The cynical journalist in me had to escape. There was a Royal Wedding on, and if I stuck around I was on Windsor street party duty. So I hatched a plan and treacherously fled to Arras in northern France.
What I hadn’t realised was just how many British soldiers once made a similar journey a century ago – albeit in far less luxury than me. I necked free fizz and snacks in the P&O Ferry club lounge.
Back then British troops lived in Arras and even hid in a network of tunnels beneath the battle-scarred town. And as I was about to find out, it was from that rabbit warren underneath Arras that they launched an audacious but doomed bid to end World War I early with its largest-ever surprise attack.
During World War I British troops lived in Arras and hid in a network of tunnels beneath the battle-scarred town (pictured)
It’s possible to trace the final steps of our boys and the spot where they necked their last shot of rum before going over the top, writes Sarah White
The Wellington Tunnels are about an hour by car from Calais and are at a depth of about 20 metres (65 feet). Pictured is a memorial to the New Zealand tunnellers
There were only two towns on the Front Line during WWI – Arras and Verdun. Pictured is the entrance to the Wellington Tunnels, named after the capital of New Zealand, the country where many of the tunnellers came from
Faubourg-d’Amiens Cemetery in Arras (pictured) was used during World War I by field ambulances and fighting units until November 1918, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
The British smuggled 24,000 troops underground to live in a network of specially mined tunnels before they went over the top a few meters from German positions before dawn on April 9th, 1917.
But despite initially gaining the momentum, the Germans wrestled it back in the bloody Battle of Arras, which lasted six weeks and cost 160,000 British and 125,000 German lives. The war wreaked total devastation for another year before the Allies finally won.
You can follow in their tracks at Arras – an hour by car from Calais – by exploring 20 meters below the now rebuilt town in the Wellington Tunnels (named after the capital of New Zealand, the country where many of the tunnellers came from), tracing the final steps of our boys and the spot where they necked their last shot of rum before going over the top, within killing distance of enemy lines.
I can only imagine that it would probably have taken an actual gunshot, rather than a swig of free booze, to get me going up and over.
I witnessed footage of German artillery devastating Arras, I heard soldiers’ final love letters or notes home mocking their band of brothers (one said another came from Norfolk ‘pig country’).
Along the dimly-lit pathway, the voices of Allied troops sing out and you can hear haunting poetry from English poet and soldier Wilfred Owen, who died on the Western Front just a week before armistice declared the war over.
His immortal line still lights up the dank passage today: ‘I am the enemy you killed. My friend.’
A cross in memory of a fallen comrade and a female lover still remain etched into the chalk walls. There’s graffiti showing a cave named London by Scottish sappers.
Some 400 Kiwi and Mauri engineers had been lured to what was the other side of the world to them to risk their lives for a cause they would never benefit from, helping to dig out the network of tunnels under No Man’s Land and right next to the Front Line.
The tunnels provided water, electricity and miles of passages big enough for men to stand up straight in and for two stretchers to pass by each other.
The few French civilians who stayed in Arras during the Great War spoke of living in perfect harmony with their occupiers, the 14 British Commonwealth divisions, even if they didn’t always take to our ways of life.
There were certainly no signs of corned beef or baked beans with sausages on any restaurant menus I saw. I wonder why.
Our informed guide Pierre Wavelet denied claims by British troops that local children were dirty, saying: ‘That’s just not true. Generally the French accepted the Allied occupation wholeheartedly. The few who remained there anyway.’
An underground shrine in memory of the Wellington tunnellers. Arras was a British outpost during the war and 10,000 copies of the Daily Mail were sold there every day
Arras was then such a British outpost that 10,000 copies of the Daily Mail were sold there every day. Confused Frenchwomen once accidently went skinny dipping with Scots in kilts, thinking they were so many skirts that they had to be women.
When I returned to daylight I found the World War II German bullet holes that will forever blight the Arras War Memorial, built to remember all of the Great War heroes.
Nearby in the British Military Cemetery the graves of over 2,600 British Commonwealth soldiers and German prisoners of war remain immaculate in perfectly manicured flowerbeds.
A surrounding wall contains the names of over 35,000 British, New Zealand and South Africans killed in Arras whose bodies were never found.
After all that fighting talk it was time to toast the royal nuptials of Harry and Meghan’s wedding.
So, I popped into local wine bar La Dame Jeanne on Place des Heros, and quaffed a couple of sommelier Bertrand’s finest glasses of pinot noir.
Then I staggered from Place des Heros to Grand Place (they are the two greatest central squares in northern France, with Flemish frontages) and the popular French restaurant L’Entre Nous.
My virtuous fish diet was forgotten while I tucked into delicious foie gras and a slightly too rare steak (so very French), before staggering back to the noisy but recommended local accommodation, the Hotel de l’Univers, after finally being beaten by a mountainous dessert.
Sarah popped into local wine bar La Dame Jeanne on Place des Heros (pictured) and quaffed a couple of sommelier Bertrand’s finest glasses of pinot noir
When my wine fog faded the next morning, I explored Vimy Ridge, five miles north-east of Arras, which the French donated to the Canadians in memory of the 66,000 who died in the Great War. Four thousand had died taking Vimy Ridge alone in April 1917 in the biggest trench line advance of the war – between three and four miles.
That was before an Allied break in proceedings to relieve exhausted forces allowed the Germans to regroup – with fatal consequences. Now a vast white sculpture marks the spot overlooking miles of peaceful countryside, which was once just shelling craters.
To the north-west of Arras, up a steep hill that cycling tourists struggle with that’s lined with photographs of the war dead on eye-level posts, is Notre Dame-de-Lorette, also called the Ablain St.-Nazaire French Military Cemetery.
It’s the world’s largest French military cemetery where 20,000 are buried under symmetrical lines of crosses, with another 22,000 unidentified in mass graves.
The female mourner sculpture on the Canadian National Vimy Memorial at Vimy Ridge, five miles north-east of Arras
The preserved trenches on the battlefield of Vimy Ridge, where 66,000 Canadians lost their lives
To the north-west of Arras, at Notre Dame-de-Lorette – the world’s largest French military cemetery – 20,000 are buried under symmetrical lines of crosses, with another 22,000 unidentified in mass graves
The Ring of Remembrance is a stunning elliptical 328-metre memorial that honours all those who lost their lives in northern France in WWI. The names of the dead are listed alphabetically on 500 stainless steel sheets
There is also a stunning elliptical 328-metre ‘Ring of Remembrance’ there that carries the names of the 580,000 soldiers who fell in the region between 1914-1918 amid the hell-fire of 1.5billion artillery shells, including 294,000 from the British Commonwealth, 174,000 Germans, 106,000 French, 2,300 Belgians, 2,300 Portuguese and even Russian and Romanian prisoners of war.
The names are listed alphabetically on 500 stainless steel sheets in what look like pages of a book. There were four enormous sheets of Smiths who died.
My friend found a potential distant relative among the names. I imagine any of us could if we looked hard enough.
I left Arras feeling moved and enormously grateful that, unlike thousands of World War I soldiers, I was able to make the return journey.