Agatha West visits the Somme 1920

Anyhow we just caught it nicely and had a coupé to ourselves. I hope Barlow does not tell his Mrs. that!!!! We had breakfast at Euston, a second edition, at least Barlow did, I was by that time beginning to feel absolutely ill with fear that tickets would not turn up and was like a cat on hot bricks and could not eat. So about 9. 30 we took a taxi to Victoria -- ( exactly 15 minutes) and at 10.15 our tickets and passports and coupons all rolled up and Mrs W. was easy in her mind at last. It has been a perpetual worry the last week, but that is over and I am here.

I came by the Pullman to Dover and had lunch en route, travelling with some awfully nice Americans were most interested in all our social problems and our solutions or otherwise. It was quite fun trying to find American equivalents for guardians and Councils and Rates ec - When we got to Dover it was still pouring (as it had done all away from home and did till we got to Abbeville) was blowing hard so I knew I was in for a bad time. It was rather ghastly and I will draw a discreet veil over the next hour. You can imagine the rest. [Note added above:] Barlow's only remark was that she dipped a little. I wanted Frank badly for he was never ill. [end of note] On the quay I was met by the Battlefields Interpreter who showed us through the Douane and passports in no time and then to my dismay I found that this week for the first time the Paris train does not stop at Amiens and, so we were to go to a "Bummel" that took from 3.30 - 7.30 to go from Calais to Amiens. But Barlow was delighted with the rapidity of the journey! But I am going too fast. Just as I was going to the refreshment room for some tea, feeling very rotten, who should accost me as a long lost friend but Lenox P. Napier (late R. W. Rugby School and Kings Cambridge). It was funny meeting him, I have not seen him since he stayed with us at Forest. He was full of chatter. He had been in Canada when war broke out and joined the C.E.F. not getting to France till 1916. He is now in business in Manchester and was going on that business to Paris Geneva and Vienna. Talking to him was an awful effort. I was feeling so dreadfully sick, but I managed to preserve appearances.

I got a side to myself for a bit in the train, in fact nearly all of the way, and lay down in desperation, so that I missed everything I ought to have seen such as Etaples etc., but will see them on Monday. I sit up and take notice after Abbeville. The poplars are all going golden and all along by those lovely marshes and lakes and river they are just a glory of colour. The whole countryside is scattered with wooden huts and hutments, all shapes and sizes, and I was amused to see that the French have their dump scandals as well the English! So republics are not everything they should be any more than are Kingdoms. We were met at the station here by the Battlefields representative. He was awfully nice and we are to start at 10 tomorrow for Aveluy, and then on -

Barlow has been so good to me, and does all the carrying of everything. And although the responsibility of the whole thing is mine, it is a great relief to have him here.

I am writing this illegible document in bed - a most comfy room with hot and cold water laid on, electric light on my bed, looking on to a garden, so I ought to sleep well, as I am dead tired.

Goodnight darling.

Sunday September 19th

Leaving Amiens at 10.30 this morning by car, we set out along the Corbiet road from Amiens. It is almost impossible to give impressions, but I remember thinking at the first village we came to what a pity it is that the French let their house fall so into disrepair, and it was not till we got to Daours that I fully realise that "disrepair" which grew greater with each mile we went, was due to German artillery fire. The road we were on was in many places sunk between banks, and in these places the banks were scarred with gun positions, small dugouts etc the first place that really and truly brought home the devastation of war was Corbie. The beautiful twin towers of the Church still stand and I was told that the clock had never stopped the whole four years of war! But the rest of the church and all the town was in ruins. La Grande Place was just a heap of bricks and dust. There were people living there, some in patched up houses, many in wooden huts, and some even in arched corrugated iron arrangements like a tin[?] tunnel. From Corbie we followed the Ancre to Albert.

The destruction of Albert is complete. That is hardly a wall left. Nothing can describe it but the prophecy about Jerusalem "an heap of stones" and eventhat seems too "whole" a description, a heap of dust is almost truer. My photographs may I hope show

something of the utter destruction of this once flourishing town.

The sun was shining and it was a glorious morning, yet I could have cried as I stood in the church on piles of dust and rubble, my head on a level with the clerestory windows and photographed, or tried to, the last arch. Barlow told me that it was even more utterly nothing that it had been in 1916. Of course it changed hands several times between Sept[ember] 1916 and Sept[ember] 1918 and ended by being a kind of no man's land, so there was little chance of anything escaping destruction. From Albert we went straight up the Bapaume Road to the top of the Pozière[s] ridge.

We stopped at La Boissellel, or rather where Lsa Boisselle used to be. There is literally not a stone of the old village left, just a few wooden huts on the old site, and the same applies to all this part. Courcelette, Thiepval, Pozières, Beaumont Hamil, Beaucourt, Orvillers, of these villages, one can only say, "They were once".

La Boisselle is the place and the only one where we were really successful on July 1st 1916. The R.E.s had been mining from Aveluy for a year to get under La Boisselle and when on July 1st the mine went up, the Scotch and Canadians advanced in the smoke and took the Zollern Redoubt and with it, La Boisselle and Ovillers. I saw the tremendous crater caused by the mine, a crater used so much later by us for defensive purposes, dug outs etc. and we walked across about half a mile of country or rather more to the Zollern Redoubt. It has all been filled in, but the chyalk is still white and fresh and one can see clearly what it was and how it commanded the whole of the Pozières slopes. It was to this redoubt that Frank's H Q [headquarters] was moved back after Billy Wyley was killed at Ovillers. He had his H.Q. in a shell hole at Ovillers at the time and the general thought it was not safe enough. He himself would have been safer in the shell hole, as he would not have had to ride along the main road in order to reach his guns.

I am afraid words can give no idea of the arid bareness of that ridge -- Purple and blue in the cloud shadows, yellow in the sun, and yet there was no beauty; it was feelings of awe and almost fear that were uppermost, "unheimlich" is the nearest word that occurs to me at the moment; haunted, full of the unseen spirits of those who had paid with their lives for every foot of the ground, and the long, white bare ribbon of road where Frank gave his life, running away up to the top of the slope and there vanishing. Barlow showed me where both Billy and Frank died and also where the dressing station was to which they were taken. It was all quite close together.

From here we went on to the top of the ridge where Pozières windmill has been rebuilt as a memorial to the Canadians, and saw away down to Bapaume. We then turned left-handed to make our way across the Ancre again and down the valley to Aveluy. So far we had only been on main roads which were not too bad, but from here to Aveluy, through Courcelette, Regina trench, Beaumont Hamel, Thiepval, it was just a series of jolts, and jars and shakes and bumps. We had to hold on just as best we could and by the time we reached Aveluy I had got a real headache and was just as sick as the proverbial cat.

There are apparently two cemeteries at Aveluy -- Aveluy Wood, and Aveluy Communal. I never knew this and our driver never asked but took us straight to the Wood. Here we spent a few of our precious moments until I had the brainwave to show them my "Graves Registration" card and then he tumbled to it that I wanted the other cemetery. We had an awful job to get there, as it is in Aveluy itself and there are no roads left through the wood except from Albert direct. However we found a track of sorts and got there. We had quite a job to find Frank's grave, for his big the D.A.C. cross was evidently destroyed in 1918. Billy's was intact and I thought well now this is easy, as everyone had told me that Frank's was next to his one. But not a bit of it. Frank is two rows higher up the slope. Why do people tell such gratuitous untruths? It did not matter to me, but it wasted a lot of my time on Sunday! Then at last I spotted the stump of a big cross like Billy's with government cross beside it and I knew I had found what I sought. It was rather a dreary spot, on the side of a hill. The graves are all level, not turfed at all, nor even weeded at present. We tied up Frank's and Billy's, and planted snowdrop and scillas in a big cross on both of them, and I must just trust to luck that they come up in the spring --

From here we tried to make Hebuterne; I think the road was worse than ever, and I hardly knew how to bear it. We were back in cultivated parts now, and the dreariness of the Pozières ridge was no longer visible, and yet in a way the sight of boys playing football in and among the ruins of their homes was just as tragic, though not quite so terrible, as the utter desolation of the Ridge.

The house Frank lived in at Hebuterne was evidently a big Chateau place and with a large garden and stable. Much of it has been utterly destroyed since but the room he lived in has had a new roof (bright red) put on it so is again inhabited. I saw where the horses used to be and also the big cellar where they used to have services and concerts {illeg - silly songs?]. Of the house Major Fowler lived in there is nothing left at all.

On the way back to Amiens we passed Forceville, one of the few cemeteries that is finished. It was beautifully kept and tidy. I cannot say I like the milestones but they might be worse.

I am afraid this is a rotten letter but I feel so battered both in body and soul that it's hard to write. I almost wish I had not come. I cannot free myself of the nightmare of the Pozières Ridge, the awful struggles that took place there, and the utter and absolute desolation the reigns there now as a result of those struggles.

To think that all that might have taken place in England -- no trees - no green of any sort, only a kind of nondescript vegetation, the general aspect being like heather in the winter. One can only thank God for the British Army.

Yours

A.