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Visiting the Somme and Ypres battlefields.
This article is the intellectual property of www.retrosellers.com
and cannot be reproduced without express permission.
(photographs from author's personal collection)
At 7.30am on Saturday 1st July 1916 the ‘flower of Britain’s
youth’ rose from the trenches along an eighteen mile stretch
of the Western Front in the final ‘push’ of the ‘war
to end all wars’. They had flocked to the recruiting offices
in their thousands, most eager to give ‘The Hun one on the
nose’ before the war was over. For so many it would be their
lives that would be over, and well before the end of the war in
1918. By the close of that fateful July day in 1916 nearly 60,000
British soldiers, each a son, a father, a loved one, lay dead and
wounded, near a small unassuming river whose name would live in
infamy - the River Somme.
The Somme Battle raged on until late November 1916. During those
terrible 142 days more than one million two hundred thousand soldiers
from all sides were killed or wounded in actions to take woods,
ridges and villages which, by the end of the battle, were nothing
but tree stumps, moonscapes and rubble.
The ravaged landscapes of the Somme and Ypres Battlefields have
now been returned to agriculture, where crops once again grow. But
things are different. Crops now grow alongside seemingly countless
cemeteries that stand as silent testament to those who never returned.
There are, however, many places where the battle-scarred land has
been left just as it was at the end of the terrible carnage - and
these are the places many visitors find particularly moving. This
is why the Somme and Ypres continue to be amongst the most interesting
and thought provoking battlefields of the First World War.
The Great War, as the First World War of 1914 – 1918 was first
called, cast a deep shadow over the 20th century. Interest in the
war has grown considerably over the past decade or so. Visitors
to the Western Front battlefields of France and Belgium are now
drawn from all ages.
Visiting the battlefield is perhaps best undertaken as part of
a small group. Walking over the battlefields can also be quite a
moving experience, an experience best handled as part of a small
group, where there is opportunity to reflect in silence, as opposed
to being part of a larger more impersonal gathering.
As one walks over the ploughed fields which were once No Man’s
Land, whether on the Somme or Ypres battlefields, it is easy to
come upon pieces of shrapnel, barbed wire, cartridge cases and other
battle debris. Unexploded shells are still unearthed on a regular
basis even to this day in what is known locally as the ‘Harvest
of Iron’. It is a common sight to see unexploded shells lying
by the roadside after the spring and autumn ploughings, awaiting
collection by the authorities.
Walking through woods, such as Delville, Mametz and Ploegsteert
(Plugstreet), fought over with such terrible losses, is an eerie
experience. These woods have been left almost as they were. Even
today they are still a mass of shell craters and old trenches, with
many of the fallen still lying beneath the visitor’s feet.
There is an almost tangible silence in the depths of these and other
woods which is difficult to describe. At Delville Wood, like many
other woods, there was no ‘front line’. Battles ebbed
one way then the other as each side attacked and counter attacked.
Shell upon shell fell relentlessly on the same spot, churning up
the soil and those who occupied it in a relentless hell of artillery
fire.
Perhaps the most lasting impression is that of the countless cemeteries
on the Somme and Ypres battlefields today, and throughout the Western
Front, each with its own story to tell. Each uniform grave an individual,
a son, a father, a treasured life, a name on a telegram, a loved
one never to return. An individual to be talked of in years to come
as being the distant uncle or grandfather, ‘killed in the Great
War’ - the war to end all wars.… This sentiment is always
present in our minds as we walk amongst the seemingly endless rows
of headstones.
Almost half the headstones bear Kipling’s words - ‘A
soldier of the Great War - Known unto God’; a body that could
not be identified. Even sadder is the realisation that tens of thousands
of the 500,000+ British and Commonwealth ‘missing’ have
been denied the dignity of even an ‘unidentified’ burial.
These soldiers of ‘the war to end all wars’ lie at rest
beneath the buildings, maize and sugar beet that covers the landscape
today, their bodies having never been found.
There are a number of tour operators who take groups on tours of
the battlefields of the Great War. One such operator is Somme Battlefield
Tours Ltd who specialise in taking small groups.
James Power
Somme Battlefield Tours Ltd
www.battlefield-tours.com
Copyright James Power 2002
Many thanks to James Power for this fascinating and thought-provoking
article.
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