It's hard to visualise when you see it now ..... but all this devastation happened on the 3rd anniversary of Anzac Day ! Villers–Bretonneux, Australian National Memorial By 25 April 1918 Villers–Bretonnneux resembled many other devastated towns and villages along the Western Front in France and Belgium. The houses of the poor as well as the chateaux of the wealthy lay roofless and looted; public buildings, some of them medieval in origin, were gutted and useless; and ancient churches were ruins where the sacred statues and icons mingled with broken stained glass, fallen masonry and charred wood. Somehow it was the churches, emblematic of European civilisation, that caught the eye of the official photographers and war artists of all nations; the empty shells of these buildings were dramatic symbols of what war had brought to Villers–Bretonneux and hundreds of other places like it. http://www.ww1westernfront.gov.au/villers-bretonneux/town-of-villers-bretonneux.html
