A grave near Arras

After the delights of Paris, Ellie and I had a more solemn visit in northern France. We travelled to Arras, and from there to the British War Cemetery at Cabaret Rouge, about 5km away . We were stunned by the sheer number of war cemeteries in those 5km. We passed a German cemetery with 30,000 graves, a French one with 34,000 graves, a huge Canadian cemetery, several British cemeteries as well as smaller Czech and Polish cemeteries. The cemetery at Cabaret Rouge had almost 7,000 graves, including those of 116 Australians. The combined sight of all these grave markers really brought home the scale of death on the Western Front in World War One. And we were only in one tiny part of the battlefields.

The purpose of our trip was to visit the grave of my grandmother’s cousin, Percy Davidson. He had enlisted in Bendigo, Victoria at the age of 22 years, and after two weeks of military training he embarked for Egypt. After stopping in Egypt for a week, the 29th Battalion sailed to Marseilles from where they were sent straight to the Western Front. Three weeks later, on 19th July 1916, Percy was shot in the stomach during battle, and was then captured by the Germans. He died as a prisoner of war the following day. He was listed as Missing in Action for almost a year, before the Red Cross confirmed that he had died as a prisoner. Percy’s father Jeremiah Davidson was informed and he then died only a few weeks later. Percy’s mother Sarah, the older sister of my great-grandmother Jessie, had died not long after Percy’s birth. Percy’s military file contains pages and pages of letters as the Australian War Office attempted to find a next of kin to whom they could send his medals.


Our visit to Percy’s grave was very moving. What was particularly poignant was that over half of the 7,000 bodies interred in that cemetery were unidentified. The photo on the left shows a row of graves of unknown soldiers. Thousands of families would never know for sure what happened to their young men. Ellie and I placed a small tub of flowers on Percy’s grave, and a little Australian flag. Ellie then let me sing Eric Bogle’s “Willie McBride” – a tale of a visit to a graveyard just like Cabaret Rouge, in which the singer asks if those who lie here “know why they died”. The song finishes by asking if they “really believed that this war would end wars”.

"But the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain
For Willie McBride it all happened again
And again
And again
And again
And again"