KEEPING THE FAITH
The story is told in my book Wildflowers, Wilderness and Wine as to why we established the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies on our land at Glen Aplin in 1996. I would have preferred to establish a memorial drive linking the Granite Belt hamlets of Amiens, Messines, Bapaume, Passchendaele, Bullecourt, Pozieres and Fleurbaix which had once been railway sidings for a soldier settlement where former servicemen who had survived the battles in France settled on rural blocks to grow apples. When farmers feared the poppies could spread and become a weed nuisance, we decided to plant a field with wheat and poppies to show the poppies were not a threat to the rural community.
We first opened our garden and field in November 1996. We charged a $2.00 entrance fee and raised $1,000.00 which we then donated to Brisbane Legacy.
The Australian Returned Soldiers and Sailors Imperial League (the forerunner to the RSL) first sold poppies for Armistice Day 1921. For this drive, the League imported one million silk poppies, made in French orphanages. Each poppy was sold for a shilling: five pence was donated to a charity for French children, six pence went to the League’s own welfare work and one penny went to the League’s national coffers.
Eberhard and I decided that, as a matter of integrity, we must visit the battlefield region in northern France and made arrangements to travel to Europe in January 1997. We were met at Villers-Bretonneux by Jean-Pierre Thierry, O.A.M., President of the Association France-Australie who became our guide for a day in the Somme .
My words will not describe the desolation of the wet, windswept fields we saw that day.
Wheat field near Pozieres
As a farmer I could look at this soil, over seventy years later, and see in the structure of the clods of earth the clay that had been brought to the surface by the trench digging and shelling. It is the clay that shows as white in the field.
Soldiers in the trenches
This clay stuck to my boots and I could only imagine how horrible it must have been to live in the cold, wet and sticky mud of the trenches. As you can see from my photo there is very little higher ground in this region and the highest points were much valued. Battles were fought backwards and forwards across what became barren wasteland with great loss of life. Only in the trenches did the men gain some protection from rife fire, but nothing protected them from the shelling.
Even today unexploded shells like the one I photographed are regularly brought up in the fields during cultivation and placed at the side of the roads for collection by the authorities.
Windmill memorial, Pozieres
Two memorials, The Windmill and the Tank Memorial face each other at the edge of the Pozieres village. Pozieres was the key obstacle which had to be overcome in order to capture first the Mouquet Farm and then Thiepval hill. This encircling plan was largely assigned to Australian troops, the majority of whom had come to the Somme from Gallipoli. The village, lying along a low ridge, was crossed by a double network of trenches that made up the 2nd German line, and flanked by two blockhouse/observation posts dominating the entire battlefield. The Australians arrived on 23rd July 1916 and captured Pozieres then, exhausted by incessant artillery counter-attacks, were relieved by the Canadians at Mouquet Farm on 5 September. Three of their divisions serving in the Pozieres sector had lost more than a third of their men, and the village itself was completely annihilated.
Flanders poppies
During World War One the red poppies were seen to be among the first living plants that sprouted from the devastation of the battlefields of northern France and Belgium. Soldiers’ folklore had it that the poppies were vivid red from having been nurtured in ground drenched with the blood of their comrades. The sight of the poppies in a cemetery at Ypres in 1915 moved the Canadian, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae to write the poem In Flanders Fields. The poem ends with a plea.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
By establishing the Remembrance Field at Glen Aplin, Eberhard and I have kept the faith.
The Remembrance Field
Today I received a poem written by Ray Wilson, which I have permission to share with you.
Poem - The Remembrance Field
Book Cover
Das Helwig Haus B&B owned by Eberhard and Fay Helwig is situated at Glen Aplin, near Stanthorpe on the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, Australia.
This is a region noted for Australian wildflowers, four wilderness National Parks and sixty wineries. In 1997 Eberhard and Fay established the Remembrance Field of red Flanders poppies, a European wildflower.
To obtain Fay’s book Wildflowers, wilderness and wine email Fay on helwig@halenet.com.au
Internationally it is available on the Amazon.com website. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002ACXQ0M/sr=8-1/qid=1244294755/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&qid=1244294755&sr=8-1&seller=
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