The Lost Tommies. Ross Coulthart
first Australians moved into the Somme valley in July 1916, and Vignacourt was soon full of the Australian diggers as well as British Tommies. Within weeks, the Australian and British soldiers from here would experience a baptism of blood just to the north of the river Somme at a town called Pozières. There were also large Australian camps very close by, at Pernois and Flesselles, and many of the diggers who appear in the photographs are likely to have walked several kilometres into Vignacourt from those camps to have their picture taken by the Thuilliers. One of the best descriptions of these rest towns appears in the book The Gallant Company: An Australian Soldier’s Story of 1915–18, by Harold R. Williams, in which he describes going to a rest camp at the town of Buire:
Its one main street was churned into mud with the ceaseless stream of transports and marching infantry passing to and from the line. Its inhabitants consisted of aged men, frightened looking children and women with care-lined faces … Every second house was an estaminet which dispensed vin blanc and vin rouge of dubious vintage. These places were open for troops only during certain hours … its immediate merit was that the Army here provided steaming hot baths … no words can describe the desire for it of men whose bodies and clothes were overrun with vermin and foul with trench mud … Dried, we went to the store and were issued with garments in lieu of those we had handed in. Sometimes this underclothing was new, but mostly it was the laundered and disinfected wear of others who had been through the baths. Invariably these contained the eggs of lice which survived treatment and eventually hatched out …2
So while it was a supply and support hub for the war effort, Vignacourt became a place primarily for rest and recreation – a sanctuary from the horrors of the war just twenty to thirty kilometres to the north-east.
PLATE 105 Soldiers of the Australian 5th Battalion pose with Robert Thuillier.
PLATE 106 A smiling Australian corporal in the Signals Corps sits a young local girl on his lap.
Unlike so many of the soldiers they photographed, Louis and his wife survived the war. Perhaps because he had been exposed to so many motorcycles during the conflict – there are many in his photographs – Louis indulged a passion post-war for motorbike racing and, ever one with an eye for an opportunity, in 1920 he became a dealer in army surplus. Judging from his attic, and the mountains of early motorcycle-racing magazines strewn around his photographic gear, it seems the Thuillier photographic plates were left exactly as they were immediately the war ended, forgotten until Robert Crognier first tried and then Laurent Mirouze succeeded in bringing them to the world’s attention decades later. There are no plates in the Thuillier collection beyond about 1919 or 1920, so it seems likely Louis and Antoinette wanted a break from photography after the war years.
PLATE 107 British Army Services Corps soldiers with troop-carrier vehicle in the Vignacourt main street.
PLATE 108 Another image of ASC soldiers with troop vehicles in Vignacourt. The churned-up condition of the road is clear.
PLATE 109 British Royal Flying Corps soldiers outside the nearby aerodrome.
PLATE 110 A rare Thuillier image of the nearby British aerodrome at Vignacourt. This is a British Royal Aircraft Factory SE5 or SE5A biplane.
PLATE 111 A private of the Royal Engineers on his motorcycle. The chevrons on his lower right sleeve show he is in his third year of overseas service and date this image to January 1918 or later.
PLATE 112 A proud young Tommy from the Royal Warwickshire Regiment with all his kit.
PLATE 113 Two seated sergeants (the one on the left has a Military Medal ribbon on his left breast). A corporal stands on the left and a private on the right, regiment unknown.
There is a tragic twist to the story of Louis Thuillier, related by his nephew Robert Crognier, in a letter he wrote to Laurent Mirouze shortly after they met, in 1989. For years after the war, Louis struggled with depression and, despite the concern and care of his family, he withdrew from them and sank into a deep despair. One early morning in January 1931, a furious knocking on the door of their house woke Robert’s parents. It was the husband of Louis’s sister, Louisa, who lived nearby. They were told ‘Louis Peugeot’ had committed suicide at the age of forty-four. He had shot himself in the head.
There is no one from the family who knows for sure what drove Louis to end his life. But it is entirely plausible that he was traumatized and pushed into depression by his own wartime experiences; tormented by the memory of the thousands of young men who went on to their deaths after sitting or standing before his camera in his Vignacourt courtyard. There was not the understanding back then that there is today of the effects of battlefield trauma on a human soul.
Louis’s suicide perhaps explains why the extraordinary photographic collection was placed in the family attic after his death and forgotten. For Antoinette, who lived until the 1970s, it may well have been too painful for her to recall this enormously creative period during the First World War when she and her husband lived such a vital and social life, welcoming soldiers from all over the world into their home, Louis often working well into the night to print the latest photographs.
The couple had two children, both boys, Robert and Roger. Robert was born in 1912 and features in many of the ‘Lost Diggers’ wartime pictures. Roger was born after the war, in 1920.
PLATE 114 A Thuillier family photograph – Robert and Roger Thuillier, after the war. (Courtesy Bacquet family)
For the many Allied soldiers, a child’s innocent face was doubtless a blessed relief after everything they had experienced in the trenches. The delightful, happy images of the town’s children sitting with soldiers suggests they clearly enjoyed playing with the troops, many of whom were fathers themselves.
PLATE 115 Soldiers, possibly of the Army Services Corps, with Roger Thuillier, on the right, and another little friend.
PLATE 116 A slightly damaged plate of Royal Engineers soldiers posing with a Thuillier child and another local.
PLATE 117 Two Army Cyclist Corps privates with a young French girl.
PLATE 118 An Army Services Corps lance corporal with bandolier and spurs, posing in front of a bus.
PLATE 119 A Royal Artillery Regiment soldier (left) with two Army Services Corps men, clearly in the winter.