Villers Bretonneux Liberated on Anzac Day 1918

A historic past...

25th April 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the Gallipoli peninsula's beaches for a military operation. By a pure coincidence, it was on a 25th of April Villers Bretonneux was liberated by the Australian and New Zealand Army ! In fact, on the 24th of April 1918, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Australian brigades counter attacked and took back Villers Bretonneux in the night.

The bodies of Australian soldiers exhumed from the battlefields, covered and laid out in rows, awaiting re-burial at the Adelaide Cemetery, Villers Bretonneux in France. Note a cross has been placed on top of each body.

This victory has been crucial for the rest of a world wide conflict. The Allies stopped the German offensive in March and took a great part in the final victory, six months later. ANZAC would lose 1200 men in this fight. Every year now, Australians and French commemorate in Villers Bretonneux, at the Australian Memorial, the Anzac Day, as a tribute to the thousands of Soldiers of the Commonwealth.

Presented by the Mayor of Villers-Bretonneux, on behalf of the town's inhabitants, to members of an AIF Graves detachment, representing the Australian people, on 14 July 1919.

The mayor's presentation speech included the following, 'The first inhabitants of Villers-Bretonneux to re-establish themselves in the ruins of what was once a flourishing little town have, by means of donations, shown a desire to thank the valorous Australian Armies, who with the spontaneous enthusiasm and characteristic dash of their race, in a few hours chased an enemy ten times their number...They offer a memorial tablet, a gift which is but the least expression of their gratitude, compared with the brilliant feat which was accomplished by the sons of Australia...Soldiers of Australia, whose brothers lie here in French soil, be assured that your memory will always be kept alive, and that the burial places of your dead will always be respected and cared for...'.

The tablet was presented to the Australians with the view that after it had toured each Australian state it would be returned for inclusion on a proposed memorial to the Australians to be built at Villers-Bretonneux. Villers-Bretonneux asked for the return of the tablet in 1928 for the new memorial, but the architect who designed it did not incorporate it into his design and the tablet remained in Australia. A tablet with similar wording is located in the Crucifix Corner Cemetery near Villers-Bretonneux. (Text by AWM)

Photos below by Richard G Crompton

Villers-Bretonneux became famous in 1918, when the German advance on Amiens ended in the capture of the village by their tanks and infantry on 23 April. On the following day, the 4th and 5th Australian Divisions, with units of the 8th and 18th Divisions, recaptured the whole of the village and on 8 August 1918, the 2nd and 5th Australian Divisions advanced from its eastern outskirts in the Battle of Amiens.

The VILLERS-BRETONNEUX MEMORIAL is the Australian national memorial erected to commemorate all Australian soldiers who fought in France and Belgium during the First World War, to their dead, and especially to those of the dead whose graves are not known.

The 10,700 Australian servicemen actually named on the memorial died in the battlefields of the Somme, Arras, the German advance of 1918 and the Advance to Victory.

The memorial was unveiled by King George VI in July 1938.

The memorial stands within VILLERS-BRETONNEUX MILITARY CEMETERY, which was made after the Armistice when graves were brought in from other burial grounds in the area and from the battlefields.

Plots I to XX were completed by 1920 and contain mostly Australian graves, almost all from the period March to August 1918.

Plots IIIA, VIA, XIIIA and XVIA, and Rows in other Plots lettered AA, were completed by 1925, and contain a much larger proportion of unidentified graves brought from a wider area. Later still, 444 graves were brought in from Dury Hospital Military Cemetery.

There are now 2,141 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 608 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to five casualties known or believed to be buried among them, and to 15 buried in other cemeteries whose graves could not be found on concentration.

The cemetery also contains the graves of two New Zealand airmen of the Second World War.

Both cemetery and memorial were designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. Source: Commonwealth Graves Commission at www.cwgc.org/