Driver Frazer's War

Monday15 September:

A nice fine day, but being Monday almost everything in Belgium is closed. We drove west to the small town of Poperinge which features briefly in Dad's diary for 26 to 30 September 1917. This was an important R & R town for the WW1 troops, and sadly also a military jail where many of the executions of soldiers took place. Talbot House, was the social centre for the troops set up by Padre Talbot, which led to the foundation of the TocH programme. Unfortunately it to was closed for the day, but as we were looking at the door the warden, a Canadian lady appeared and did take us in and give us some brochures and told us a little of its wartime entertainment and services for the troops. One of Talbot's famous notices was "If you spit upon the floor at home please feel free to do so here".

after excellent coffee and cake we drove to Watou a small town which was mentioned in the diary for 3rd to 7th November 1917 as a behind the lines camping point and on to Boeschepe where the artillery was out of the line 25 November to 7th December 1917, and also from 22nd to 25th March 1918 when the great German attack of March 1918 took place. The Australian and New Zealand infantry were rushed south and simply marched towards the triumphant German breakthrough on the Somme. They met them head on as the British forces retreated in near panic and did great slaughter, but lost heavily also as they had no artillery back up. The diary reports the rush from Boeschepe to Caestre and entraining in the middle of the night with all the guns and ammunition. I decided to do the drive which took place over undulating country and must have put great strain on the gun teams and mules. They then spent some 36 hours on the train going about 120 km by tortuous routes and rushed up to support the infantry (more of this later). Caestre today is a rather sleepy town with no rail connection now. We lunched at a tiny CWGC cemetry which contained one NZer (in the Australian army). I also noted the grave of a 19 year old from Durham, who at the time of his death had reached the rank of sergeant and had been decorated with the DCM (Distinguished Conduct Medal - just beneath the VC) and the MM (Military Medal - also a significant bravery decoration). One wonders at what age he had joined the army to have such a history at such a young age. There was also a grave of a young married Australian which had a brief history attached to his gravestone (probably recently by relatives) - he was on his bunk in his billet when a shell came through the roof and killed him instantly. A few seconds before he had been speaking to his friend of how he was looking forward to leave in London in two days. Another sad war story.

A rather difficult journey home followed via Metteren, Baillieu, Loker and Dikkebus - none of the roads seem to go directly to anywhere else! After a brief rest we started to walk the wall of Ieper and met a couple from Matamata - like me he came originally from Gisborne. We followed this with an excellent dinner on the square of fish and chips and excellent Belgian beer.

Tuesday 16 September:

A fine morning and we set out early for the Somme. This put a heavy strain on Edna as navigator as we went from one road system to another. After a couple of hours of difficult driving we arrived at Le Quesnoy. We seemed to be lost and wondered if we were in the right place when suddenly up ahead we saw the NZ flag on large floral display, paired with the French flag and the medaille millitaire picked out in flowers. Immediately behind were the moat and the formidable walls which the NZers scaled with ladders in the last few days of the war. Having photographed the walls we walked back down the hill to the CWGC cemetery with its rows of white stones, almost all bearing the fernleaf and the date of the 4th November 1918. We are proud of how we save the town's population and the medieval walls, etc., but I could not help feeling we should simply have blasted it and taken it without such horrendous casualties. In the town the first building we noticed was the Cambridge Bar (the towns are "twinned"), and it was full of NZ memorabilia. We asked for coffee but after a pleasant talk with the owner were directed across the square to where we could in his opinion get much better service for coffee. We left promising to sengd him some more Cambridge memorabilia.

After coffee we walked by way of New Zealand /Aotearoa Street to another part of the walls where the actual scaling took place and we were able to view and photograph from across the moat a magnificent bas relief let into the wall showing the New Zealanders scaling the walls - a rather difficult and very touching memorial. Later in our trip we met a New Zealander whose grandfather was the fifth man up the ladder!

Leaving Le Quesnoy we drove again over very confusing roads to find the grave of George Whitfield MSM (Meritorious Service Medal - a rather rare decoration), who dad had met on the boat from Egypt to France. He came from Desmond Rd (off Gladstone Road near Gisborne High School). He and two other gunners were killed a month from the end of the war when the Germans were beaten and on the run. I imagine an unlucky shell had probably taken out the gun they were on. In the same cemetery were a line of eight graves of New Zealanders all died of wounds on 8 September 1918. I surmised that there must have been a dressing station nearby and that somewhere further east there would be another cemetery full of men killed in action on the same date.

We then sought out the small village of Montauban where Dad's diary recorded that they were shelled out of on 20 September 1916 and fell back on Fricourt a few miles further back during the first Somme offensive in 1916. It was a strange feeling to drive through this very remote and peaceful rolling countryside today and see small wartime cemeteries every mile of so. After Fri court we drove to Acheaux nearby where the amunition column went in March 1918 after their hurried rush south. This was where the diary inexplicably stopped with no further entries for the rest of the war. However, I remember him saying that he saw the troops coming away after the funeral of Dick Travis, so off we drove northwest to Couin CWGC cemetery where he is buried. His gravestone bears the outline of his VC. He was probably the greatest ever NZ soldier (and I am not forgetting Upham and his double VC in WW2). His decorations were VC, DCM, MM, Belgian Croix de Guerre, and twice Mentioned in Dispatches. On one occasion in Flanders he went out for 40 nights in a row to patrol and explore no mans land, plus countless other feats. As a boy in Gisborne I recall a friend of Dad's, Mr Slingsby, who had been with him in the Otago regiment and was not at all keen about going out with him. I wish now that I had questioned him more closely about it and memorised it more carefully. Travis was known as "the king of no mans land" and his death in action was said to have cast a pall over the whole New Zealand Division.

Much though I would like to have spent more time on the Somme by this time it was late and we faced a long drive back to Ieper which we reached after 7 o'clock - a day of over eleven hours of hard driving.