Most Australians touring the Somme visit Villers-Bretonneux – and with good reason. It is here that Australia raised a national memorial, a tall white tower looking out across the killing fields of France. The names of over 10 000 men are inscribed here: those whose bodies vanished in the carnage, who ‘have no known grave’. And stretching down from the Memorial to the Missing are row after row of tombstones, each as white and upright as the tower set behind them. Over 400 Australians are buried at Villers-Bretonneux. They rest alongside the graves of soldiers from Britain and the dominions, and 266 men who could never be identified. Their homeland will never be known.

Most of these men were killed in the German spring offensive of 1918. While historians debate the role the First AIF played in turning back that onslaught, none would dispute that this was a turning point of the war. In a way, Villers-Bretonneux marked the beginning of the end of the fighting – a tiny hamlet on the outskirts of Amiens carved its name in history and secured a place on the itinerary of every battlefield tour.

No visit to Villers-Bretonneux is complete without a tour of its museum and school. Thousands of visitors pass through the building annually; some study the contents of glass cases and bookshelves, others gaze in wonder at intricate carvings of Australian wildlife (a postwar gift to the school) lining the Assembly Hall’s walls. Every Australian visitor also reads the message shouting in green and gold across the school ground: ‘N’oublions jamais l’Australie’ – Never forget Australia.

N’oublions jamais l’Australie: A kiss from France sent across the ocean. Embroidered cards like this one were often posted home by nurses and soldiers serving abroad. They laid a foundation of goodwill that Madam Crivelli’s fundraising efforts would build on. Courtesy Laura James.

Australia did not forget Villers-Bretonneux. In the aftermath of the Great War, communities large and small contributed to the rebuilding of the town, and money raised mostly in Victoria helped establish the school. What we have forgotten is who was behind that mammoth labour: Madame Charlotte Crivelli, a French expatriate who settled in Albert Park.

In 1915, Madame Crivelli established the French Red Cross Society of Victoria. It was the beginning of an unpaid career in war work that would long outlast the war itself. ‘A bundle of energy’, Crivelli organised appeals, officiated over fundraising events, and personally packed a veritable mountain of goods for France.1

Throughout the war her society held soirees, fetes and dinner parties; organised parades, flower stalls and performances; and embarked on one collecting drive after another. Victorians responded generously – and not just with money. Rolls of flannel, reams of paper, cartons of books, razors, scissors, pillowslips and buttons were bundled together and sent overseas. Most of these donations went to a military hospital outside Paris where Madame Crivelli’s son Dr Louis Crivelli, and her sister, the wife of the former French Consul in Melbourne, worked. By 1916, Crivelli had raised enough money in Victoria to equip a ward of forty beds named after generous Melbourne suburbs or donors.2 And by the end of the war, the Society had raised a staggering £207 233 in funds – the equivalent of several million dollars today.3

But Madame Crivelli’s war work did not stop there. ‘As a French wife and mother’, the cause closest to her heart was the Societe d’Assistance Maternelle et Infantile.4 This particular charity helped the wives and widows of French soldiers and their babies, offering them legal, social and medical protection. Pregnant women were housed, fed and cared for, and once their child was born both mother and baby were sent to a maternity home to convalesce. In a city stricken by wartime deprivations, the organisation provided food and housing for the hungry and the homeless. Between August 1914 and August 1915, 37 085 children were born in Paris, and the Societe d’Assistance Maternelle et Infantile assisted over 34 000 of them.5

Madame Crivelli’s war work continued: Madame Crivelli is presented with a bouquet of flowers at the award ceremony for her Legion of Honour, in recognition of her lifetime of service. She was the first woman to receive the honour in Australia. Sunday Times, 23 July 1916 courtesy National Library of Australia.

A French wife and mother: Madame Crivelli managed fundraising efforts, and personally contributed to the charity projects for her home country, France. The photographer noted that the image didn’t do her justice; that it couldn’t show ‘the way her smile goes sparkling all over one as she talks’. The Argus, 10 May 1947 courtesy National Library of Australia.

Madame Crivelli appealed to patriotism and motherhood at once, urging an alliance between the mothers of Australia and France. The former were asked to empathise with the plight of children orphaned, maimed and disadvantaged by war. ‘[G]ive a pillow for their heads’, Madame Crivelli pleaded:

Give food and clothing, so that, when your own little ones go to bed at night, your heart will not be sad at the thought of other babies who have suffered so much when their young lives should be full of peace and smiles.6

This call raised £20 832 over the course of the war, providing French children and their mothers with the necessities of life.7

Yet still Madame Crivelli felt she could do more. Appealing again to a sense of shared identity, she implored the schoolchildren of Victoria to come to the aid of war orphans in France. They responded by collecting over £1000 in a single year.8 Madame Crivelli then launched the French Ambulance appeal, securing the purchase and equipping of fourteen vehicles in 1917.9 She asked for clothing and blankets for refugees, welcomed French colonial troops on leave to Australia, and urged childless couples to adopt French children orphaned by the war.

Appealing to the schoolchildren of Victoria: Fundraising badges and medals issued to young Australians. Events like Children’s Flower Day mobilised vast reserves of unpaid child labour in support of the war effort. After the war, much of the money raised was pledged to the rebuilding of Villers-Bretonneux. Courtesy Laura James.

Even after the fighting had ceased and the French Red Cross Society had closed, Madame Crivelli’s war work continued. Not long after the signing of the Armistice she established the After-War Relief Society for France. At a time when most war workers were putting aside their collection tins and knitting needles, she rallied again to the cause. ‘Help is needed in France for the crippled, the blind, the consumptive soldiers; for returned prisoners, for the women, babies and war orphans.’10 Her beloved homeland may have no longer been a battlefield, but she saw there was still a war to be won.

The pact between France and Australia was mutually binding. Australian mothers had sent their sons to war; Charlotte Crivelli now helped them bear their loss. Through her sister in France, she organised some of the first wreath-laying ceremonies on the Somme. Photographs were taken of the carefully tended graves of Australian soldiers, and forwarded to those who most mourned their absence.11 In this, Madame Crivelli acted as a kind of fictive kin to grieving families; through her, those disenfranchised by distance from the battlefields found a way of connecting with the graves of loved ones far away.

Madame Crivelli was well aware of the devastation of Villers-Bretonneux, and knowing of its connection with Victoria, began to seek assistance for the town. Plans were put in place for French Week, a fundraising festival to be held in Melbourne in aid of that tiny town on the Somme. It took place in the last week of August 1921, coinciding with the anniversary of the Battle of Amiens. Under the refrain of ‘By Diggers Defended, Victoria Mended’, the festival received an overwhelming response from the community. Throughout the city of Melbourne, its suburbs and even in regional Victorian towns fundraising efforts were organised. Stalls selling flowers, buttons and postcards crowded the streets; a charity football match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground raised £200 alone; night concerts, picture shows and performances were held in venues large and small; and, at the top end of Collins Street, a reconstruction of the ruined town in miniature was displayed.

Victorians soon became familiar with the distress and suffering facing the citizens of Villers-Bretonneux, and at the conclusion of French Week, £24 275 had been raised.12 It says much for the generosity of Victorians that communities financially and emotionally exhausted by giving could be asked to give yet again. And this money was raised while Victorians grappled with the needs of their own veterans returning home to Australia, a legion of blind, crippled, wounded and insane.

Some of Victoria’s most prominent citizens pledged their support to rebuilding Villers-Bretonneux; Sir John Gellibrand and Sir John Monash argued for the adoption of the town by Melbourne. But again it was Charlotte Crivelli’s genius for fundraising that secured the project’s success. In 1921, she appealed again to the schoolchildren of Victoria to aid their counterparts on the other side of the world. And she succeeded in convincing the Director of Education, Frank Tate, to divert most of the funds leftover from the war effort to the aid of the town. A gift of £12 000 was presented from the children of Victoria to the children of Villers-Bretonneux. It laid the foundations of a new school and began a lasting relationship between Australia and France.13

The foundations of a new school: The community of Villers- Bretonneux gathers to lay the first stone of a new building. Note the coupling of Victoria and Villers- Bretonneux; their coats of arms are linked and circled by the flag of St George. School Paper, September 11, 1923 courtesy State Library of Victoria.

In postwar Australia, many hoped for a new epoch of peace and prosperity. The gesture of rebuilding that corner of war-torn France symbolised a faith in a new and better world. But the same orphaned children rescued by Madame Crivelli from the slums and streets of Paris would march to war in much the same uniform as their fathers, and the town of Villers-Bretonneux would soon be occupied again.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: This story draws on a detailed survey of contemporary newspapers. An extended study of the relationship between Victoria and Villers-Bretonneux, featuring the work of Charlotte Crivelli, appears in Laura James, ‘A Little Piece of Australia in France: Memory, Loyalty, Nationalism in Historicising the Relationship between Victoria and Villers-Bretonneux’ (BA honours thesis, University of Melbourne, 2010). For further reading on Villers-Bretonneux and Australia see Allan Blankfield and Robin Corfield, Never Forget Australia-N’Oublions Jamais L’Australie: Australia and Viller-Bretonneux, 1918–1993 (Hawthorn: Villers-Bretonneux 75th Anniversary Pilgrimage Project Committee for the Royal Victoria Regiment, 1994); and Linda Wade, ‘The Reconstruction of Villers-Bretonneux 1918–1922’ in Martin Crotty and Marina Larsson (eds), Anzac Legacies: Australians and the Aftermath of War (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2010).

1 Punch, 11 July 1918.

2 Brighton Southern Cross, 23 December 1916; Punch, 6 January 1916.

3 Ernest Scott, Australia During the War (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1941), p. 883.

4 Argus, 12 November 1915.

5 Age, 8 December 1915.

6 Advocate, 8 July 1920.

7 Scott, Australia During the War, p. 883.

8 Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 18 December 1915.

9 Punch, 11 July 1918.

10 The Argus, 7 May 1919.

11 The Australasian, 13 December 1919.

12 The Argus, 2 March 1922.

13 Minutes, Victorian Education Department War Relief Fund Meeting, 26 November 1922, PROV VPRS 14009/P0001/1.