Bomy Travel Guide

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Five of these graceful mourning caribou can be found on former battlefields in France and Belgium where men of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment fought and died in WWI. The main Newfoundland memorial is found at Beaumont-Hamel in the northern area of the Somme battlefields. Here at Masnieres, just south of Cambrai – next to a strategically for me placed gas station along N 44 – is one of the other four Newfie caribou baying in sorrow over the 100 or so Newfoundlanders who died in battle near here 20 November 1917. The monument marks the high water mark for Allied advances in the Battle of Cambrai. In the nearby Macoing British CWGC Cemetery is a row of Newfoundlanders who died that day. They had fought their way over the Escault Canal just south of here where the N 44 crosses but without reinforcements they were forced to withdraw. In recognition of their actions here and actions involving them at the Battle of the 3rd Ypres, King George V affixed the ‘royal’ title to the name of the regiment, the only such unit to have such an honor conferred on it during WWI while the fighting was ongoing.

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A few miles northeast of St Quentin, the Somme River begins its life as it bubbles out of a hillside next to the little town of Fonsommes. Leave it to the French to make a big thing out of something so humble. That said the park here is quite nice where you can sit and contemplate the waters percolating out from the rock. We sat and watched it amidst a thunderstorm making an even stronger impression. The river becomes one of the more important rivers in Picardy and, of course, has connotations of other sorts due the huge battles fought in its vicinity during the First War. Don’t blame the river.

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La Escaut does not have the name recognition of la Somme, but it does become an important river in northern France and western Belgium. As at the source of la Somme, there is a little park where the waters percolate out from under laid stone – for the most part, anyway – and you can sit and enjoy those waters as they begin their slow journey to the north. With a bottle of Orval in hand, the source of la Escaut is given that much more of a spiritual meaning.

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Buried here are 1,844 American soldiers most fo whom died in the fighting that raged in th surrounding area at the end of September 1918 though a few had fallen earlier in actions around Cantingy in May – one of the first actions involving American soldiers in the war in France. Three Medal of Honor winners are buried here: Corporal Thomas O’Shea, Private Robert Blackwell and 1LT William Turner. There is a carillon which plays period music every two hours during the day and “Taps” at the closing time. A small chapel has 333 names inscribed whom are men who went missing in the area. There is a small visitor center on the west side of the cemetery.

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While the vast majority of Americans fought in France as part of the First or, later, the Second American Army, there were some 90,000 who fought with British or Commonwealth forces. This monument remembers their actions here in Picardy where they played a role in helping to breach the Hindenburg during the last days of September 1918. The US II Corps was made up of the 27th and 30 th Divisions and these two units fought hard in the vicinity of this memorial, the 27th attacking to the north and the 30th to the south. The two divisions had fought earlier with the British and have another monument at Vierstraat in the Ypres Salient. In the fighting here on September 29th alone, the 107th Infantry Regiment lost 995 casualties which was the highest day total for a single regiment in the American Army for the entire WWI.

Set next to the busy N44 road, right by the Touage boat exhibit – one of the electric towboats that pull canal boats through the Riqueval Tunnel beneath – is the small memorial to the US 30th Infantry Division. The soldiers that made up that division came mainly from Tennessee and he Carolinas, so the division was nicknamed the “Old Hickory Division” after Andrew Jackson. The men of the 30th Infantry Division fighting alongside the US 27th Division, overran three German trench lines on 29 September 1918, though they did leave quite a bit of work for the Australian 5th Division which followed in their wake as the Germans popped up out of secret tunnels from inside the Riqueval Tunnel after the Americans had passed over the top.

A Territorial division from the Midlands, the 46th had been in France since February 1915 taking part in several battles. On 29 September 1918, two brigades of this division sliced through in this area south of Riqueval Bridge known as Bellenglise Mill gathering up some 4,000 prisoners in the process. The division would be reactivated for World War II, just in time to take part in the retreat to Dunkirk.

On 18 September 1918, the 4th Australian Division took this high ground in preparation for the 29 September assault which would punch through sections of the Hindenburg Line further to the east. The road out to the memorial is a gravel/dirt farm road and can/was be a bit difficult in bad weather.