The battlefields of the Somme

Almost a hundred years after the final shots of the First World War, the gunfire is just a stutter in the history books. Today's Somme is sleepy and safe. Although not on the major tourist routes, there is still much to see and do. Battlefield tours of course, but more.

Here is a story from my family:

"I'm Benjamin Miles McKenzie Matthews – and if you laugh I'll 'fump' you". When he was a child, this was the introduction always used by one of my mother's favourite uncles (above).

I grew up hearing that anecdote, loving its cadence. To be landed with such a handle must have been a heavy burden for a lad. He dealt with it. Pity he couldn't deal so well with the grenade that just years later blew his young body to pieces, leaving nothing to bury.

The huge wall where his name is recorded at Villers-Bretonneux in the Somme region of France is dense with names from many battalions of Australian and New Zealand forces that opposed the forces sweeping these now-slumbering plains. Today I find his name halfway up on the left, under the 11th Battalion, carved proudly yet simply: B. M. Matthews. He was just 24.

I shed a tear for this young man I never met, for I am the mother of a son, too.

Today the Somme region is quiet, holding memories, hosting the graves of those they could bury. The sight of endless fields of ordered white headstones is shattering. The sheer scope of the loss is incomprehensible – a million and a half casualties, dead, missing, prisoners, wounded, from both sides.

Yet some remember with more gratitude. At the Victoria school in Villers-Bretonneux, schoolchildren learn Waltzing Matilda, there is an Australian flag, and carved possums and platypus in the hall. A sign reads "N'Oublions Jamais l'Australie" – let us never forget Australia.

Let us also never forget the loss of lives - and futures .

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