DAY 275 - RANCOURT TO ARRAS (VIA VIS EN ARTOIS): 29.8 MILES (57,600 STEPS)

Sunday 22 January, 2012

29.8 miles (Total: 2698.3 miles) – 57,600 steps (Total: 6,061,601 steps)

I arrived at my hotel, Le Prieuré, in Rancourt just before 10pm with red and swollen feet from having walked 100 miles in five days from Paris; I may have learnt the technique of avoiding blisters, but if I don’t have a day of rest every 3-4 days, then my feet seem red raw and very painful. I should have taken a day of rest at Rancourt, but I was up against the clock to be in Lille by Tuesday and so decided to press on to Arras – it was a mistake.

My route took me directly through the Arras battlefields of the First World War – during my journey I must have past at least a dozen military cemeteries, mostly British & Commonwealth names like: Ecoust St Mein, Deslaux Farm, Bancourt, Bullecourt, Cherisy and Vis en Artois. I decided to go to Arras via Artois as my Great Uncle was buried there and my Great Grandmother Walton, whom I knew very well and only died when I was in my twenties, always spoke with quiet pride of her husband’s service in WW1. He was killed in 1917 in the Battle of Arras, as were her two brothers, although I never heard her speak of their deaths. Grandma Walton was a widow for nearly seventy years and raised her twin sons, my Grandfather Eric and my Great Uncle Herbert, both of who are still fit and well in their late nineties.

It is a living connection to the events of this area and, though I was in considerable pain, I felt that it was in some way honouring their memory to walk this route.

The Battle of Arras was a major Spring offensive launched by British forces that lasted for 39 days, between April and May 1917, in an effort to breakthrough German lines. The British and Commonwealth forces had already taken massive casualties at the Somme and Battle of Gallipoli, as had the French at the Verdun, without achieving a breakthrough. However, in December 1916 Herbert Asquith had resigned as Prime Minister and was succeeded by David Lloyd George, who wanted a quick and decisive victory to maintain morale at home and on the battlefield.

The opportunity came on April 6 1917 when, after suffering major losses of civilian merchant shipping in the Atlantic at the hands of the German U-boats, the United States declared war on Germany. Three days later the Battle of Arras commenced, although it would of course be many more long months before American forces arrived. Nevertheless, there was a feeling that the balance of power had shifted and it was now time to push. There might have been new momentum, but there were no new tactics with the charge at the machine guns of the Germans by men armed with bayonets. The result was 150,000 dead British and Commonwealth forces in 39 days and about 120,000 German dead. The Western Front remained virtually exactly where it was in May as it had been in April.

The madness of the battle was memorably captured by Siegried Sassoon in his short but pugnacious poem The General:

“Good-morning; Good-morning!” the General Said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ‘em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Sassoon was to survive the war and be awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry in charging the German trenches.

The experience of walking through these fields weighed down by my rucksack and in pain from my shoulder to my feet seemed to, in a very small way, allow me to empathise with the conditions in which these heroes were assembled to be wasted on a vanity project for politicians and generals. The fact that, even a century later, farmers pile munitions by the side of the road (pic) for collection seemed to bring it home.

I say ‘vanity’ project with great care and humble acknowledgement that I may have it wrong, but it just seems that the Germans weren’t going anywhere on the Western Front; the Americans had just joined the war, so why on earth wouldn’t you wait for Uncle Sam to arrive and secure a victory through overwhelming force? Or at least wait for the Germans to take the initiative. I am out of my depth, but I want to understand what happened here because I think it has a bearing on how we conduct international relations today. I wanted to hear the voices of my ancestors to tell me what was really going on, but I suspect their answer may have come in the form of another wartime poet, Lord Tennyson:

“Ours is not to reason why. Ours it but to do and die.”

This line was of course from Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War in 1854. The difference is that in the pointless effort of 1854 650 people died, but in Arras over 250,000 lost their lives. Warfare had come into the industrial age, but their leaders were still putting their faith in medieval chivalry.

One final note, having witnessed so many cemeteries in one day, I think we have four truly great institutions in the UK: The Monarchy, The National Trust, The National Health Service, and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The message from all the cemeteries is, ‘Their Name Liveth for Evermore’. That is true; it is not a euphemism, but a fact brought into reality by the painstaking and meticulous work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission who care for the graves and memorials of 1.7 million servicemen and women on 23,000 sites in 150 countries around the world. As a family member of three of those remembered, I simply wish to say ‘Thank You’.