No roses in Picardy

Our breakfast is an international melange: French - exquisite fresh bread; German - Aldi’s brilliant fruit and nut muesli; and our Aussie standby: vegemite, which we bought across with us as we can't seem to do without it overseas. 

We head out amid peaceful green fields and discover we are in Picardy. There are no roses in Picardy. But there are graves. Never-ending fields of symmetrical, meticulously kept war graves. Oddly, we would not have chosen to come this way. We usually avoid war areas and war memorabilia, as philosophical objectors. 

We were woken by sunlight and the smell of fresh baked French bread wafting through the motorhome windows from the village boulangerie. All so at peace. It is only when we pass a sign identifying the region as the sight of one of the bloodiest battles in the Great War, the Somme, that I begin to think some of my Irish heritage is kicking in, and that fate, and the Irish faeries, have drawn us here. I suddenly realise that it is here that my funny fat little Grandfather Harry went quite bonkers. When he was only seventeen. 

Here, he lay in a trench that he had dug to protect himself, shivering in the only warmth he owned, his Army-issue greatcoat; his blisters raw and bleeding in ill-fitting army boots as he tried, under orders, to take potshots at other boys, as young as he was, barely 17, just out of sight, just over the hill, trying to hide, too, in their shallow dugout shelters, all of them shivering in mind-bending fear. 

The fields they fought are now littered with silent earth covered bodies, topped with white crosses; and, sometimes, red poppies. The boys are two to a grave, ten graves wide, seventeen rows deep. I count 340 to each plot. And, tragically, here are 20 more massive plots. That makes seven thousand innocents, not yet men, lying buried in this field alone. And this is one field. There are thousands upon thousands more in each burial field as we silently pass. 

Down this row of plane trees lining the road my grandfather likely marched with his battalion. Into this tiny village church, under this spire, he probably crept to pray. To stay alive. Even shell-shocked and witless. Wave after battlefodder wave of these young men who set out from Australia, Canada, Britain, France and Germany in that Great War, fell for the last time on these Flanders fields. Where wild poppies now bow their tall heads in the summer. At the intolerable senselessness of it all. The day stretches on, past the endless mass of simple white crosses standing symmetrical in every field. 

We have, as always in France, invitations to park our motorhome in wonderful rural locations throughout France, all for free. Tonight we are parked in one of the loveliest we’ve visited. It is a farm, in the heart of another village, opposite another church, with another lovely church bell tolling away gentle hours from its tower. 

The farmhouse is large. Its two stories front the village street with its back into a gardened courtyard. The outhouses, including stone and stuccoed homes for permanent farm workers, large barns, and neat machinery sheds are all built around the perimeter of a large internal square.

Like the old fortified bastides of earlier days. It all feels very secure, womb-like. 

Monsieur Alain, the owner, greets us and encourages Bec to take a walk beyond the farm gates to visit the donkeys, ponies, geese, rabbits, pigs and chickens in the fields. As usual, the animals flock to her and she is generous with her pats. 

After a long walk around the village we buy local honey and aged beer, reminiscent of how I imagine medieval mead must have tasted, and it is all utterly delicious! And, again, we marvel how much better everything seems to taste in France. Dinner tonight is fennel with wine-doused steak. We finish off with something wicked (abricot tartlette) from this morning’s village boulangerie. We fall asleep smiling, and wake when a cockerel crows.

Field after endless field of war graves

Our farmhouse stop for the night