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BATTLEFIELDS TRIP

Our trip coincided roughly with the Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme.

16th June: We left school, jubilant over finishing our exams and excited at the prospect of arriving at our destination, Dixmuide, Belgium. We drove down to Dover to catch the Eurostar train to Calais before driving up through the French and Belgian country side to our destination.

 

In 1914, the journey would have been more arduous, soldiers travelling to France and Belgium would face a long journey by double-decker bus along not so smooth roads and then a ferry journey from Dover to Calais. This would have taken a few hours as opposed to the one hour crossing we had on Eurostar. Many of the men would be very sea-sick. They would then face another long journey to the front either by bus or by marching.

When we arrived in Dixmuide, we found ourselves in a picturesque town square with bells chiming. The square looked centuries old, but we later found out that the town was ruined during the war and was built back up again after the war by memory. That evening, we ate a good supper at the hotel. The food was good, especially seeing as they had cooked for all 34 of us.

When the soldiers arrived at the front, they wouldn’t have a nice hotel to stay in; they would have been constantly on the move at the beginning of the war and later on in the war, they would have been sent straight to the trenches.

17th June: This was our Somme Study day. We woke up early, had our Belgium-style breakfast, prepared our packed-lunches and left in good time for the Somme battlefields.

Our first stop was Thiepval Memorial. Thiepval Memorial is a memorial to British and South African men who lost their lives at the battle of the Somme in 1916. There are 72,000 names inscribed on the white panels; names of men who have no known grave. Behind the memorial lie 600 graves, 300 British Commonwealth and 300 French. This symbolises the joint nature of the Somme offensive.  

Our next stop was Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland memorial park. It covers 84 acres of land and contains a number of memorials and cemeteries. We were given a guided tour of the park by a Canadian student who was doing a prestigious summer job in helping to look after the park. The guide showed us the park including the Newfoundland memorial with the ‘caribou’ – the symbol of the Newfoundland Regiment. She took us along the preserved Newfoundland trenches and showed us the route they took across no-man’s land on 1st July 1916 and the ‘Danger Tree’ where the Newfoundlanders re-grouped and many were killed as they didn’t realize they were in full view of the Germans. She then showed us a cemetery and the German trenches. In the distance, we saw the infamous Hawthorn crater where 40 000lb of explosives were detonated ten minutes before the infantry advance on July 1st 1916. The next stop was Lochnagar Crater where 25 000kg of explosives were detonated at 0728 on July 1st 1916.
From here, we proceeded to Delville wood, known as ‘Devil wood’ to soldiers fighting there. It was the scene of intense fighting between South African British commonwealth forces and the Germans. It was very peaceful there when we visited and is almost impossible to imagine the fighting that occurred there. Today, there is a memorial to 25,000 South African men who have given up their lives in conflicts across the 20th century. 

 

Our final stop of the day was Vimy Ridge. This is another Canadian site as Canadian forces played a primary role here. Frontline trenches have been reconstructed here with concrete. Canadian and German trenches have both been reconstructed, and it is incredible how close the frontlines are together. Although quite effective at showing what the trenches would have been like, the trenches feel sterile there, quite the opposite of how I imagine the trenches would have felt like in 1916. Then we received a guided tour of tunnels dug under the ground at Vimy, tunnels used for troops to get to the front line without the risk of heavy shelling. In the tunnels there are mess rooms, bedrooms and communication rooms. The tunnels would have been sparsely lit by electric lights with telegram cables running along the walls. The tunnels were very damp and it must have been a nasty experience walking along them with the shells exploding above you.

We then travelled all the way back to Dixmuide in our coach and after dinner, we were allowed to explore Dixmuide town square, where there was a rather exciting robotic machine open 24 hours a day, selling everything from champagne to cat food. It was a shame that it did not sell sun cream as I had to suffer the consequences of not bringing sun-cream during the night.

18th June: This was our Ypres study day. We woke a little later as we didn’t have so far to travel, but the breakfast was still good, (one thing that struck me though, was the orange juice which tasted suspiciously alcoholic…).

Our first stop of the day was at Essex Farm cemetery. Essex Farm cemetery has grown up around a field hospital. It has been made famous by the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ which was written by John McCrae, a surgeon serving at the field hospital. 1,199 men are buried and commemorated in Essex farm.

Our next stop was Ieper (in Flemish) or Ypres (in French) where we visited the ‘In Flanders Fields’ Museum. This was an excellent museum in the Cloth Hall in Ieper, the town hall. It was very informative with interesting displays about local events of the First World War such as the three battles of Ieper. Free to then roam around Ieper, I discovered the town had beautiful architecture, surprised to find a festival going on involving loud music, volley ball and large crowds.
 
After Ieper, we went to Hill 62, Sanctuary wood. This is an incredible museum filled with artifacts from the war. There are uniforms, cap badges, revolvers, swords, photographs, trench mortars, shells etc. It is an amazing collection, and even more interesting are the trenches behind the museum. The trenches haven’t been touched since 11th November 1918. They were British lines and are one of the few examples of preserved trenches in the Ieper area. The land is scarred with shell holes and some shattered trees remain from the war. Underground tunnels connect the trenches in places, but I was too scared to enter, even though many others had fun exploring the tunnels.

 

We then travelled to Hooge Crater. Here there is a museum full of local First World War artifacts and a cemetery. Hooge Crater saw the first ever use of flame throwers and there is now a cemetery in the actual crater. The crater was made by a mine set off by the 3rd division in an attempt to defend Hooge chateau. 5,924 British Commonwealth soldiers are currently buried there.

Our next stop was Langemark Cemetery, a German cemetery which is a very striking contrast with the cemeteries of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It is much smaller in size than the commonwealth cemeteries, but holds 44,000 German dead. The atmosphere is completely different, and as it was pointed out to us, you can tell who won the war by looking at the cemeteries. The grave stones are flat on the ground and say things such as ‘Zwanzig unbekannte Deutsche soldaten’ ~ ‘twenty unknown German soldiers’. They are much less personal: in commonwealth cemeteries, it is rare to find a shared grave stone, but in Langemark, there are no gravestones for single people. The trees cast a shadow over the cemetery and I felt a very deep and profound feeling that I cannot describe. The cemetery was not exactly depressing, but it was certainly sobering. As Stalin said, ‘A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic’. I certainly can’t contemplate 44,000 deaths or the implications of that, but this cemetery definitely helps you try and understand and come to terms with these figures.

After Langemark, we headed back to Ieper and spent some free time there. I think we all got sucked into the chocolate shop there by a rather competent chocolatier/businessman. Further exploring the town, I then got ripped off buying batteries for my camera. They charged 9€, but further down the street I spotted them being sold for 2€! Anyway, we stayed in Ieper for the 8 o’clock memorial service at the Menin Gate which has taken place every night since 11th November 1918, (not always at the Menin gate of course as it was constructed in 1927 and certainly not during the Second World War Nazi occupation). At the ceremony, Buglers from the local fire service sound the last post and two songs are sung. There is also a minute’s silence.

We then headed back to the hotel in Dixmuide, but on route we stopped at Tyne Cot Commonwealth cemetery and memorial to the missing. It is the largest Commonwealth cemetery with 11,856 burials. There are a further 35,000 missing commemorated on the memorial panels at the back of the cemetery. 15 old citizens are named here, and we laid a wreath on behalf of the school to the old citizens who died during the war. Tyne Cot supposedly gets its name from the Northumberland Fusiliers who reckoned the German pillboxes on the ridge (some of which you can see today) looked like the cottages of workers on the Tyneside. It was the scene of heavy fighting as the ridge was of strategic importance as you could see the surrounding country side from the top. Again, you have the problem with taking in the amount of dead buried and commemorated there.

 

After an intense day, you would have thought when we arrived back at the hotel again that we would go straight to sleep. Unfortunately this wasn’t the case.

19th June: Grudgingly woke up and ate breakfast. It was market day in Dixmuide and I had time to look around. I bought some peaches which looked great and I knew they would go down well at home. It’s a shame we can’t grow peaches like that.
We departed Dixmuide and headed back to Calais to visit ‘Cité de l’Europe’, a huge shopping centre. It was a bit disappointing not to find a suitable way of spending my Euros, though. The majority of shops there seemed to be clothes shops, so I ended up food shopping in the supermarket. I managed to find my favourite crisps which can only be found in France – mustard flavour! When the time came to leave Cité de l’Europe, we had a competition to guess how much money the teachers had spent on alcohol for the sixth form leaving ball. Miss Murphy racked up a sum of 800€!

Anyway, after missing the first train we intended to get because of customs, we spent an hour and a bit in a service station and then took the next train and proceeded back to school, desperately tired, but thankful for a thoroughly interesting and enjoyable trip.

Ben Rodin (3S)