Bertangles (
web site, in French) is a tiny village (pop. 654) 5 miles from Amiens in a rural area of Picardy. We stopped
there because there was a campground, which turned out to be very nice, on the grounds of a chateau.
The Chateau de Bertangles (also
see Wikipedia article) had served as the headquarters for the Australian Forces in WWI and is a handsome building. We walked
around the village just in time to see an afternoon wedding at the
church.
The village is very quiet and charming, and like
a lot of places in Europe, at least one thing of historical note occurred there, or at least very near there. On April 21, 1918,
the German air ace,
Baron von Richthofen, the famous Red Baron, made a forced landing there after being shot down by a British pilot
in a
Sopwith Camel. When a British soldier rushed to the plane he found that Richthoven was dead, the controls of his
red
triplane still gripped between his knees.
