History Trips to WWI Battlefields

An important and popular site. Besides a small museum, it contains an excellent example of first World War trenches complete with dugouts and communication trenches. The museum is owned by the family Schier who have preserved this small part of the front more or less intact since 1919. It is called Sanctuary Wood because in 1914 it was a quiet area where troops, cut off from their units, could be gathered together and eventually sent back to their correct battalions.

A very interesting and compact site which illustrates some important facts about the Ypres Salient and the fighting in it. There is a German bunker, which British troops took over and added to. It was also used in the Second World War. The remains of the craters can be seen, which were the product of the work of tunnelling experts. The best preserved is Caterpillar Crater in private grounds across the railway line. Facing the road is a memorial to the Australian tunnellers.

The Last Post, the traditional final salute to the fallen, is played by the buglers in honour of the memory of the soldiers of the former British Empire and its allies, who died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War. It is the intention of the Last Post Association to maintain this daily act of homage in perpetuity. A very moving ceremony and often the highlight of a Battlefields tour.

It opened in December 1915 and was the inspiration of the Reverend Neville Talbot who named it after his brother, Lieutenant Gilbert Talbot (who is buried in Sanctuary Wood Cemetery). He immediately set about making the house an oasis of peace and ‘normality’. He was so successful that after the War the Toc H (military signallers code for Talbot House) Movement was founded to help the unemployed and keep alive the ‘brotherhood of the trenches’.

This is the largest Commonwealth military cemetery in the world where 11,954 soldiers are buried and where the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing stone wall surrounds the cemetery listing nearly 35,000 names. The Cemetery is built on a ridge from which there is a good view over the Salient to Ypres in the distance; its position therefore explains why it was so hard to seize and the advantages of occupying it. 

Poperinge was the forward base for the whole of the Ypres Salient and was therefore completely surrounded by training camps, depots and hospitals. Many Belgian refugees from Ypres also tried to find shelter here. It was, too, the first place behind the lines where soldiers could find some form of relief from the horrors of life in the trenches.

It was built in 1928-29 as a place of worship for the British colony in Ypres, most of which were employed by the Imperial Graves Commission. It is now a memorial to all those who died in the Salient. It is worth a visit only if time permits as it tells us more about the inter-war British colony in Ypres than it does the War.

The cemetery, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, is where nearly 1,200 servicemen are buried or commemorated and is on the site of the British Front Line. Essex Farm was the site of a field hospital, where Canadian Army Medical Corps Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae was stationed in May 1915 and wrote the poem ‘In Flanders Fields'.  The poem led to the poppy becoming a symbol of First World War remembrance.

The British position in the ‘Hooge’ area had become quite unstable
in the summer of 1915. The Brits tried to eliminate this fortified
German bastion with a limited but well targeted attack. They let
explode more than 1700 kg of dynamite in a tunnel, made by the
special Tunneling Companies of Royal Engineers. All this happened on July 19th, 1915. This crater was later recalled ‘Hooge Crater’.

There are relatively few German cemeteries on the Western Front
battlefields. As the invaders the land that France and Belgium was
prepared to grant was limited, in comparison to their British allies.
Although this cemetery is much smaller in area than Tyne Cot, in
fact it has many more burials. This is because the burials are
effectively in the form of several mass graves.

During the British attack of 1917, there were 500.000 casualties in
100 days for a gain territory of only 5 miles. Passchendaele became an international symbol of senseless military violence in its most cruel form. In the Memorial Museum the memory of the battle is kept alive through images and movies, and a large collection of historical artefacts.

Combine this with Platoon Experience – Follow in the footsteps of the 40th Australian Battalion on 4th Oct 1917 with this interactive visit including a 3km battlefield walk in full uniform, an authentic ‘Tommy Tucker’ meal & a guided tour of the Memorial Museum

Discover the German site with its 2 listening shafts, 300 metres of
trenches and 4 bunkers. Information panels and a scale model
explain the events of war and life at the front

In 1915 the Belgian army tries to dislodge the Germans from the petrol tanks north of the city of Dixmude. After two failed attempts the Belgians decide to dig a trench towards the drums. The Germans however manage to capture part of it. In order to suppress the German threat, Belgian military engineering creates, by the end of 1915, a breach in the Yser dike. The two camps are now only separated by a mere ditch. The trench is then transformed into an impregnable position, called Trench of Death because of the victims buried there after the German attack.

Using maps, photographs, videos & war memorabilia, the exhibition tells the story of life and death on the front-line.