In this episode, the first in a series of Battlefields in a Day, we explore one of the iconic British and Commonwealth battlefields of the Great War: Ypres, in Flanders. On our tour we take in some well known and famous locations, and travel off the beaten track, too.
Support the Show. (https://www.patreon.com/oldfrontline)
the city of Eep in flanders’s fields was the Bastion of the British and Commonwealth forces during the Great War four years of conflict changed the landscape forever and left behind hundreds of thousands of dead from All Nations what can we see of Eep in a day as spring brings the landscape of the western fronts alive once more it’s possible to travel to the old battlefields the old front line once again and so to inspire some interest in that this episode is the first of a new series of episodes where we’ll look at individual battlefields along the western fronts and try to visit them in a day now obviously we can’t do justice to the momentous episodes of The Great War in just a single day on any Battlefield but what we can do is give a taste of what the war was like in that area an insight into what the men of both sides went through and what there is to find on the battlefields today as always it will prompt you to go further and that’s the very purpose of visiting these battlefields like this and many go to the Western Front and don’t know where to start so hopefully these battlefields in a Day episodes will give you some inspiration to get out there to get on the ground and begin your own Journey along the old front line while a war is Raging in Europe once more and our perspective of visiting these battlefields might be slightly different because of that what do we get by taking a trip to the Western Front to any Battlefield of the Great War what it does I think is take our reading and understanding of the subject one step further you could read an entire library of books on the first world war but in many resp until you’ve seen the ground until you’ve understood just how low the ridges in Flanders were or the rolling downland of the Som affected the outcome of the battles or how dense the Woodland was or what the heights of the myrs around veran were like or the Rocky Mountains in the voge where the fighting took place or stood on the beaches at galipoli and walked the dry nulas there until you’ve done all that in many respects it’s a onedimensional view of what the conflict was about and I think more than that as well when you’ve read so much about a subject and you’ve studied it and you’ve read the Memoirs and you’ve heard the voices of the Great War connecting to the landscape that last witness of the Great War which still has so much to tell us is really the next step along that path the landscape that we find in France and Flanders and The Wider battlefields Beyond tells us so much and affects us part of us I think once you’ve been there will always always remain behind and this is what visits to battlefields like this give us apart from the greater historical understanding of the battles and engagements that took place there what kind of preparation do you need to do before you go to these battlefields and take a trip like this in this episode we’ll do e in a day what do you need to do well you obviously need to plan your route and to make that easier the route that we’re going to take in this podcast will be mapped out on the podcast website for you so you can go on there and see the Google Map links that will show you the route that we’re going to take Plan your routs see your ground understand the ground that you’re going to visit there are plenty of books that you can consult on the Great War before you go you may well have read so many there are Guy books there’s my own walking EP for example there’s the major and Mrs Holt’s book on EP Jerry merland and the late John cookie have done a whole series of Battlefield guides and there are many titles in the Battleground Europe series but a good easy title to take with you to pop in your knapsack because it’s only small and very thin and easy to digest is a book written by my former geography teacher Les coats Les coats and my history teacher Roger basball were the ones that got me across to the Western Front nearly 40 years ago now and I’m forever grateful to them both for that Les coats formed a publishing company with some fellow teachers and they put out quite a few books that were designed for students but they are so much more than books for children they contain good information good maps Les coat was a geographer so that’s not surprising and some good veteran testimony as well and good links to what you can find when you return from a trip like this because doing reading before you go is great but I often find exploring A New Path of a battlefield sometimes you get more when you read once you returned because you’ve seen the ground you’ve tramped those lanes you’ve passed through the woods and walk walk the streets or wherever it is you’ve gone and when you get back and pick up a book about that area it all seems to come together and is somewhat more understandable once you can visualize and once you can think back to what that Battlefield what that location is like so I’ll put some hints on reading both pre and post visit onto the podcast website and if you take nothing else with you I would certainly recommend Les coach’s little book just called EP and easily available and I’ll put a link to that on the podcast website too so with our preparation done our books read our guide books packed away our maps at hand whether digital or real we head off to the battlefields we head off to the Western fronts and we begin our attempt to visit EP in a day before we begin our visit on the ground it’s always worth thinking about some background to a Battlefield this is something that we regularly do when we take coach groups to the Western Front or indeed any battlefield of either World War setting the scene is an important part of our understanding and for many of you perhaps this will only be a virtual visit rather than an actual one or I hope most if not all of you will get that chance one day so EP in 1914 was a a sleepy Flemish City it was described in a pre-war badecker guide as a medieval Gem of Europe it had to make magnificent medieval buildings and it was a city that had grown rich on the cloth trade its main and most visible building in the center of the city was the cloth Hall here in medieval times cloth had been bought and sold all the little individual doors that surrounded the base of the building were each individual cloth stools the cloth trade had long since ceased in eat by 1914 but the money that had been generated from it the taxation had allowed the construction of good defenses around the city a good water system a good sewage system and a network of canals going up towards the coast to ship the barges of cloth to other parts of Europe for Britain the route to Eep in 1914 came by the declaration of war against Germany on the 4th of August 1914 the German invasion of neutral Belgium and our guarantee of that neutrality had drawn Britain into the conflict the British expeditionary Force the bef had mobilized as soon as the war had begun the first troops arriving in France on the 5th of August the very next day and then it had fought its first battle at mons on the 23rd of August 1914 a successful battle which the Germans were held but the French retreated on our flank and a great Retreat from mons that took the bef from mons to the man over 200 miles began at the man British and to a much greater degree French troops pushed the Germans back from the gates of Paris the schen plan the lightning strike against France its attempt to reach Paris had failed both sides dug in on the a Heights and then the Germans mov their forces up into northern France and Flanders for the so-called Race To The Sea the German attempt to get to the channel ports one of the places that stood in their way in 1914 was the city of Eep the old roads that went across this part of Belgium came through Eep on route to the channel coast and the German Army found itself heading towards that medieval Gem of a city to the north of ep the Belgian Army flooded the Easter plain and around the city British and French troops moved up to take their positions to hold the German Advance the war the war of movement in 1914 was rapidly becoming a war of entrenchments not on the scale that it would soon become but even at this stage British troops were digging in this was the first battle of EP in in which 56,000 British soldiers became casualties the bef and the French and the belgians to the north held the Germans the race to the Sea failed both sides dug in trench warfare began and trenches would be part of the landscape here in Flanders around deep for the next four years while aiming to dig in and dig deep and hold the belgians and the British and the French at Bay the Germans in the spring of 1915 decided to go on the offensive in Flanders and the Second Battle of EP saw the birth of chemical warfare on the Western Front on the evening of the 22nd of April 1915 poison gas was released against French troops French Colonial troops and British and Canadian troops on the battlefield over the course of the next few weeks the Germans pushed these soldiers back captured a lot of ground using the gas but the city of EP was held one thing that the Germans did take in that circum Battle of EP was much of the socaled High Ground the battlefields in Flanders are flat any Rising ground here will afford you an advantage and the Germans then have that Advantage for the next two years from mid 1915 to Mid 1917 when there is static Warfare at e no major battles a few minor engagements but no big attacks like there was later on or before this was the day-to-day activities of trench warfare thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of Men passed through here and thousands became casualties just holding the line in mid 1917 the Battle of meines to the South ruptured the German line and 19 huge Subterranean mines were exploded underneath the German positions allowing British and Commonwealth forces to advance from one side of the ridge to the other in a single day this led to the third battle of EP from July to November of 1917 often referred to as the Battle of passendale although passendale wasn’t reached until the very last stages of the offensive this saw the British and Commonwealth forces and with the assistance of French to the north advancing across this ground in a battlefield smashed to Pieces by shellfire a lunar landscape of shell craters and with the wetest summer in living memory it turned the whole Battlefield into a quagmire some of our most potent images of the Great War come from this period but the Battle of passendale pushed on it resulted in over 300,000 casual and the capture of all that High Ground to the north and Northeast of EP and pushing the Germans back finally we had the advantage but so smashed was that landscape that by the time passendale was taken it was taking British units up to 18 hours to move from EP up to the front line on the passendale ridge we held that line during the winter of 19178 America had now entered the war and the Germans knew that it was only a matter of time before American troops arrived on the battlefield so in the spring of 1918 they had one last rle of the dice one last attempt to win the war to end the war in Germany’s favor with a whole series of offensives first on the Som in March 1918 and then here in Flanders what the British called the battle of the lease in April of 1918 when on the 9th of April the Germans broke through EP was almost taken the line to the South was pushed right back and towns and Villages that had previously been behind the battlefield were now part of the battlefield but EP stood defiant and the German offensive ran out of steam the Americans did indeed come to Flanders in the summer of 1918 the 27th New York and the 30th Tennessee divisions fought alongside the British here and in the fourth and final battle of EP when British and Commonwealth forces into the north the belgians broke out of the old battlefields around EP pushed the Germans back the town of Menin was taken in October and beyond that both sides found themselves fighting not in trenches but in open ground leading to the final shots in Belgium at mons the Final Shots on the Western Front on the 11th of November 1918 four years of fighting at e four major battles five including the battle of the lease and so many smaller engagements as well and with it the mighty cost of a quarter of a million British and Commonwealth dead at least that many Germans thousands more French and belgians the battlefields of EP which measured no more than 20 odd miles north to south and about the same from east to west had really become one vast Cemetery as early as 1919 it became a place of pilgrimage because of these losses the very first Battlefield guide being published by the Mitchell entire company just a few months after the end of the war and it makes fascinating reading today the pilgrims came in drips and drabs the civilians returned and the landscape of e was gradually reclaimed fled the pilgrims the visitors coming to see cemeteries and memorials that were being constructed to see where a loved one had fought and died and Veterans returning to see where they had fought and lost so many of their comrades came first in drips and drabs and small groups and then in organized Parties by the 1930s it was thought that a quarter of a million English-speaking visitors were coming to Flanders each year this level of pilgrimage perhaps forgotten now was massive really in that into war period another war broke out in 1939 and in 1940 fighting returned to Flanders returned to the streets of EP and The Villages around it once more and following four long years of occupation Eep was liberated by the polls on the 6th of September 1944 the last post was played at the menning gate that evening and has been played every single evening ever since the war being the only break in that wonderful continu uation of remembrance that began at the menning gate about a year after its construction but by the 1950s the pilgrims gradually declined the numbers coming across declined the generation of the Great War was getting older the parents were beginning to fade away the parents of those who died and by the 1980s when I first came across it felt as if the battlefields of Flanders were forgotten there were so few English-speaking visitors then but that’s all changed in those four decades the Great War is not forgotten the generation who fought in the trenches of the Western Front are remembered and during the centinary the number of visitors English-speaking visitors reached the same sort of levels that they had reached in that inter War period but the story of the Great War in Flanders is not a story that has ended that last witness of the Great War the landscape continues to give up its Secrets whether it’s the trenches and the dugouts that trog world of the Great War or whether it’s the remains of soldiers of both sides the Great War remains very much part of the lives of the people who live around e so now it’s time to begin our journey and head out to visit e in a day the first part of our Battlefield Road Trip begins in the city of e itself we’re in the the main square of EP with the road behind us the men and Strat going down to the mening gate where the last post is sounded every evening and ahead of us the Magnificent building of the cloth Hall by 1918 EP was a city in ruins it was said that if you entered eat by horseback you had an uninterrupted view from one side of the city to the other very little remained to obscure your field of vision the buildings were smashed to Oblivion by four years of bombardments and only what remained of the clock tower of the cloth Hall and the Spire of St Martin’s Cathedral behind gave any indication that any buildings of any stature had ever been here so today we see a city restored a city restored using the original medieval plans e Rose Like a Phoenix From the Ashes and when we stand here today it’s hard to believe that the hand of War ever passed through here the Germans only ever entered E when once in 1914 when a German Cavalry Patrol came through this Square after that it was a route to the front line in the early battles in the early period of the War British troops marched through this Square down the men strats the men in Road out through the mening gate and out onto the battlefields once the Germans Took The High Ground around the city that became more and more difficult and really movement in E was always done at night it was often said that at night the city came alive and the men emerged from their dugout out and the sellers and went about their tasks with repairing the roads working on positions within the city evacuating the casuales or moving up to a Frontline area Darkness shielded whatever they were doing and then in the daylight the city once more went quiet as quiet as any part of these battlefields could ever be leaving this main Square will head down the rle start the rudil as it was called during the war and that’ll take us out towards the the Lil Gates now quite a few of the places that we’ll see in this EP and a day are areas that we’ve covered in Greater depth in previous podcast episode so it’s a nice way to bring together some of those episodes and to add detail to your visit later on or during them by listening to those episodes relating to a specific location the Lil gate socalled because it was on the road to Lil all of the gates were named after the towns that the roads took you to was really the main route out of eat for most of the war because the men and gate could be spotted from The High Ground east of the city when soldiers moved out they often came down through here rather than the mening gate there were headquarters in the ramparts the old valan ramparts that surround the city used by British troops plumer General plumer who commanded the forces in the Battle of macines was said to have an advanced headquarters here the tunnelers had headquarters here and then were Medics close by as well receiving the wounded coming back from the battlefield and up on the ramparts to our right as we go through the Lil gate and out onto the old front line here is the rampart Cemetery a small Battlefield burial ground made during the war where the graves of the Fallen there look out onto the ground over which they’ fought in some respects the Guardians of the city of EP coming out of the city over the moat Bridge we reach the modern world and its roundabouts but that takes us on the road heading down towards the mine’s Ridge to the south of EP and we’ll turn off at a road Junction here which during the war was named shrapnel Corner shrapnel Corner because it was bombarded with shrapnel by the Germans on a regular basis because they knew it was a a key part of the infrastructure the lines of communication to the British and Commonwealth forces in this sector turning off to the right here this takes us on a road that runs parallel to The High Ground to the south of EP I think not enough people come down here there’s a lot of traces of the war very soon we see a sign for Belgium battery corner and this is where a Belgian gun battery was in action during the first battle of EP in 1914 but that too became a major routs to and From The Trenches particularly for artillery units and there’s a cemetery of that name close by where you’ll find the graves of many Gunners alongside the Infantry soldiers who took part in actions like machines and third EP But continuing along that road which would eventually bring you to the Village of kemel in the southern sector of the E battlefields will come down to a small Hamlet where there’s a large concrete works now called vrat and we’ll just jump over a junction here because up on the left hand side is a memorial to the American participation in the fighting in Flanders Fields this Memorial records the men of the 27th New York and the 30th Tennessee divisions which we mentioned earlier in the podcast who took part in the fighting here in the summer of 198 it’s one of the very few American memorials on this part of the battlefield and the role of sold of the American expeditionary Force the AF and their parts in these actions is something that’s not widely known about but the role of the doughbys here and their involvement and their casualties many of the British cemeteries in this area had American Dead American Dead that was later either repatriated back to the United States or moved to the infers field Cemetery at waram and while their casualty level was much smaller than most other nations that fought here it once more reinforces just how International the scale of the sacrifice was here during the Great War doubling back on ourselves to V Strat we turn off to the right on the road that would take us to the Village of witcha or white sheet as the British Tommy called it and this is a route that I like to come because it gives you an appreciation of the mine’s Ridge when you’re driving down the mine’s Ridge you can sense that you’re on higher ground because you have quite a good view but you can’t sense what the ridge looks like and coming to here and pulling out of this Junction heading towards witch CH to and then stopping and getting out of your car you can see the line of the ridge in front of you stretching from the northern area around Center Lair through witcha and down towards minines across to your right and you can see how high the ridge is compared to where you’re standing by the positioning of the churches that sit on top of it and I think coming to locations like this and stopping and pausing for a moment and absorbing the landscape seeing what this landscape is really like is all part of what these Battlefield VIs it are about taking this road into white sheets coming up to the rising ground of the ridge we’re coming into an area where some of the 19 mine craters are located just to our left is Holland Shure Farm where several mines were exploded underneath the German positions there and although the craters are on private ground they can be viewed from just by the side of the road I’m right across this part of the ridge the evidence of these Mighty mine craters are everywhere from here across to Petty Bo mestad Farm peckam span Brook Mullen and indeed Beyond in the village by the church is a memorial to the tunnelers a recent Memorial a bronze figure of a British tunneler kneeling with an entrenching tool in his hand now we’ve mentioned this in a previous podcast this Memorial and the entrenching tool in his hand is not really the type of equipment that tunnel has used to work on the tunnels beneath the battlefield in the underground War but the memorial does bring attention to the role of these tunnelers there were no tunnelers in the Army on the outbreak of War many miners joined the army or were in territorial units and came across to the Western Front and when the war went static and the tunneling began largely instigated by the Germans and the French the British responded in the early part of 1915 with a creation of what were then called often divisional mining companies ad hoc units made up from miners that served in infantry units or other units on that part of the battlefield eventually these became the tunneling companies of the royal engineers and miners were recruited from areas like South Yorkshire from Wales and across the country where mining was a very prevalent activity and here on the minees ridge on the 7th of June 1917 the tunnelers the miners The Men Who worked and fought that underground War had their finest hour and in some respects their final hour because the war was never that static again that allowed a mining offensive of this scale with 19 mines being exploded ever to be utilized again coming out of which Cher we get on to the EP to minees Road and across to our right we’ll see the distinctive Spire of massines in the distance The Village the smallest town in Belgium actually that gives the ridge its name an area of intensive fighting from the very beginning of the war but we’ll turn left and head up towards EP again to the next Village of calaa this was an area of mining activity from 1915 onwards and it’s an area where you can find quite a lot of mine craters including the crater of the largest British mine of the war of something like 96,000 of explosive that was blown as part of that machine’s offensive in June of 1917 there’s a little pathway through a gate that brings you into the crater which looks like a big ornamental Pond and indeed several of the back Gardens of houses in this Village have almost adopted the crater as part of a feature within their Garden it’s how the old world of the Western Front and the new world merged together I suppose continuing on the road back toward W deep a little further up we turn off to the right and in taking this part of the journey we are roughly following the curve of the Eep Salient as it curved around the city of EP we are literally running close parallel almost to the front lines and this will take us across a silted up Canal a canal that was not in use in 1914 this is the Eep Kine Canal that comes from the city of EP down towards the Belgian town of Kine on the French border here both sides met in the battles of 1914 and both sides dug in and the old spoil from when the canal was made became known as an area called The Bluff where the lines were very close together there was a lot of mining activity and if you paused here and walk down the little cobbled path into the area of the canal and the bluff today which is a big nature Reserve you would find the evidence of mine craters in there and there’s quite a good little Visitor Center with a permanent exhibition with a film and maps in multiple languages that’ll give you an insight into the war that was fought here amongst these trees of the bluff in what today is called the paling beak and because this was a position that sat on the front line for so many years of the Great War there are a lot of military cemeteries here we’ll see Spore Bank Cemetery as we drive along this road Chester Farm named after the cheshier regiment who had their headquarters here in 1915 and across on the rising ground towards the wooded area of the paling beak there are small Battlefield cemeteries like the first dcli first juk of cornw was like infantry Cemetery hedge R trench and wood Cemetery coming out on the next road we passed the Hamlet the uran her where the front line continued and where in April 1917 the London Irish Rifles made a full Battalion size raid on the German position just prior to the Battle of minines we then turn off into the ground around Hill 60 Hill 60 was probably one of the most famous locations around deep during the war it was in the newspapers all the time because the fighting was almost constant here from the battles using gas in 1915 to the two long years of trench warfare and Mine Warfare where both sides dug underneath each other and blew those mines and the front lines here were just separated by mine craters to the Battle of mine when two huge mines the hill 60 mine and the caterpillar mine were blown and enabling the men of the 23rd division of the British Army in this area the West Yorkshire regiment to advance across this ground and take these positions today the caterpillar crater can be visited on foot you walk a path that takes you across No Man’s Land into the trees there’s the remains of a German bunker there and you come up onto the lip of that Mighty crater that gives you an insight into just how big these mine craters could be from the Great War and when you walk the ground on Hill 60 on the other side of the Railway curing here you can see how smashed the landscape of the Western Front once was mine craters shell craters rubble from destroyed bunkers and bunkers themselves that can be visited including an Australian Engineers observation bunker built on top of a German one that was used later in the war Hill 60 was once site to a trench Museum that existed in the inter War period in for a little while after the second world war and right up to the 1990s there was a small Battlefield Museum here and you can find out more about these in a previous Hill 60 episode of the podcast Rose kums who wrote what was the best single volume guide book to the Western Front battlefields speculated that at least 8,000 soldiers of both sides remained unburied beneath the grass here beneath the mine craters and the shell Craters of Hill 60 so while it is a memorial site of Pres oberved area of Battlefield like so much of this landscape it is the grave of soldiers who died here during the Great War and it’s thoughts of that really that I think is what makes this landscape that we visit on trips like this so much more poignant the cost of war the true cost and reality of war is never that far away leaving Hill 60 we travel down into the village of zil this Village sat just behind or on the front line for all four years of the war War it was reduced to almost dust with the largest pile of dust of rubble being the church so again we see a village like all of them here risen From the Ashes of Destruction in 1918 and for a moment we can blink and imagine that the war never really happened and then amongst the Trees of the village churchyard alongside the church itself we see the white Portland headstones of British soldiers and the reality of the war returns once more this is the arist rat Cemetery officially Zill beak churchyard where officers of the British army who fell during the first battle of EP were brought for burial many of these men had gone to the top public schools of Britain were from aristocratic families thus the name men like the fifth Baron of conlon or Lord Gordon Lennox and these burials here give us an insight into just how destroyed the British aristocracy was by the four years of fighting in the Great War these were men who were tor to by Instinct led by example they did that in civilian life they did that in the Army and on the battlefields of the Great War often paid for that example with their lives coming out of Zilla Beek we emerge onto a modern Road system just outside the city of EP on what was known as the men Road this is hellfire Corner a main route up to the front line during the war there was a road and Railway Junction here it was a main route for almost every unit that came up to take part in the fighting here it was bombarded mercilessly by the Germans and that’s how it got its hellish reputation across to our left which is now a fast Road a Ring Road around the city of EP was the Old Railway line and in a hollow there soldiers would wait until they were given the orders it was safe as safe as it ever could be to proceed across Hellfire corner and continue with their Journeys roundabout today it’s lost a bit of its Mystique but we’ll find here a demarcation Stone one of a number of these stones that were placed on the battlefields by cycle touring clubs after the first world war to Mark the Western Front each Stone proclaims here The Invader was brought to a standstill The Invader of course being Germany and they Mark the spots at different parts of the Western Front where the German Army reached its Zenith here this was the closest that the Germans ever came to Eep this one has the shape of a British helmet on but there are others with French and Belgian helmets marking the contribution of those Nations and they extend right along all 450 Mi of the Western Front I think originally they intended to have possibly hundreds if not thousands of these stones but in the end a few hundred were placed and many of them sadly lost over the period since some in the second world war turning off at Hellfire Corner we take a route familiar to British and Commonwealth soldiers in the Great War along that men road ahead of us the road an old Roman Road extends towards the Rising ground around the village of hug Bellard Ridge and fenberg Ridge across to our left and the rising ground of sanctuary wood Observatory Ridge and Hill 62 to our right here as we go along this road you can see how dominant the Germans could be on this so-called High Ground just tens of meters above sea level they could look down into the British positions down into the city of EP and dominate the battlefield and that’ll bring us up to the hoo crater Cafe a cafe where we’ll have a a welcome lunch stop but also a chance to visit the best private Museum in Flanders of the Great War where an incredible private collection of uniforms equipment artifacts photographs and a big display of Battlefield archaeology helps bring alive the landscape that we’ve seen during our morning’s visits with objects connected to it here we’ll pause for lunch and you could walk beyond the cafe up onto the Bellard Ridge to see the preserved mind craters amongst the trees on the crest of the Ridge and the unique Royal Engineers grave that commemorates men from the tunneling companies who died beneath that Ridge from 1915 to 1917 there are no headstones there they’re commemorated on the base of the Cross their seure is deep beneath this part of the Flanders landscape but pause we will and then we’ll continue with our journey up into the north eastern part of the battlefields pulling away from hug we continue along the Menin Road and we can see the ground ahead of us now is rising we’re coming on to what was known as the Menin Road Ridge where there was fighting here in September of 1917 and as we come up over onto the crest of that Ridge we come to a road Junction the road goes off to our right and in the trees to our right was a shadow at the time of the war that was marked on the maps as ster in Castle and this road Junction was called Clapham Junction and there are two memorials here the one on the left is to the glare regiment who fought close to this ground in the first battle of EP in 1914 and then on the other side of the road is another Memorial to the 18th eastern division one of three memorials to this formation made up of Home counties regiments like the suffs the norol the East sis the Queens raw West s’s the Sussex regiment and so on and they fought here during that battle of the men in Road Ridge in September of 1917 during the third battle of EP and when I come here and stand on this bit of ground and look across the fields Beyond these two memorials towards the wooded area a wooded area known as cbox wood during the first battle of EP I think of the second Battalion Royal Sussex regiment who were here at that time they’ve been on the move and on the fight since the Battle of mons they’ve been in the retreat from mons they’re fighting on the man and the A and they moved up here to Flander and had lost two commanding officers during that period and were about to lose a third leftenant Colonel Crispen of the north umberland fusel ear on attachment to the Royal Sussex came up here on a white charger a rather conspicuous figure on an open landscape with only small firing trenches to protect you he became an almost instant casualty here his body was taken back for burial where the hood crater Cafe is today but that grave along with many others including a small French Cemetery was lost in the later fighting and crispin’s name is now on the raw Sussex panel of the men in Gat proceeding further down the men in road we passed herent chatau wood on the right hand side where there was Heavy fighting in there during the first battle of EP a lot of the wooded areas here are private but since the 1990s just beyond the southern area of the Menin Road quite a lot of them now have open public spaces and foot paaths going through them and it’s an area that is well worth exploring if you have some more time but we’ll turn off left and take a minor road that moves Northeast from the Menin Road and takes us up towards polygon wood cutting across this ground we’re very close to the site of the tank Cemetery this was an area where tanks had moved up during the third battle of EP had come under artillery fire and the wrecks of them were abandoned on the landscape and the tank Cemetery became a tourist attraction in the 20s and 30s during that period of B field pilgrimage the wrecks were torn up it appears by the Germans in the second world war and scrap so nothing of them remains today except in photographic evidence because so many people photographed them as part of their Battlefield tour in that inter War period it brings us up to another warded area non-abortion and in non-abortion during the first battle of ep the ox and buck light infantry were digging in supported by men of the fifth field company of the royal Engineers when the Germans attacked and this became one of the instances in the war in which the engineers put down their picks and their shovels picked up their rifles and fought as infantry and the fifth field company is the only unit of the royal Engineers to have non-abortion as a battle honor and they became known as the fighting fifth as a consequence of the action here where they fought alongside the men of the ox and Bucks turning right and crossing over the modern Motorway that was built in the 1970s a period before Battlefield archaeology when apparently no human remains were found during the construction of this cutting and nothing of any archaeological significance was recovered either something that is quite difficult to believe when you look at the work of modern archaeologists on the battlefields but nevertheless this brings us out to Black watch corner and we see a fantastic modern bronze of a black watch Soldier looking over the ground where this regiment fought during the first battle of EP in October and November of 1940 here close to polygon wood on the 11th of November right at the end of that first battle battalions of the guards moved up under the command of Brigadier General Fitz Clarence VC he was a veteran of the B War awarded the Victoria Cross as an Irish guards officer then and now as the self-appointed OC men in Road officer commanding the men in Road he’d taken over a number of units here in a Storch defense of this ground but on the 11th of November he couldn’t resist leading his old regiment into an attack and he was killed leading them forward his body was never recovered and his name is on the men in Gate just like Colonel Crispen but Fitz Clarence is the most senior British officer to be commemorated on the mening gate he’s at the very beginning of panel one under commands and staff and again demonstrates how these senior officers became casualties from the very beginning of the war many people believe they spent their war in Shadows and went home and died in bed but the graves of senior officers and the names on memorials to the missing like Fitz clarence’s name on the mening gate demonstrates that there is another part to this story we’ll continue around the edge of polygon wood now and the DVA Cafe run by Johan vandala just up the road from here is an excellent place to stop for an afternoon coffee but also to go upstairs to his private Museum of the work that he’s done as an underground archaeologist looking at the tunnels and the fighting tunnels and the dugouts of Flanders Fields is well worth going to have a look at but we’ll continue along the edge of the ward you can go into polygon Ward and there’s a previous podcast episode discussing this to see some of the bunkers that are in there and also visit the battlefield cemeteries that are here including polygon wood British Cemetery which is itself the shape of a polygon mimicking the shape of this wood a wood that before the war was a Belgian army training ground with a rifle range in the middle of it with a rifle butts at the end of it a a big Mound basically and that mound became a feature on the battlefield which the Australian when they fought here in September of 1917 there was tremendous fighting around that mound and sitting on top of it today is the memorial to the fifth Australian Division and beneath it the cemetery with the graves of many Australians indeed new zealanders who fought here later on including their New Zealand Memorial to the missing can be found we’ll continue from polygon wood from the very tip of it around and into the village of zon beak there are so many Fantastic museums along the western front and you can’t visit them all particularly when you’re trying trying to look at an area in a day but here at zonab is the Memorial Museum passendale found in the old zonab Beek Chateau rebuilt after the war on the site of the original and now a brilliant museum with a huge array of displays covering this part of the battlefield and a massive area of reconstructed trenches both British and German giving you an insight into what the trenches actually look like during the war but we’ll continue through zonab and we come alongside the church again a new feature here is to be able to go up the tower of this church and get fantastic views across the Flanders landscape and it’s well worth doing that but alongside it and underneath it was a huge German Dugout system that during the centinary was opened up it was full of water the water was pumped out and you could go down the original steps and into the Dugout and get an insight into what this underground war on the Western Front was like unfortunately it couldn’t be kept open permanently but underground features like that are very much part of the legacy of the landscape here the legacy of the Great War that still impacts upon the lives of locals when the subterranian positions collapse and houses then need underpinning and even people fall into these things as happened on a farm very close to here a few years ago but beyond the village of zonab Beek we’ll go up the rising ground of another Ridge the Brun zinder Ridge that’ll bring us up onto the approaches to the Village of pendal as we turn left at the crest of the brunander ridge down down towards the village of passendale we’ll see the Spire of the church there in the distance passendale that iconic part that iconic name really connected to the fighting here in Flanders during the Great War this landscape smashed to Pieces by the bombardments of 1917 resulted in men living not in trenches but in interconnected shell holes very often up to their waste in mud and muck and slime men disappeared into this landscape horses mules limbers guns even tanks and the proportion of missing soldiers from this period was incredibly high and as we come round this part of the brunes Zer Ridge it brings us up to the largest British and Commonwealth cemetery in the world from either World War Ty cot Cemetery with almost 12,000 Graves and 35,000 men listed on the memorial to the missing behind it here on the slopes of this Ridge before the village of pendal I think we get an insight into the scale of the first world war as you turn the corner here to come to the main entrance it’s almost impossible not to gasp at the sight of rows and rows and rows of white headstones disappearing seemingly almost into Infinity on the slopes of this Ridge ahead of you tin cot as you wander amongst the rows of the graves here we see how many of these soldiers were not identified unknown soldiers of the Great War or an unknown Australian Canadian New Zealander or from a regiment of the British army but their identity lost their name recorded on the menning gate or here at Ty cot but the fact that the majority of the Dead buried here are not known shows the sheer brutality of artillery of industrial Warfare on the Western Front at this point in the Great War tin cart seems to me to always be the point at which the crisscross Paths of the Great War meet here we see the reality of sacrifice the cost of war the tragedy of war and it’s a defining location on the landscape of the Western Front a place that once you’ve been and once you’ve walked amongst the rows of headstones you can never really forget and a new Visitor Center built at the back of the cemetery brings insight into this location because it is a place that because of its size many people can almost feel lost in we’ll leave Ty cot now and cross this passional landscape across to s graen staffle a small Hamlet close by where we’ll find a memorial to the New Zealand division who fought here in October 1917 here was their worst day of the war on the Western Front when thousands of New Zealand soldiers became casualties advancing in this mudfield landscape towards the village of passendale again it just reiterates as we travel around the Western Front we travel around battlefields like Flanders to see just how many people came from different parts of the world to fight here and the route Beyond takes us across what the Canadians called Mousa Ridge during the Second Battle of EP we pass a Canadian Memorial a little bit further on and then come to Vancouver corner to where the main Canadian Memorial the brooding Soldier is located looking out across the battlefields around the village of St Julian where in a 48h hour period more than 2,000 Canadians were killed in action and 4 and a half thousand were wounded gassed or Taken prisoner the defense of eat by Canadian soldiers in 1915 saw the virtual destruction of that original Canadian expeditionary Force the first Canadian division that came across to France in early 1915 the brooding Soldier as his head bowed Low Remembering his Fallen comrades and shows us just how important a war in Europe could be to people on the other side of the world a strong resonance with our world today but we continue from here into the next Village of langar and Beyond it the German soldaten frof the German military cemetery at Lamark it’s not the largest German military cemetery from the first world war that is also in Flanders at Menin with 48,000 burials But Here There is a staggering 44,000 German soldiers buried in this Cemetery more than half of them in a mass Grave by the main entrance langar is a cemetery of myths the very name was used by the Nazis to demonstrate how Germany was betrayed in the war because here at langar in the first battle of EP so-called Stenton soldat and student soldiers recruited from the schools and colleges and universities of Germany went into battle and many of them became casualties but the Nazis said that this destruction of the cream of German youth sent to a pointless and futile death showed how Germany had been betrayed by its politicians and by traitors and Jews and whoever you wanted to add to that list the history of langar was weaponized used by the Nazis as propaganda and the cemetery took on the air that we see now the character that we see now in that 1930s period And when we enter and go inside we can see how different the German approach to the commemoration of the Dead is to T cot where we’ve just come from but we see here not just the outcome of the first world war but of the second as well post World War II the German vks Bor the German Warg Graves commission decided to close the majority of German cemeteries in Belgium and move them into Mass Graves like the one here at langar so the more than 22,000 German soldiers who were buried in this Mass grave were once originally buried in German cemeteries and they were moved here during the 1950s it’s not one great big hell pit as I’ve often heard it described that the Germans just tossed their dead in after the Great War but langar remains a powerful powerful place to visit we can understand the sacrifice of those from Britain and the Commonwealth from our Belgian and our French allies but what did these men sacrifice their lives for many of them came from lands that are no longer German silesians and prussians that land is now Poland and the complex history of Germany in the 20th century certainly weaves a dark path through places like this Crossing to the other side side of langar we find not a memorial to a soldier who died in the Great War but its last survivor Harry patch the last fighting Tommy and the Book of that name by Richard van emden is really worth a follow-up read after you spent your day visiting EP Harry patch was a man who after the war wanted to forget it he threw away his medals he had no photographs of himself in uniform he wanted to forget the war until he could forget it no longer and in that last phase of his life he returned to give testimony to the sacrifice of an entire generation here to symbolize an entire generation and on so many occasions he was there under the mening gate on the 11th of November as the poppy petals fell down from the roof and he looked up and one wonders what he could see in his Mind’s Eye as he saw those poppy petals fall what faces of the Great War was he remembering his memorial here is just a simple one by the side of the steam beak River where the fighting had taken place in August and September of 1917 and close to the railway line the railway embankment which he could remember having moved up to take part in the fighting Beyond langar towards the village of pel his first and last major battle on the Western Front getting back onto the main road we go past cement house Cemetery named after a German bunker the cemetery that remained open right up until the 1990s it was the main Cemetery for the burial of the dead from across Belgium so when soldiers were found at any part on the battlefields within Belgium they were brought here for burial and when smaller cemeteries were closed and the graves were moved they were brought here so this Cemetery today not just represents men who died in flanders’s fields but in battles like mons in August 1914 as well and it was reused again in the early 2000s when some of the the dead recovered by the diggers recovered during the archaeological work they did on the industrial estate near boinger the remains of those soldiers were brought here for berion and there is a separate plot in this Cemetery where you can find them continuing along this road we passed a new Memorial from the stiner a red Walsh dragon on the crest of the pil Helm Ridge where the men of the 38th Walsh division made their Advance new memorials like this emerged both before and during the centinary period and they indicate just how how connected we still are to the history and the men and the sacrifice of the Great War it feels like the desire to record remember and Mark that sacrifice has never been stronger a little further up we turn off into that industrial estate where the diggers did their work in the late 90s and on until the early 2000s working one step ahead of the bulldozers as this site was constructed recovering the artifacts and the remains of the battlefield and also the remains of those soldiers who had fallen there and in the heart of it now surrounded by modern Factory and storage units is that bit of the Western Front preserved Yorkshire trench a small section of Frontline trench dug by The Man of the West riding division after the French had occupied this ground previously and now preserve so that not all of that forgotten Battlefield as it was called then was lost there’s a new Visitor Center close by at the F Hoff an Old Farm building where you can go in and see an excellent film about this part of the Flanders battlefields there’s some interesting maps and photographs and also quite a big display of some of the artifacts the diggers found on this part of the battlefield cutting through the industrial estate that brings us to the EA Canal the old medieval Canal that once witnessed the passage of barges full of cloth during the Great War this was behind the British front line but to the north at boosinger it became part of the front line with the British and to the north the belgians dug in on one side of the canal and the Germans on the other there were Bridges right across it throughout the Great War but we’re taking a modern road bridge now that takes us down to Essex farm and Essex Farm Cemetery named after the men of the Essex regiment who were here in 1915 in the spoil banks of the canal behind that Farm building a dressing station was made and it was used by the Canadian Army Medical Corps during the to end of the Second Battle of EP Canadian poets John McCrae came out of his Dugout here one morning you could see in May 1915 that amongst the crosses the poppies were beginning to grow May is the month in which the poppies begin to emerge across this landscape and this moved him to write the now Immortal poem in Flanders Fields which you can read on a modern Memorial to him on this spot when McCrae was here it was a wooden dressing station later in 19 16 it was made permanent with concrete and that concrete dressing station that gives us an insight into the medical side of the Great War the evacuation and treatment of the Wounded is possible to enter and visit today for many years when I first came here this was flooded there’s a little stream of beak that runs alongside it and the beak often overflowed and the farmer didn’t really like people going in the bunker but some years ago the city of EP purchased the ground and preserved this site and it’s one of those locations where we can bring together together the literature and poetry of the first world war going into the cemetery we see beyond it a tall Memorial to the men of the 49th West riding division those Yorkshire territorials who dug Yorkshire trench and a plot as we go through a little gate in the rear of the cemetery to our right slightly at angle to the rest of the graves is part of their original divisional burial ground where we’ll find men from the York and Lancaster regiment the West riding field ambulance the West riding engineers and many other of these Yorkshire units that served here at that time for most visitors particularly School groups who come here to Essex Farm it’s the grave of a Teenage Tommy that they come to see Valentine Joe strudwick born on Valentine’s Day 1900 he died one month short of his 16th birthday aged just 15 a 15-year-old in the Great War was very different to a teenager now he would have considered himself a man and he lied about his age to get in and do his bit so many thousands Richard van mdom I think has counted almost a quarter of a million of these teenage tomies who enlisted and served in the trenches of the Great War for young visitors to the Western Front today strudwick grave is a point in which they can connect with a subject that perhaps to them seems very very distant at times he’s the same age as them he was certainly the same age as me when I first stood at this grave all those years ago with les coats and Roger bastable my old teachers it’s the very reason I would guess that they brought us here and one wonders how many tens of thousands of students have trod this path and now go home with Valentine strudwick name forever remembered by them and here we can walk out of the cemetery take the little Bridge across the beak up to the West riding division Memorial on the bank we can see the spires of EP in the distance our Journey’s End on this epen a day has come to an end this is our final stop in a single day we can only hope to Peak at the Great War really but all these places we’ve seen they’re not in isolation they’re all parts of the same puzzle all pages in the same story here we see how the Great War has left an indelible mark on this Flanders landscape like so many other parts of the Western Front what we learn from visits like this can resonate so strongly in our own lives seeing the sacrifice of both young and old of men and women from many nations does it make us reflect on what we should do what we should achieve in our own lives there’s so much that we take away from these visits and so much of ourselves that we leave behind this as ever is the power of the old front line [Music] you’ve been listening to an episode of the old front line with me military historian Paul Reed you can follow me on Twitter at somore you can follow the podcast at oldf Frontline pod check out the website at oldf frontline.com and links to books that are mentioned in the podcast and if you feel like supporting us you can go to our patreon page patreon.com oldf Frontline or support us on buy me a coffee at buy meac coffee.com oldf Frontline links to all of these are on our websites thanks for listening and we’ll see you again soon [Music]