowdy as might often be the case, it was one of the teachers who constantly talked at the kids – who were really very quiet – and made it hard to hear the audio commentary. So we abandoned this part and went to the separate “immersive experience” which is said to be as close a reproduction to a real experience of the soldiers as possible – with strobe lighting, sound effects and smoke simulating the Australian advance in the final days of the war.
We had some lunch in the cafe then strolled around the outside of the museum before walking back through the memorial to the car.
We then went on to Queant Road cemetery where my dad’s cousin, Thomas Henry Brown is buried. You will find my story about him here if you are interested in my research about him. Still a very touching and emotional experience for me.
We finally arrived at our last stop in France, Amiens, late afternoon. Our hotel was near the imposing Amien Cathedral, a Gothic designed church dating back to the 1200’s. It is a huge cathedral and whilst it did not receive much damage in either world war it seems in need of some significant restoration. There is currently scaffold around an area inside around the organ but there are various sections of the roof trusses with large cracks. Many of the original stained glass windows also no longer exist.
After visiting the cathedral we walked back to our hotel where we had dinner in the hotel restaurant. Next day we drive to Paris for our flight to Heathrow and the UK part of our tour.