2017 Battlefield Tour Page 25

Across the road from the tank memorial on the D929 is the Australian memorial at the old Windmill site. In 1914 a windmill stood here, the highest point on the Somme battlefield. The Germans used it as an observation point so obviously, it was eventually knocked down by artillery fire. It was also on the German second defence line just behind the fortified village of Pozieres. The Australians lost 22,900 men capturing the village and the windmill site. In 1993, on the 75th anniversary of the end of WW1, the Australian Govt exhumed the remains of an unknown Australian soldier from Adelaide Military Cemetery in Villers Bretonneux in France. The unknown soldier was taken back to Australia and interred in the War Memorial in Canberra. Soil from the battlefield at the Pozieres windmill site was scattered in his tomb.... In the field, adjacent is the WW1 Animal War Memorial and also thousands of crosses in an arrowhead formation all pointing to the windmill site.

Graham Taylor