We were headed to Vimy this day - but got distracted by a fairly new attraction called Le Carriere Wellington - which turned out to a fantastic attraction. During WWI in 1917, the British Army assembled a huge force to attack the Germans around the Arras area - they thought up this ingenious idea of attacking with some 24,000 soldiers, which were - and this is the neat part - all housed in caves underneath the town of Arras. These caves had originally been carved in the 17th century and were later added to by team of New Zealand engineers (hence, the name Wellington) such that there were some 12 miles of tunnels close to the German front. The caves featured some artwork from the soldiers who lived there waiting to pop up on the front lines - and face the enemy. One of the more famous soldiers was the British poet Wilfred Owen who said "I am the enemy you killed, my friend".
Trouble was that their intelligence hadn't picked up that the Germans had moved their front - called the Hindenberg front. As a result, the battle raged over some 2 months and resulted in around 250,000 soldiers dying (both sides) - around 4,000 per day. We had a tour of the underground tunnels where they lived for some months before the assault. It was fascinating. These same caves were later used by Canadian soldier later in 1918 as part of the assault that led to the end of the war.
We all enjoyed it very much - very humbling to see how these young men lived - before many of them died.
