… where I am right now.

In fact, if I walked forward a dozen or so spaces and stood on that slab just there in between the rails, I’d be on the very spot where the Armistice was signed between the Allied powers and Germany on 11th November 1918.

And it’s also the place where the armistice was signed between France and the German Reich on 22nd June 1940 and which brought to an end the Battle of France.

And despite what you might hear, this is not the railway carriage in which the armistice was signed, even though it dies carry the same fleet number.

After the signing of the 1940 Armistice, the original carriage was taken to Germany where it was displayed for a while in Berlin. But as the noose closed in around the city, the carriage was one of the artefacts evacuated.

It was taken to relative safety to near Ohrdruf in Thuringia, but was burnt by the Germans in late April 1945 to stop it falling back into Allied hands.

This carriage here is one of the original carriage’s younger sisters, but is fitted with many of the fittings and accessories of the original carriage, which were discovered in Berlin after the end of the War.

There are quite a few other bits and pieces on display here too.

This is a Renault FT light tank of 1918, and despite being built less than 2 years after the first appearance of the tank on the battlefield, it really is a modern vehicle, well in advance of anything else that any army had to offer at the time and is the basis of almost every subsequent tank built even today.

In fact the design was so advanced that dozens of them went to war in World War II with several different armies. The one here actually did see action in the latter stages of World War I.

But pride of place from my point of view in the absence of any contemporary aeroplane, has to be this piece of artillery

This is the French Army’s 75mm rapid-fire cannon, much better known as the soixante-quinze. And when I say “rapid fire”, I really do mean “rapid fire”. The official firing rate of one of these is 7 shells per minute, but fully-trained crews have been times as firing 24 and even more rounds per minute under pressure.

This was certainly the most astonishing piece of artillery of World War I and its rapid rate of fire with a trained crew saved many a battle.

You could always tell when they were at the front because instead of going off with a dull thud or a bang like most artillery pieces, they had a very distinctive whine that anyone who has ever seen a World War I film featuring the French Army will immediately recognise. It sends a similar shiver up my spine as does the hooter of a North American diesel engine.

Apart from that, the one trouble with going to bed early is that you awaken early. And after a long while of tossing and turning, I finally rose up from my (very comfortable) stinking pit to find that it was … errr … 04:26

But never mind. That gave me an opportunity to back up all of the files on the laptop and to do a few other things too.

And have a shower. And a shave. And not just clean clothes but brand spanking new socks and undies. I bought a pile of those last year just before I was taken ill, and I hadn’t even unwrapped them. Anyway, I’ve brought them with me.

Breakfast could have been a little better, but apart from that, I enjoyed my stay at the Akena Hotel here at Claye-Souilly and I’ll remember this place for again, that’s for sure. Add it to the list if I can’t make one of my other two stops. It was a good find.

By 11:00 I was back on the road and after fuelling up with diesel on the N2, headed off for the clearing at Compiègne. This was another one of the places on my list that I can now cross off.

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful and even after my sight-seeing, I was back here in my little room by 17:00 with a couple of bags full of stuff.

I had a good rest, a pizza from round the corner, and now I’m off to bed. I’ve had a busy last few days and I need to catch up with my beauty sleep.