Very moving

Our third and final tour started today. We are doing another Back Roads tour focussed on where Anzacs served on the Western Front. Once again I’m not going to focus too much on the history but rather what it is like to be in these places now.

We left Lille and headed into Belgium to our first stop Messines. This is less than an hour’s drive but it wasn’t long until you started to see some of the bunkers from WW1 in the fields beside the road. Of course local farmers have to be careful as there is a lot of unexploded ordnance around.

The first stop was the top of Messines Ridge which would have been the German front line in June 1917. This is where the New Zealanders were involved in taking the high ground. On the 7th of June 1917 the allies detonated 19 large mines tunnellers had placed under the German front lines. They actually placed 23 but decided not to detonate 2 of them and the other 2 failed to detonate. One of these mines did go off in the 1950s during a thunder storm, it killed a cow.

The New Zealand memorial over looks the ground where they advanced after the mines had exploded. It’s hard now to stand there listening to the birds chirping and leaves rusting looking at farmers working these fields to understand how different it would have been back then. The Germans held the high ground so they had the advantage but the mines did surprise them and ultimately it was a victory for the allies.

After the memorial we walked around to the Irish Memorial. This was only completed in 1998 as part of the Good Friday Peace Agreement and has a high tower similar to what is found in Ireland.

We then went to the town of Messines itself. Of course this town was completely destroyed in WW1 and has been rebuilt. There are lots of memorials and signs around the town. The church crypt was used as an aid post by the Germans and you can climb to the top of the bell tower for a view over the surrounding area.

Ration Farm Military Cemetery is about 2.5 kms south of the village of La Chapelle-d'Armentieres, on the south-eastern outskirts of Armentieres. Once again it is in the middle of farmland and hard to reconcile then with now. The farm is named because the aid station was right next to the ration dump.

There are all lot of museums around and we went to the Hooge Crater Museum which is privately owned and has a very impressive collection of WW1 artefacts.

Next stop was the craters at Hill 60 and nearby Caterpillar. The area around Hill 60 was purchased after the war by an English family, fenced off and left. This means the ground still shows the shell holes, bunkers, and of course the two massive craters. This is a war cemetery as many soldiers on both sides died in the explosion of the mines and subsequent fighting. Interestingly this area was fought over many times in the war and in 1914 the front lines were only a few metres apart, see the photo.

The movie Hill 60 was reasonably accurate but the mines were all detonated at once and not one after the other as the movie shows.

We then went into Ypres where we are staying the next two nights.もっと詳しく