Saturday, August 23, 2008

France in the morning ...

We're heading for the Thiepval Memorial in the morning, with a promise we'll stop by the river Somme. My grandfather was injured during the battle of the Somme during WW1 - perhaps I'll be covering some of the same ground as we travel ...

heading for the somme, france, originally uploaded by - di.

2 comments:

furiousBall said...

wow, i just did some googlin' on the memorial, 73,357 names of fallen British and South African soldiers... WWI was so brutal

Di Mackey said...

Thanks Van, I used your figures on the post about the day.

New Zealand lost the most soldiers per head of population and in one of the battles related to the Battle of Passchendaele - more than 800 kiwis were killed in a few hours. Although thousands were killed and wounded in that war. NZ suffered hugely too.

It was brutal on everyone attached to the Commonwealth .