16.
In Flanders Fields.
The following morning, after studying my maps, I came to the conclusion that the campsite had been built slap bang over the old British trenches. It obviously hadn’t been my first night’s sleep on the old front lines, but I did wonder if anybody else who was camped there knew that? Maybe the owners don’t want to publicise that fact? Sorry!
Belgium wasn’t far away; just over the River Leie, about a mile from the campsite. Before I went through Houplines, I visited the 534 British soldiers who lay in the Houplines Extension cemetery. The majority of whom had been killed during 1915, which turned out to be another quite emotional visit, as I didn’t want to leave them and ended up visiting all 534 graves, before I felt like I could.
Once I’d crossed the river into Belgium, there wasn’t far to travel until I reached another British cemetery. Unfortunately, due to the abundance of cemeteries in this corner of Belgium, they’ve all merged into each other in my mind. I might describe the wrong ones, so I will just name them instead:
The first that I visited was Motor Car Corner Cemetery, with 131 Commonwealth graves, plus a single German. Soon after that there were Gunners Farm Cemetery, with 175 Commonwealth and 4 German graves, Calvaire (Essex) Cemetery, with 218 Commonwealth graves and London Rifle Brigade Cemetery, with 335 Commonwealth and 18 German graves. Next were Ploegsteert Churchyard, with 9 Commonwealth graves, and Strand Military Cemetery where 1,143 Commonwealth soldiers are commemorated. Up until then, I had more or less been heading north but just south of the Strand Cemetery I headed east along a road, which entered some woods towards a few more cemeteries and the old front line.
Ploegsteert Wood (Plug Street Wood to the Tommies.) was a sector of the front below the Ypres Salient. Fortunately for the lads, after the spring of 1915, it was a bit quieter than the Ypres Salient. It’s also the place where Winston Churchill commanded a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers after resigning from the government due to his involvement in the Gallipoli Debacle. The Gallipoli Campaign was his idea, so it was only right that he resigned. You’ve probably noted by now that I’m not particularly fond of most of the politicians from that era and rightly so, as they caused the decimation of so many young men. For his part in the Gallipoli Campaign, Churchill must be part of that maligned group, but his actions afterwards also make him stand apart. Can you imagine any modern day politician resigning from their posts before volunteering to fight in the front line of the war in which they had been responsible for so many deaths? No? Me neither! Although only at the front for about 3 months and in the comparatively quiet sector of Plug Street Woods, he still exposed himself to all of the dangers that the normal Tommy faced, including about 30 trench raids and other forays into no-man’s-land. Most people regard his finest moment being in 1940 when he alone rallied the British in defiance of the tyranny which had swept through Europe, whilst I regard it as being 25 years previous to that, when he showed the world that politicians can be as good as the common soldiers on the battlefields by fighting amongst them.
The road became a track as it headed deeper into the woods and I felt a familiar feeling creep through my bones. I didn’t want to be there, but neither did the men who died in those dark, lifeless woods. They did what needed to be done, therefore so would I. Deeper amongst the trees, it was possible to make out the collapsed walls of brick built bunkers amongst the partially hidden shell holes. Dark memories of the Verdun battlefields began to haunt my mind. Fortunately I soon reached the green sanctuary of Ploegsteert Wood Military Cemetery, which contains 164 Commonwealth burials.
This location is probably the saddest feeling Commonwealth cemetery that I’ve visited.
Most of them are bright and airy, which helps to dispel the gloom that pervades Ploegsteert Wood. The normally glistening white headstones and memorial were stained by the green lichen and it caused them to look dirty and unkept, whilst the cross of sacrifice at the centre of the cemetery had been damaged by water entering a crack that had expanded and split the stone when it froze one winter. To give them their due, I had probably caught the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s maintenance team at a bad time. They do an amazing job caring for the graves and memorials at 23,000 locations worldwide.
The atmosphere at the nearby Rifle House Cemetery felt better as it had just received a bit of a clean up by the CWGC team. Whilst walking amongst the graves, one stood out amongst the rest. I’m sure that all the other men who are buried there won’t mind me singling out just one of them, as beneath that grave was buried a 15 year old lad.
Born as Raphael Glitzenstein in Hackney during the summer of 1899, he enlisted in the British Army in the early autumn of 1914, after an argument with his Russian born immigrant parents. As he was well under the required age for overseas service (19) he used the name that now marks his grave: Robert Barnett. He was one of 26 men who were killed during an attack on Ploegsteert Wood on the 19th of December 1914.
After heading back north along the track past Ploegsteert Wood Cemetery, I reached a cemetery which is located near to the northern boundary of the woods. Fortunately the sun had decided to come out, brightening the mood by making a dappled effect on the floor of the woodland. Despite its name, Toronto Avenue Cemetery is surprisingly full of Australian soldiers who were killed during the Battle of Messines in June 1917. A total of 9 Divisions from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand took part in this offensive which began during the early hours of 7th June 1917. At 0250, the British artillery ended their barrage. The Germans thought that an attack was just about to take place so they bolstered the number of troops at their front line positions. Unfortunately for those German soldiers this wasn’t quite true; 20 minutes later at 0310, 26 mines were detonated beneath the German positions, which resulted in the instantaneous deaths of 10,000 German soldiers.
Because of the mines and the British rolling artillery barrage that came afterwards, it was fairly easy for the infantry to capture what remained of the German lines but at the same time it was no walk over. The Germans, despite losing many of their front line units in the area, continued to offer heavy resistance towards the attacking enemy infantry. Heavy dust thrown up by the rolling barrage had turned day into semi-darkness, with visibility reduced to around 100yds, causing confusion and hell like conditions for the remaining German defenders. Although there were many small scale localised counter attacks by the Germans, they were unable to retake their old front line positions and their reserves, which had been hurriedly brought forwards, were forced to retreat by the resumption of the British rolling artillery barrage.
I can’t bring myself to describe the Battle of Messines as a success. A success is supposed to be something good and not as a way to celebrate the fact that 10,000 German men were killed during the opening sequence of the battle. Instead, I will say that it was an improvement upon the British tactics, which had cost so many lives the previous year during the Battle of the Somme.
The main objective for the attackers was to capture the high ground to the south of Ypres, (Wipers to the Tommies!) although that low ridge was of strategic importance, the real reason was to take some pressure off the French, as they were beginning to struggle to hold their armies together after several rebellions amongst their ranks. It had the desired effect as the Germans had to move their reserves north to plug the gaps in their line formed during the Battle of Messines.
It was a relief to leave the oppressive feeling behind as I came out into the sunlight beyond Plug Street Woods. If it wasn’t for the numerous British Cemeteries which dotted the landscape, the casual visitor would be hard pressed to notice what occurred in that western corner of Belgium a century ago. The green fields, small woods and low rolling hills could have been anywhere in the Home Counties of England (not that I really knew, as I rarely travel down south!) but if you look closer, then the signs that something occurred there start to stand out. The first clues are the buildings and trees; nothing is older than a hundred years. Look closer still and the ponds at the sides of the fields are very numerous and of a uniform shape and size, whilst resourceful farmers had reused barbed wire pickets and in some cases the barbed wire itself on their fences. Those same farmers face the same hazards that their compatriots across the border in France face: the ‘iron harvest’.
Throughout the length of my journey I had come across this ‘iron harvest’ which occurs on every battlefield, but I was fortunate in that I could avoid it, whereas the farmers can’t. As they plough their fields, century old artillery shells, bombs and hand grenades come to the surface, sometimes exploding when they come into contact with the farming machinery.
In the Ypres area alone, 360 people have been killed by unexploded munitions since the end of the war. They were mostly agricultural or construction workers, but inquisitive children and souvenir hunters are also listed amongst the dead.
An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 unexploded shells are unearthed in Belgium every year. Most of them are of the high explosive variety and although they are still very dangerous (more so as the years advance) they can, at least, be dealt with in a slightly safer manner. (They are carefully removed by experts and blown up at designated sites.) Unfortunately, some of the munitions are both extremely difficult to dispose of and pose an extreme danger to the public once disturbed. These shells contain gas (mustard, chlorine and phosphate.)
Both the Belgium and French governments have had to set up expensive processing plants for the gas shells, where each shell is x-rayed before being disassembled by robots and the gas burned off at a very high temperature. At the end of the war and up until the 1970s, they, as well as the British just dumped them in the English Channel. This solution was ok for the chlorine and phosphate shells which dissolve in seawater, when they eventually rust through and start leaking. Mustard gas doesn’t dissolve in seawater, though. Instead, it forms globules that float on the surface; the cool seawater keeping it in a solid state. Eventually it will end up on a beach somewhere, the sun will warm it and it will become a gas again. Hopefully it will be a remote beach and not one packed with families on holiday!
I don’t know how many mustard gas shells were dumped in the English Channel as that information has been kept secret by the various governments involved, but some estimates put it at a couple of million. I’m writing this down as something needs to be done about it before the war claims any more casualties. They know the areas where the dumping occurred, but they would rather bury their heads in the sand than deal with this massive and potentially deadly problem!
Just north of Ploegsteert Woods I came to a strange and slightly out of place memorial. It was located next to Prowse Point Military Cemetery which contains 231 Commonwealth graves. The site in question commemorates the British/German football match which took place on Christmas Day 1914 but it’s in the wrong place. The football match actually took place a couple of hundred yards to the east, where another memorial commemorating the event is located. I wonder why they thought it necessary to build a newer one in the wrong place? Anyway, whatever the reasons, it managed to cheer me up a bit, despite my dislike of the silly game called football. The memorial consists of a small iron obelisk with a ball on top. In front of this was a plastic tray which contained scarves and, yes you’ve probably guessed by now, footballs. Somebody had left a Bradford City scarf, and as my best mate, Jon is a devoted (fanatical) fan of ‘City’, I draped the scarf around the memorial before taking a photo of it. Earlier in my journey, whilst in Macedonia and Albania, I had to ask Jon to send me some details about Bradford City, as all the locals wanted to talk to me about was bloody football and I knew nothing!
Near to this memorial are two shockingly bad reconstructions of trenches that were obviously built by people who had never seen what a real wartime trench looked like! After there, I visited the real site of the football match, before heading to the Island of Ireland Peace Park.
Before my journey I didn’t know much about the Irish involvement in the war, but the Peace Pledge inscription on a bronze plaque, near the entrance to the Peace Park, inspired me to research the Irish role when I returned home. It reads:
“From the crest of this ridge, which was the scene of terrific carnage in the First World War on which we have built a peace park and Round Tower to commemorate the thousands of young men from all parts of Ireland who fought a common enemy, defended democracy and the rights of all nations, whose graves are in shockingly uncountable numbers and those who have no graves, we condemn war and the futility of war. We repudiate and denounce violence, aggression, intimidation, threats and unfriendly behaviour.
As Protestants and Catholics, we apologise for the terrible deeds we have done to each other and ask forgiveness. From this sacred shrine of remembrance, where soldiers of all nationalities, creeds and political allegiances were united in death, we appeal to all people in Ireland to help build a peaceful and tolerant society. Let us remember the solidarity and trust that developed between Protestant and Catholic Soldiers when they served together in these trenches.
As we jointly thank the armistice of 11 November 1918 – when the guns fell silent along this western front - we affirm that a fitting tribute to the principles for which men and women from the Island of Ireland died in both World Wars would be permanent peace.”
After discovering that the 16th (Irish) Division literally fought side by side with the 36th (Ulster) Division during the battles of Messines and Langemarck, I began to wonder why there’s been so much hatred and conflict since the end of the war, between the Catholics and Protestants in Ireland? Now, as an Englishman, I’m very reluctant to talk about the troubles, but as I took a strictly neutral role during my journey, I will delve into the quagmire a little bit.
For crying out loud! The leaders from both sides after the war needed their heads knocking together! A massive opportunity that was forged through the mud and blood in the fields of Flanders was wasted by the petty squabbles and arguments in the years following the war.
A bond was forged in ‘hell’ that brought together the men of the Irish and Ulster Divisions. Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference, but maybe it would have? It’s not too late to properly honour the sacrifice that 49,400 Irishmen, of all denominations, made during the First World War. The soldiers who returned were friends during the war, but enemies during the peace! Now, that really is sad.
It should be noted that all of the Irishmen who fought with the British Army during the First World War were volunteers. Conscription was never implemented in Ireland.
The Island of Ireland Peace Park was built around a traditional Irish round tower which reaches a height of 110ft and was officially opened November 11th 1998. Its location is just behind the site of the old German front line trenches, which were dug into the ridge that were captured by the Irish and Ulster Divisions during the Battle of Messines in June 1917.
I had my dinner (lunch) sat in the town square of Mesen (Messines) before heading to the Messines Ridge New Zealand Memorial and the adjoining Commonwealth cemetery. The memorial was built to commemorate the soldiers from New Zealand who were killed near to Messines during the fighting of 1917-18 and who have no known grave. (About 800 poor lost souls.)
Messines Ridge British Cemetery contains the graves of 1,534 Commonwealth soldiers, although over half of them are unidentified. (957.)
Due to the amount of Commonwealth cemeteries to the south of Ypres, it soon became apparent that I didn’t have enough time to visit all of the ones that I had planned to, therefore I headed north on the N365 road from Mesen until just after the village of Sint-Elooi. Whilst on that route I visited the nearby Somer Farm Cemetery, which contains the graves of 91 Commonwealth soldiers. I then turned off the main road and nervously headed east towards the woods of Palingbeek, which was the scene for a lot of the heavy fighting that took place south of Ypres.
You can follow trails through those woods alongside the old canal that interrupted the front lines of both sides, but after seeing the scars of war beneath the trees I decided not to. Instead, I headed to Spoilbank Cemetery that lies just outside the woodland to the northwest, which holds the remains of 520 Commonwealth soldiers who were killed between 1915 and 1918.
A few yards away, Chester Farm Cemetery holds another 420 Commonwealth graves. As I’d already made the decision not to enter the woods, I stuck to the road and tracks as I visited a further three cemeteries. These were: Hedge Row Cemetery with 98 graves, Woods Cemetery with 326 graves and the First DCLI Cemetery with 76 graves. The latter is located on a low ridge called the Bluff and was the scene of very heavy fighting as both sides attempted to capture and hold that low but strategic hill.
After Palingbeek, I headed further east to another location of heavy fighting. (The whole of the Ypres area was probably the same!) The location is called Hill 60, but before the war came along it probably had a more peaceful role as it was then called Cote des Amants (Lover’s Knoll.)
It is unusual for Flanders to have quite steep hills, but Hill 60 wasn’t natural. Instead it had been formed from the spoil of a railway line which had been cut through the area 60 years before.
Upon the stabilisation of the front lines around the Ypres Salient in Autumn 1914, the capture of Hill 60 would have been of a great tactical significance to the Germans, as it would have enabled them to have a good, uninterrupted view behind the French and then later British front lines. Therefore the Germans managed to capture it from the French sometime between November 1914 and the end of January 1915. I can’t find out for certain when this took place, but when the British took over the French positions in this sector on the 1st February 1915 it was in German hands.
Once in position the British quickly set out to capture Hill 60, first by mining and raiding the position and then by a successful all out attack on the 17th April 1915. The British managed to hold onto Hill 60 until the 5th May 1915, when the Germans first gassed the defenders before storming the hill. Despite the best efforts of the British, the Germans managed to hold onto the hill for more than two years, until the start of the Battle of Messines, when a huge mine was detonated under Hill 60. The resulting explosion reduced the height of Hill 60 from 60ft (hence its name) to a mere shadow of itself at 13ft. With most of the German defenders killed instantly by the explosion of the mines, what was left of the hill was captured by the British, who held it for the remainder of the war.
These days Hill 60 is a memorial park maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and as the battles of Hill 60 took place as much underground as above it, most of the men who were killed making or fighting in the tunnels that riddled the ground below still lie there. The reduced hill that is pock marked with craters is their only headstone, although there are a number of memorials built on Hill 60 and these are:
After Hill 60 I headed north to the village of Zillebeke, which was defended at great cost to the Irish Guards when they helped to prevent the Germans breaking through to the English Channel during the First Battle of Ypres in November 1914. In Zillebeke I turned east towards my next destination, Maple Copse Cemetery that holds the remains of 308 Commonwealth soldiers. Unfortunately that cemetery was destroyed during fighting in June 1916, which meant that only 78 of the graves could be located after the war.
I had originally planned to visit some woods about a mile southeast of Maple Copse Cemetery; the location of some fairly well preserved German trenches and bunkers, but I decided to leave it for another time, (I’m not sure if there’ll ever be another time though!) so, after missing that out I headed to a place that reverberates through the hearts and minds of every modern day Canadian: Sanctuary Wood.
On the 2nd June 1916, the Germans attacked the high ground that lies just to the east of Zillebeke, which was held by three divisions of the Canadian Corps. They managed to lose the high ground on the first day but they spent the next 13 days recapturing it, piece by bloody piece. The highest point on that ridge was Hill 62 and that’s where a memorial was built to commemorate the Canadians who fought and died to recapture that low Flanders hill. The memorial itself isn’t that impressive, but you can see, from the view at the top why both sides wanted that vantage point that overlooks all of the land around it.
A few yards to the north is a section of trenches and a battlefield that has been preserved as an open air museum, but that’s as much as I can tell you about it as I had no desire to visit it then.
Further to the north is the location of Sanctuary Wood Cemetery which contains the remains of 1,989 Commonwealth soldiers, unfortunately only 636 have been identified. After walking around the graves, I decided to rest for a while near the entrance. Whilst there I stared beyond the nearby houses and into Sanctuary Wood and had a bit of a think about certain things. Why was I so reluctant to enter the wooded areas of the former battlefields when I didn’t mind visiting the more open battlefield areas? I usually love woodland areas, but not those ones. I then started to think about the vast swathes of land that had been utterly destroyed by man a century ago: the mountains, forests, heaths, pastures and meadows that were blasted by shells and mines, poisoned by chemicals, metals and the hundreds of thousands of remains from both man and beast. Those things turned the once vibrant and beautiful landscape into filthy wastelands, some of which were fit for nothing at the war’s end. Even today, those areas are fit for nothing, as the poisons and pollution still linger, tainting everything that is grown on that slighted land. Nature is wholly at the mercy of mankind.
I had touched upon this subject when I visited the “Last Tree” at the Delville Wood South African Memorial, but that had been a living tree. I knew somewhere where the remains of shell blasted stumps still stood amongst the newer trees, but it would mean revisiting my primeval fear of what lay amongst the trees of the Western Front’s forests and woodland. There was no choice, as I couldn’t avoid woods for the rest of my life. The “Forets de Guerre” wouldn’t beat me...
That location was the Sanctuary Wood open air museum that I had missed out about half an hour before, so I didn’t have far to go. It was the old British front line trenches that had been preserved after the farmer who owned the land returned after the war, unlike a lot of the trenches in Flanders that have been filled in and ploughed over. There is also an indoor section to the museum which displays all the artefacts and relics that have been recovered from the former battlefield of Sanctuary Wood.
Fortunately there were quite a few other people visiting when I entered the wooded area that contains the preserved trenches and this helped to lighten the mood somewhat, although everybody was talking in low, sombre voices. Why aren’t there any children chattering away when you want some?
The trenches themselves weren’t the best ones that I had seen during my journey, as they had used modern corrugated metal sheets to stop the sides collapsing, but then again, most of the well preserved trenches that I had seen were of German or Austro-Hungarian origin who built them better.
I wasn’t there to look at trenches though, but I found what I was looking for in the pock marked ground that surrounds them: the shattered and decaying remnants of the original trees, some of which were only being held together and upright by the use of wire and steel posts, although some still had roots that held them up. Each one was only a few feet high, but the sight of them was more powerful for our collective memory than the many manmade memorials could ever be. I can’t remember how many there were, maybe five or six? But as well as the trenches and shell holes they were a lasting reminder of the savagery of what took place there a century before....
Afterwards, I headed back past the Canadian Memorial before turning northeast at a crossroads and riding to the main road that headed towards the city of Ypres; The infamous Menin Road.
I followed the road for a few yards before reaching my next destination: Hooge Crater Cemetery that contains the remains of 5,916 Commonwealth soldiers. Hooge Crater itself is located on the other side of the road amongst some slightly grittier preserved trenches in the grounds of a hotel. It now looks more like a pond, but the crater was formed after the British detonated a huge mine underneath the German positions. I didn’t bother looking around the trenches, instead I just sat at the edge of the crater for a while, just thinking about the pointlessness of it all and how the journey had changed my view about certain things.____ just contemplating the many experiences I’d had throughout my journey.
Back on the road towards Ypres I reached a modern roundabout that had been built over the site of an infamous cross