Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux - Memorial

Memorial

In the 1930s an impressively towering memorial was established at the top of the Villers-Bretonneux British Military Cemetery to honour the Australian soldiers who fell in France in the Great War. The cemetery is located between Villers-Bretonneux and Fouilloy on the hill (belonging to the latter but overlooking the former) from which the famous night attack was launched. Some ten miles east of Amiens and north of the straight main (Roman) road to St-Quentin, it rises gently to a plateau overlooking Amiens, the Somme Valley and the town from which it has its name. The cemetery contains 2,000 graves, of which 779 are Australians. A further 10 Australian casualties of the battle are buried in the Villers-Bretonneux Communal Cemetery. The smaller Crucifix Corner British Military Cemetery just east of the town, and now in the shadow of a motorway embankment, contains the graves of British and French home and colonial troops, the former including many Australians, who fell in the area in subsequent fighting which moved further to the east only on 8 August 1918 (but from then on rapidly).

The victory gained at Villers-Bretonneux on the third anniversary of the Gallipoli landings is yearly commemorated by Australians. In 2008, to mark the battle’s ninetieth anniversary, the Australian and New Zealand ANZAC Day dawn service was held for the first time on the Fouilloy hill instead of on the Gallipoli peninsula.