Day 23 - The Eleventh Hour

Sunday 9th April, 22 days completed and with only 12 days remaining until we arrive in Ypres. When we left km0 on the 18th March, Ypres seemed such a distant proposition; a nebulous mirage without form, ‘a mountain to climb’ or more precisely 1000 km to walk. Now, as we prepared to leave Soissons on a foggy grey morning, our arrival in Ypres has now become tangible, taking shape so that we can almost reach out and touch it. Ypres is now only 122 miles by road.

Today’s route took us along the southern bank of the river Aisne to the Glade of the Armistice, about 27 km. We had originally planned to walk into Compiegne from here, adding a further 8 km along a busy road to the route, but decided to avoid an hour or two of dicing with death at the end of the day by jumping in a taxi into the town centre. This new plan significantly improved morale as we struggled to get going through the early morning mist after our 36-hr break.

Just north of Ambleny, we passed the Robert du Bois Military Cemetery, the combination of fog and the weak sunlight giving it an eery ghostly feel. There are over 10,000 French soldiers buried, here, their bodies exhumed from other military cemeteries further to the south-west; casualties of the fighting on the Marne in 1914 and later during the German Spring Offensive of March 1918.

As the sun broke through and burnt off the fog, the day warmed, and it wasn’t long before we both felt the need to supplement our rather lack-lustre breakfast of a croissant, with a slightly-melted Snickers bar and half an apple each. Satiated, we continued our walk along the banks of The Aisne, the last few kms taking longer than expected, as the very narrow track (not suitable for bikes) wound its way through the newly budding trees. The air was close and the forest dense, and we had the feeling that in its own way, nature was letting us know that something momentous had happened here, which indeed it had.

The Glade of The Armistice sits in the forest outside the city of Compiegne, at the location where the Germans signed the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended WW1. Upon entering, a large statue of the French general and Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch towers over the grassy glade, having survived its destruction on the orders of Hitler in 1940. He apparently ordered it to be left intact so that Foch would be forced to stand in honour only over a wasteland. The original mahogany-lined carriage in which The Armistice was signed was removed by Hitler to Berlin for safe-keeping but later destroyed by The SS. The Compagnie des Wagon-Lits carriage housed by the museum today was built in the same batch as the original and was part of Foch’s private train during the signing. The small museum containing the carriage was most informative and well worth the 8 euro entry fee. Now we have visited the site of the ending of WW1 hostilities, we are both keen to pay our respects to the fallen British (indeed all nationalities) servicemen by maximising the number of important sites we can visit over the coming days across The Somme and then further North into Flanders.