Ypres and WW1 Battlefields

Welcome to my first blog from my trip in Europe!

I've just got back from a battlefields tour of the Ypres Salient and I'm absolutely blown away. I've studied the war at school, seen countless movies and done my own reading around the subject but I was still totally unprepared for what I've witnessed and experienced over the past 2 days.
I attended The Last Post at The Menin Gate last night and, although I didn't really have a personal link to anyone whose life was being celebrated, I still felt that the whole experience was incredibly moving. I actually felt very drained afterwards, as if I'd just attended a funeral!

Picture: Menin Gate

Then, bright and early this morning, I was taken on a tour of the battlefields near Ypres by a very knowledgeable Englishman called Bob. He has spent the whole of his life studying the two world wars, could recount verbatim letters/ stories/ poems from the front and could answer any question that was thrown at him. Firstly he took us to Hill 60 (a hill that was created by men who, as they created the railway, needed somewhere to throw excess soil). This was German occupied for a long while as it was 60 ft above sea level and gave a great vantage point. But what struck me most was the distance between the German front line and the Allied front line - it was literally a stone's throw away! Bob described to us how the miners were employed, at 6 times the wages of the soldiers, to tunnel under the German territory. In 1917 a series of explosions were set off by the Allies underneath the German territory resulting in a huge amount of German deaths and striking fear and shock into the rest. The Caterpillar Crater was created by one of these explosions and it was said that a huge cheer could be heard from the Allies as this was detonated - it was very motivational for the men! Bob had mentioned that it was predicted that thousands of bodies still lay under the grass at Hill 60 and there certainly was an eery feeling as we walked around.

Picture: Caterpillar Crater

Next we went to Hill 62/ Sanctuary Wood where we stood in preserved Allied trenches. I walked through a Communication Trench where I noted how cold and wet it was (and I was only there a matter of minutes, not years as the soldiers had been!). I wasn't able to stand straight as it was underground and I spent most of the 90 seconds that I was in there praying that there weren't any rats! Thankfully it was pitch black so I wouldn't have been able to see them anyway! Interesting note: we'd started chatting about Birdsong when we'd visited Hill 60 (as there was a link with miners and WW1) so when we reached Sanctuary Wood Bob told me that Eddie Redmayne had hired him a couple of years back to help him to understand the nature of trench warfare and to give him a good idea as to how the soldiers felt. Apparently Eddie had walked through this Communication Trench 15 times to get a really good feel for it - I walked through twice and knew that I didn't like it and didn't want to do it again!

Picture: Inside the Communications Trench

It was interesting to go at this time of year as it was very wet and soggy and the trenches were filled with water - I couldn't go in the Support Trench as the water would have spilled over my walking boots and I might have got trench foot (OK, maybe I'm being dramatic but my feet would definitely have ended up damp!). What struck me was how narrow the trenches were. It's unbelievable to think that the men slept, ate and socialised in such cramped conditions. There were holes literally metres from the trenches that had been caused by shelling, so I guess the men wouldn't have been getting much sleep anyway due to the noise. Bob had also mentioned that the Germans were big fans of eating rats - they were apparently a delicacy!

Picture: The Support Trench

Outside the museum was a great example of the Howitzer which Bob explained was a German brand that the Allies copied and improved over the years - quite cheeky to use their own design against them, I think!

Picture: The Howitzer

Next we went to two cemeteries - one was a battlefield cemetery and one had been created after the war for the Australian men. There were some stones that backed up against the wall of the battlefield cemetery which I later learned meant that the soldiers had been buried in that cemetery after they'd died (these were recorded) but then the cemetery had been shelled during the war. When the Commonwealth War Graves Commission came to restore the cemeteries (most of which had been makeshift cemeteries in the battlefield) they had no body to put with the stone so the stone was laid next to the wall. It was amazing how many of these stones I saw on the 4 hour tour!
We also went to Tyne Cot Cemetery - the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world. Almost 12,000 soldiers were buried here. The thing that saddened me the most was that around 8000 of these graves were for unidentified men! Sometimes a rank was put on the stone but oftentimes it was left blank. An inscription was put at the bottom of all of these stones of "Known Unto God" that was chosen by Rudyard Kipling which is a nice touch, however, it must be sad for the relatives who are not able to visit a specific stone and know that their husband/ father/ brother is buried there.

Picture: Tyne Cot Cemetery

At the end of the war, King George had visited the site where Tyne Cot Cemetery now stands. He'd declared that the Cross of Remembrance be built on top of one of the German Bunkers - it is still there today.

Picture: The Cross of Remembrance on top of the German Bunker

Lastly we visited The Brooding Soldier - a statue that marks the spot of the first gas attacks in WW1. We were told a lovely story of how one of the soldiers (a Chemist back at home) knew that the natural substance for neutralising the chlorine gas was urine. So news quickly spread that, when the next gas attack happened, the soldiers should wee on some cloth and hold it to their mouths. A horrible thought now, however, I'm sure I'd rather inhale my own urine than die from exposure to the gas!

Picture: The Brooding Soldier

All in all, a really interesting and thought-provoking day. Compared to what these men went through in the battlefields, we have no reason to complain with the easy lives we live today! It was freezing up on those hills (and I was wearing 3 layers - some of the Canadians and Scots were wearing kilts!). The noise in 1914 must have been deafening, the smell unbearable and the fear of potential death at every turn must have been incredibly traumatic, not only for the men on a daily basis but for their families who would have had to pick up the pieces when (if) they got home.

I have loved wandering round Ypres (Ieper), especially since I'm one of only a few tourists in the whole town, and I have found it very interesting to see how the community have rebuilt there lives in the past 90 years. Buildings were rebuilt to replicate the buildings that were shelled (from around 7 miles away in the battlefields) and farmers came back, picked the shells and hand grenades out of their fields and got back to work. They are still finding unexploded shells today and every month the bomb disposal unit blows them up - unbelievable 100 years on!

Next stop = Bruges tomorrow!