Unforgettable

First stop after reaching Belgium was Brugge. Brugge is a small but interesting town with lots of things to do. After a long exploration of the town, we headed to Kortrijik youth hostel to relax after the journey.

The next day was the first real day of the experience. Many places were visited, including Messines church, where we met a very interesting man named Mr Albert. We visited Sanctuary Wood, descending into real trenches and feeling a lot like the real soldiers might have felt.

On Saturday, one of the places we visited was the Thiepval monument. We were all struck by the size of the spectacular war memorial. We also went to La Boiselle, the massive crater formed by a mine explosion. I was awestruck by the power of the explosives.

We visited a considerable number of cemeteries during the next day of the trip, but in my opinion, Tyne Cot Cemetery was the most astounding. 12,000 of the war dead were buried there. It was touching to hear the stories of some of the soldiers.

After visiting many other sights, we went to the Menen Gate at 8.00pm for the last post ceremony. It was a very moving, experience. Then, as a fitting end, we placed a poppy wreath in the monument, and had a minute's silence.

Highlights

Thiepval - This monument was breath-taking. It dominated the landscape... There were thousands of names on the monument, all of which were on the grey stone blocks.

I thought the hotel was great, with the bowling and the arcades, and the food was good. At first no one sang the songs but by the end of the trip everyone was singing and we have all remembered one or two. I think they added a lot of atmosphere to the trip.

The stories were very moving and interesting, and walking round Tyne Cot gave me a very strange feeling inside... My most vivid memory was walking around Tyne Cot cemetery looking at all the thousands of gravestones and names and then getting on the bus and listening to "The Green Fields of France". Everyone was just silent and there was such an atmosphere.

The hotel was perfect, with nice sized rooms with their own bathrooms and TVs. There was a bowling alley, and video games, plus the bar and the dining room. The meals were also very good, and it had to be the best lift ever!

When we had learned the songs we all began singing them. The next day in the morning, we left the Western Front again singing yet more 1st World War songs. We arrived (exhausted) at around 10.30pm. It was an experience I will never forget.

Vimy Ridge

At daybreak on the 9th of April 1917, the Canadians marched 100,000 troops to the front line at Vimy through a maze of tunnels. Within fifty minutes the Germans retreated, overwhelmed by Canadian numbers, but in just over an hour nearly 10,000 men had been killed.

The monument on the ridge now stands shining brilliant white, carved in Yugoslavian stone. It is quite a spectacle. On this monument are carved a daunting number of Canadian names, showing you just how many died for so little achieved, and for so little ground.

Scattered all across France and Belgium are massive craters, which reach up to 22 metres deep. The craters were made by the tunnelers, who dug under the German trench line and blew it to pieces.

Every night at eight o‘clock at the Menin Gate one or two men from the local fire service play ”The Last Post" to commemorate the missing of the First World War.

Cemeteries

The whiteness of the stones at all the British cemeteries was amazing, and the number of graves scattered through the fields was incredible. Tynecot: Reading hundreds of names and seeing hundreds of unknown soldiers made you think too, as we knew that every gravestone had a story behind it. Des, Fran and Chris Bibby, who drove the coach, were very good guides who knew an awful lot about the war and managed to organise everything perfectly.

At Newfoundland Park we reconstructed what happened at the Somme, which made you feel more in touch with the men who died there. Mud was everywhere, even on a dry day. It was shocking to see the trench conditions which men had to endure during the First World War. Even now, eighty years later, the mud went up to my knees.

One of the most saddening things we saw was the German cemetery at Langemarck. It held 45,000 German soldiers, most of whom were students, 20,000 in one mass grave the size of a classroom...

Vauquois

The village of Vauquois that exists today is perhaps half a mile from the site of the village of 1914. It is a nondescript place only worth a visit if you like nondescript places. It huddles at the foot of what appears from the plain to be a substantial hill; the only really high ground for miles in any direction. The village of 1914 stood atop the hill, and the main street ran along the hill's spine.

Very early in The Great War the Germans took Vauquois without much of a fight. Not until they had lost it did the French appreciate the hill's strategic importance. French assault troops then clawed their way back up the hill and took one side of the village. The Germans could not be dislodged from the other side. The main street was the front line. You can see the trenches today scarcely fifty yards apart; so close you could hit the enemy with a well thrown stone let alone a bullet. Pretty soon all the buildings between the two sides were burning wrecks. The fires burned for months and could not be extinguished.

Because of the fires, fighting on the surface became impossible. Nevertheless for both sides the hill was too important to leave in the other's control. So they began to tunnel under the enemy trenches, to lay mines when they reached them and to blow up the enemy if they could. The last and largest of these mines was laid by the Germans and killed 150 French troops. Of course the age old principle of the countermine applied too. If you could find your enemy's tunnel and surprise him underground you could turn the tables. This grisly troglodytic form of combat went on for a very long time.

Although the guidebook warns you what to expect, you are not prepared for it. Rubble and rusting barbed wire you expect; holes in the ground too. What you actually find where the main street of Vauquois used to run is a crater fifty yards wide, fifty yards deep and two hundred yards long. The land on which the village used to stand has simply ceased to exist, as if some giant with a spoon had gouged out the top of his giant pudding. What separates the trench lines today is not the ruins of the village but a vertiginous drop into the bowels of an extinct man made volcano.

Before we become intransigent today, convinced of our own total righteousness and our enemy's total evil, it is worth reminding ourselves what intransigence has done for us in the past. Those who will not learn from history are still condemned to repeat it.
PBH