Now the 100 year anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War has passed and the politicians and dignitaries have been and gone, now is the time to visit the rows of uniform gravestones, vivid museums and monuments to remember the horrific slaughter.

Across the regions of Flanders Fields (Belgium) and the Nord, Pas-de-Calais, Somme and Aisne (Northern France), museums, revitalised existing collections, new visitor centres and, in this digital age, electronic, virtual resources, is bringing us face to face with the people who experienced the war to end all wars. This is most evident at the newly renovated In Flanders Fields Museum in probably the most famous town associated with the war, Ypres, in southern Belgium.

Ypres has been rebuilt and some historic structures have been restored including the splendid Cloth Hall that was the largest Gothic building in Europe before being obliterated by German shelling but now lovingly rebuilt stone by stone.

The Last Post is still sounded every night at the Menin Gate memorial in the heart of Ypres, a sit has since the tradition started in the 1920s.

The museum manages to incorporate latest technical wizardry, a rich collection of photographs, artefacts, uniforms and video.

The electronic cleverness includes everyone being given a wristband that programmes your age, gender, birthplace and language that you then put against a sensor at exhibits to select a personal testimony from an actual person from the war.

You also have your own personal encounter with 10 iconocharacters, life-size projections of figures from Belgium, France, Britain and America who speaking a written testimony from the time.

A contrasting yet no less impressive collection is housed in the ultra-modern Museum of the Great War at Péronne which also shows the experiences of the major participants in the First World War but with the emphasis on the impact of this conflict on the 20th century.

A smaller museum in the heart of the battlefields of the Somme, the Musée Somme 1916 follows the soldiers into the trenches of the 1916 offensive with a 250 m long underground tunnel with tableaux of the daily life of the troops with original items discovered in the battle scarred area.

 

Battles across this region of Europe have stretched back over the centuries and beyond.  The Chemin des Dames was a strategic route and natural look-out position used in battles from the days of Julius Caesar to Napoleon Bonaparte.

In April 1917 the Chemin des Dames was the site of one of the greatest battles of the First World War when tens of thousands of men advanced to attack the German positions. The appalling loss of life in this terrible defeat prompted mutiny in the regiments – an episode hidden by the French government until modern times have taken a more liberal attitude to the mass slaughter of a generation.

In an old chalk quarry the Caverne du Dragon museum gives an account of this horrific loss of life and a now seemingly bizarre episode.

Originally occupied by German troops, the warren of caves that look out over the landscape, and therefore an excellent location for soldiers and artillery, were fought over and at one time were divided by a wall with Germans on one side and French soldiers on the other.

But nothing brings home the true horror than the cemeteries whether vast or small, well-established or recently opened to home the latest remains uncovered.

Back in Belgium, the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery is the largest hospital-cemetery of the Great War and a new visitor centre explains the work of this major field hospital. At Lijssenthoek, just south of Poperinge, the farm of Remi Quaghebeur was a few miles behind the front and next to the Poperinge-Hazebrouck railway line. At the height of the war, Remi comprised four big field hospitals and the four Casualty Clearing Stations here boasted some 4,000 hospital beds.

Amongst the nearly 11,000 headstones are those marking the final resting place commemorates Chinese workers, Commonwealth, French, American soldiers, a British nurse and Germans prisoners of war.

A short drive away Passchendaele took its grim place in history when in 1917 there were 500,000 casualties in 100 days of fighting for the gain of just five miles. That carnage can only be remotely sensed by visiting the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 housed in a castle at Zonnebeke with photographs and videos, artefacts and dugout tunnels. The next dark stop on any visit is the nearby Tyne Cot Cemetery, the biggest military cemetery of the Commonwealth with 12,000 graves.

The large number of cemeteries and memorials demonstrates how many countries and at the time dominions and regions of the then Empire were involved, such as V.C. Corner Cemetery, Australian Memorial Park marking the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916. This was another disaster for the Allies dubbed “the worst 24 hours in Australia’s entire history”, with 5,500 Australians and 2,000 British troops killed or wounded.

Another is the memorial to the Newfoundlanders at Beaumont-Hamel, nine kilometres north of the town of Albert.  A bronze caribou, the Newfoundland regiment’s symbol, stands proudly on a mound, surrounded by rock and shrubs native to their homeland. He faces the direction of the enemy line and where the Battalion advanced on July 1, 1916.

You can walk through original trenches although of course they are now clean, dry and secure, unlike the rat and flea infested quagmires that the young soldiers had to endure across the battle lines through the course of the war. One gross fact is that the rats grew so large on the remains of the tens of thousands of dead soldiers and horses that they grew to the size of large cats.

This may sound like dusty history but every year the remains of more people are found and buried, their details traced now using the latest DNA technology and relatives informed.  For example, in May 2008, the remains of soldiers buried by the Germans in a mass grave were finally located on the outskirts of Fromelles. A total of 250 British and Australian soldiers from this site are now reburied in the Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery.

The most impressive and certainly the largest cemetery providing a final resting place for France’s war dead is at Notre Dame de Lorette, northwest of Arras at the village of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire, with beautifully-kept grounds and rows of crosses. There is a plot at the western end of the cemetery for muslim soldiers, and each grave has a headstone instead of a cross. Each headstone is positioned so that it faces east. North Africans from the 1st Moroccan Division fought in this area during the battles of 1915 for the ridges of Notre Dame de Lorette and Vimy.

This area is known to us as Vimy Ridge which dominates the surrounding area including the town of Arras, another place forever now in history for the ravages, senseless death and sacrifices war.

 

On a hill overlooking Arras stand the remains of two towers of Mont-Saint-Eloi Abbey which were used by French troops to observe German positions. In 1915 heavy shelling truncated the towers, leaving a ruined symbol to the horrors of war.

It might seem odd to also talk about the fine food and drinks you can enjoy in Flanders and the Somme regions when visiting battlefields and museums but southern Belgium and northern France boast wonderful cuisine, wines, beers and ciders.

Maybe when enjoying these pleasures of life the poignancy and unfathomable sadness of the First World War are brought even more to mind.

 

Factfile:

www.1418remembered.co.uk: Actvities, guides and a download application for smartphones.

www.thewaysofthegreatwar.co.uk:  a virtual exhibition based on The Great War Remembered with educational records.

www.greatwarjourneys.co.uk: an excellent planning guide to visiting the towns, villages and the fields of Northern France and Flanders in Belgium.

For further information about visiting Antwerp please contact Tourism Flanders-Brussels on 0207 307 7738 (Live Operator Line, Mon – Fri) or visit www.visitflanders.co.uk for more details.