Travel is fun, exciting and can be invigorating or relaxing. It can also be the perfect way to delve deep into history, mark memorable historic events and pay your respects. And to mark Remembrance Day, we invite you to join us on a moving journey through the World War I Battlefields. This 4-day tour takes in key sites in Belgium and France, including the Somme Battlefields, under the guidance of Local Experts and historians. Walk in the footsteps of brave soldiers as you explore the locations, hear the stories and spend time at the memorials, marking those who lost their lives in the fight for peace.
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THE SOMME TODAY
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THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME
The Germans were stationed behind a formidable set of defences, vastly underestimated by Allied intelligence. A combination of a compact battlefield, destructive modern weaponry and several failures by British military leaders led to the unprecedented slaughter of wave after wave of young men. In the first day alone, the British army took 57, 570 casualties.
The battle marked a significant turning point in the war. After the Somme the British army was supplied with more firepower than before. And it was firepower, rather than manpower, that eventually decided the course of the war.
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VISIT THE SOMME BATTLEFIELDS
Explore the Franco-British Memorial at Thiepval built between 1928 and 1932 and designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. The memorial bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in the Somme sector before 20 March 1918 and have no known grave. Over 90% of these perished in the Battle of the Somme.
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OTHER SIGNIFICANT SITES
See the Australian Cemetery of Fromelles in Northern France, a poignant stop of battlefields tours. Commemorating one of the darkest days in Australian military history, it contains the graves of 410 Australian soldiers who died in the Attack at Fromelles. Not a single body found on the battlefield could be identified so it was therefore decided not to mark the individual graves. Instead, recorded on the memorial are the names of all the Australian soldiers who were killed in the engagement.