How the Ypres Trip Deepened Our Understanding of the First World War

 by Wilbur Palmer Ward 

Firstly, I would like to point out what a wonderful experience the 2023 Ypres History Trip was. Everyone that went broadened their outlook on the First World War - and had a great time.

The two coaches heading to Belgium promptly left Portsmouth after the school day had ended. There was no traffic and the coach made it to Dover with a lot of time to spare. The ferry crossing only took an hour and we were on our way through the north of France and into Belgium. We were at the hostel by one o’clock in the morning.

The first thing that we did was visit the small but not unimportant Brandhoek New Military Cemetery. Buried there, alongside many other brave soldiers, is one of three people to have received two Victoria Crosses. His name is Noel Chavasse and he was a British military doctor who served and died near Ypres. Alongside being a doctor, he was an Olympic athlete. Another cemetery that we visited (Poperinge) contained 3 graves of people who were executed, the largest at any cemetery. These soldiers would have been executed for a number of reasons such as desertion.

We then visited the Talbot House, a wholesome alternative to the bars that flourished in a town a few miles away from the front line. It was uniquely open to all ranks, officers and men. It provided a place for rest, relaxation and humanity for soldiers on leave. It has a chapel, garden, library and games room.

A British dressing hospital, Essex Farm, was where we went next. This is where John McCrae wrote the famous poem “In Flanders Fields”. Dressing hospitals were the first place a wounded soldier could expect to receive some medical aid. Doctors could conduct triage and emergency surgery before passing casualties onto field hospitals. These dressing stations were around 5-7 miles from the front line. Alongside the dressing station is the Essex farm cemetery where the youngest known casualty is buried, Private Joe Strudwick of the Rifle Brigade, aged just 15 when he died.

Bois Coraert or Bayernwald (Bavarian wood) was the only German trench system that we visited during the trip. They were developed by the Germans between November 1914 and the 17th of June 1917 when the system was captured from the Germans by allied forces. Adolf Hitler served near here in 1914/15 where close by he was awarded the Iron Cross while working as a company runner. He returned to visit after the fall of France in 1940. Even  though this trench system is reconstructed, it remains probably the best preserved trench system in this area.

Hill 60, sometimes known as Polingeek (Caterpillar) crater, was fiercely fought over in WW1 due to its vantage point. The sheer size of the crater was immense when we visited it during the trip. The hill was the scene of the 19 miles planned to be detonated on the 17th of June, 1917 at 03:10. Four failed to explode (one went off in 1956 after a lightning strike). Underground mining began in early 1915 as British miners (paid three times the number as ordinary soldiers) tunnelled towards the German lines using the ‘clay kicking’ method. This method involves the miner lying on his back with a metal attachment to his boots. He will push his feet into the tunnel wall and bring the loose soil towards himself. The shafts were 30m deep and 429m long. On the 9th of November, the 1st Australian tunnelling company took control of the tunnels. Their job was to make sure the Germans did not discover the explosives or cut the cable for detonation. When the explosion went off, at 3:10 in the morning of the 17th of June 1917, the German front lines were obliterated, leading to the  allied forces overrunning the hill. The explosions could be heard across the channel in London.            

After we had had supper, we walked into Ypres to visit the Menin Gate, where they were holding a ceremony to commemorate the fallen soldiers of the great war. The Menin Gate marked the start of the infamous Menin Road that led out of Ypres towards the front line. Tens of thousands of soldiers passed through these gates, many of them never to return. It was one of the many ancient gates of Ypres, but was destroyed during the great war. It was rebuilt as a memorial for those British and Commonwealth soldiers who had lost their lives but had no known grave in the Ypres area. In total, 54,896 men are commemorated here. It was found however, that the Menin Gate was not large enough to hold the names of all of the missing. The names recorded there are of soldiers who died between the outbreak of the war and the 15th of August 1917. The names of the further 34,984 missing soldiers who died between the 16th of August 1917 to the end of the war are engraved on carved panels in Tyne Cot cemetery. One Old Portmuthian is commemorated here, Lieutenant Wilfred C Anderson whose name is on panel 31/33.

On the final day, we had a guided tour of the In Flanders Field museum, which is in central Ypres. This museum was very useful at showing us the general history of the Ypres area but also talked about different aspects of the Great war.

Our final activity was visiting Clone Valley cemetery which was a small cemetery that was funded by the local people. We also visited Caesar’s Nose, a largely Welsh cemetery amidst a scenic corn field. This cemetery was called Caesar’s Nose as the section of trench that ran alongside the cemetery looked like Caesar’s nose. Nearby to both of these cemeteries, is the Yorkshire trench and dugout. This was an excavated British trench section from 1917 that, unsurprisingly,  included a dugout.

We left Ypres at around 15:00 on Saturday and returned to school at around 9:30 pm.

The amount of history that everyone learnt during the trip was astonishing. It just goes to show what a great trip it was. Thank you to all of the staff that came on the trip; you made this wonderful experience possible.