RVR BATTLEFIELD TOUR SPONSORSHIP

Naked Army had great pleasure in helping sponsor 5/6 Royal Australian Regiment’s exercise ‘A Walk Too Far’ which occurred in July 2006 and involved a 4 day Western Front battlefield tour, culminating in the RVR team’s participation annual marches at Nijmegen, Holland (site of the ‘Market Garden’ allied airborne operations during WW2).

The RVR team tour started at Brugge, Belgium, concentrating particularly the Ypres salient and the locations listed on 5/6 RVR battle honours.

The tour included visits to cemeteries, Menin Gate, Polygon Wood, and the 5th Australian Division Memorial. Hill 60, earthworks and trench remains, pillboxes, bunkers and shell craters were also inspected, with the team returning to Menin Gate for the Last Post ceremony in the evening.

The team moved on to In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, a moving tribute to the fierce battles
of early World War 1 on the Ypres salient. Strong audio-visual and other presentations, then on to the Hooge crater museum, and the trenches at Hill 62, by far the best preserved trenches seen on the trip.

RVR’s delegation leader Major Beck’s notes read ‘Monday, July 10: From Arras to the Somme, the 2nd Australian Division Memorial, the windmill site and Mouquet Farm at Pozieres. Realised for the first time the flatness of the French terrain, and the comparatively small geographic area of 5/6 RVR’s battle honours. It was on the Somme on July 1, 1916, that the British took 57,000 casualties including 20,000 dead, a record never equaled in the history of warfare... visited the underground museum in Albert, the Hamel memorial, Villers-Brettoneux, the major Australian Memorial...’

The next day included a training walk along the river in Arras in the morning, battlefields in the afternoon including Vimy Ridge, a Canadian memorial that included 10 kilometres of underground tunnels on a seven-kilometre front. Included was a one-kilometre tunnel, 10 metres underground that led from a rear area to the frontline trenches, which were just 25 yards from the German lines at the closest point. Heavy mining was a feature of the campaign. In 20 days, the Canadians rained one million shells on the Germans, the last week of which the Germans called “the week of suffering”. The visitors’ centre also revealed that there are 33 million grenades and 33 million shells estimated to remain along the length of the Western Front. Up to 750,000 of these shells could contain chemical agents. The RVR team returned to Bullecourt in the evening and then via Mont St. Quentin to Paris.

Naked Army was very pleased to be approached by RVR and will continue to sponsor the unit’s self-funded activities, which in previous years have also included ANZAC landmark restoration work in the UK.
Many thanks to Major Beck, team co-coordinator Sgt Staffieri and the RVR team members.

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