In order to do this we booked a private tour through a couple, Annette and Christian who run Camalou Tours. We are staying at their B and B and they are driving us around the area. They are very knowledgeable about the history of the region and are just fabulous tour guides. You can check them out at
http://www.camalou.com/battlefieldtours.php
Christian picked us up at the train and we joined Annette and three other clients for lunch at a restaurant located at Hill 60. Apparently during the war many of the sites that were fought over were named for how high they were located above sea level so in this case the site was 60 meters above sea level so became known as Hill 60.
At this site the memorial is for Australians soldiers meaning many of them died here.
There are monuments and gravesides everywhere across this region since so many soldiers died here through the war. They are so well kept and respected by the local citizens. We have had an opportunity to visit many of them already, both large and small and it is a very humbling experience.
There are small crosses with names written on them at every site, a great grandfather maybe.
The cemetery at Tyne Cot, mostly British soldiers.
Finding the grave of a Newfoundland soldier
We also learned that the landscape of this region was a critical factor in how the war was fought. The land is quite flat so the Germans felt they could get through it as a way into Paris. They were stopped short of Paris so then decided to outflank their opponents to the north in the so- called "race to the sea" which was the English Channel. If they got there they could stop supplies coming in by sea to support the Allies.
This is a typical scene,flat farms and little ridges.
However from December 1914 each side began to put down defensive positions, thus creating a relatively fixed front line that stretched for 750 kms across Belguim and France. The Germans and the Allies would stay deadlocked for years in their positions, pushing forward and backward over a few kilometres resulting in 100s of thousands of casualties. Since the land was basically a valley with a few little hills they would fight or control of the hills to give them a strategic lookout and the troops went forward and backward from the higher land to the lower land.
Annette driving us around the backroads to get to the sites.
We have travelled over 600 kms in the last two days over this now beautiful and peaceful landscape. There are farms as far as the eye can see, quaint little villages and meticulous houses and gardens. It was hard to imagine that so many lives were lost here during bloody battles that had turned the land into a barren place full of mud, water and disease.
Yesterday we also visited Passchendaele where one of the biggest and bloodiest encounters of the war took place. It happened in 1917 and in 100 days of fighting 245,000 Allied forces were lost just to gain five miles of territory. Many are missing or lie in unidentified graves with the inscription, "A Soldier of the Great War".
There are thousands of these markers all over the area.
While there we were able to visit a very interesting museum display but also go down in one of the trenches that were built here on the Front Line.
Going down to one of the tunnels , some were only about 8 meters and others up to 40 meters down
Display of gas masks as the German used this type of warfare in this region, subsequently so did the British.
We also came across a group of young people who were participating in "The Platoon Experience" where they get an immersion in the life of being a member of a platoon from 1917. We had to stop for awhile as they unloaded their bus with their supplies including rifles. I thought this was a great way to help students understand the experience of the soldiers.
There are students everywhere here doing tours as we were. We ended our first day at the Menin Gete ceremony which was very moving. The Menin Gate which is located in the town of Iper was built as a war memorial on the roads through which many soldiers walked to the battlefields. Every night since 1928 at 8 pm they have a short ceremony where people from all over come to participate. Wreaths are laid, poems are read and the buglers play The Last Post.
The gate is a large archway filled with names of missing soldiers.
There were many people present as there are on most evenings.
Some of the buglers who play the last post. They are volunteers from the local fire brigade. The whole ceremony is run by volunteers from the community.
Location:Iper, Belgium
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