Ypres: The Menin Road

Continuing our journeys along the roads which crisscross the landscape of the Western Front, we travel to Flanders in Belgium, and take the old Roman road between the city of Ypres and the town of Menin which follows the story of four years of conflict here in the First World War and discuss once more the 'culture' of The Old Front Line.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:01):
The old Roman road that extended from the city of
Ypres to the town of Menin tookthe men of both sides into the
very heart, the dark heart ofconflict in Flanders during the
Great War.
Here today, as we follow thatroute, what do we find of the
culture of the old front line?

(00:25):
We've spoken in a recent episodeabout the Albert-Bapon road on
the Somme and how those mainroads which cut across the
landscape of the Western Frontare perhaps taken for granted as
we use them today to traversethat ground, but yet are
themselves incredibly importantas pathways to the past and are

(00:50):
all part of how we access thepast via that landscape of the
present.
And we've spoken about this andits relation to the culture of
the old front line.
And I do think that there issomething in this idea of a
culture.
The battlefields have somethingabout them that we know is

(01:12):
tangible, but we can't alwaysquantify.
And I think our search for theunderstanding of that is all
part of that culture.
But those roads, they guide us,they lead us.
They aren't simply a route fromone place to another.
And along them are the manylayers of history by which we

(01:34):
understand the Great War, andwith it perhaps how we begin to
put together the jigsaw piecesof that conflict and make sense
of them.
We discussed the Aubert-BapomeRoad and what that means to the
Somme battlefields of 1916, andanother obvious one to explore
and consider is the Menin Roadat Ypres.

(01:58):
A road and a name that iscertainly very much part of the
war's culture in Flanders,whether it be from the
perspective of veterans,accounts written both then and
later, or how we view that verycentral part of what was once
the Ypres salient, but as it istoday.

(02:18):
For me, the Menin Road is a veryevocative name.
Almost a phrase, really, abyword for the Great War at
Ypres.
And I remember veterans that Iinterviewed in the 80s and 90s
discussing it with me, talkingabout marching up that Menin

(02:39):
Road with star shells cuttingthe sky in the distance over the
ridges beyond, or gunners...
galloping in their limbersacross Hellfire Corner and
straight up the Menin Road toget to the gun sites, to feed
those guns, to continue with thebombardment, to fight another

(02:59):
day in this massive industrialwar of which they were all a
part.
And I can remember one or two ofthose men, when they used the
names of the places aroundYpres, including the Menin Road,
it almost sent a shiver downtheir spine.
If I could have somehowquantified and what they were
seeing in their mind's eye.

(03:19):
Who knows what we'd have seen?
Who knows what darkness we'dhave had an insight into?
So I think these roads, thenaming of them, the
Albert-Bapaume Road and now,which we'll look at in this
episode, the Menin Road, theseare all parts of that layered
culture of the First World War.

(03:41):
The very names themselves takingus to those moments during that
conflict.
So in this podcast, we're goingto follow another one of these
roads, another Roman road, andsee where it takes us and what
we find of Flanders past as wetravel along that highway in

(04:02):
Flanders present.
So where do we start on thisjourney along the Menin Road?
Well, without a doubt, we startat the Menin Gate in Ypres or
Ypres as it is today.
This is essentially where theMenin Road begins and the gate,
the Menin Gate today acts likealmost no other beacon to the

(04:26):
past of the Great War when itcomes to those who make their
pilgrimage here more than acentury later.
But we of course have to askourselves, what is the Menin
Road and what was the MeninGate?
Well, roads have always beengiven names and with the city of

(04:47):
Ypres built up, Over manycenturies, fortified by the
military architect Valba, turnedinto this kind of star-shaped
fortification with the citywithin its walls.
There were a number of gates,breaks in the ramparts, not
necessarily a physical woodengate itself, but a gap in the

(05:08):
ramparts which could be defendedand could be opened for the
passage of ordinary people, andthey all headed to different
locations.
There was one to Dixmuda, therewas one to Lille and there was
the one here to Menin and theroad that took you out of Ypres
to the nearest next main townwhich was Menin was of course

(05:29):
called the Menin Road and theMenin Gate named after that road
that passed underneath it thatpassed through it and took you
out into that ground beyond thiswas a quaint city the city of
Ypres before the Great War amedieval gem it was described at
in one of the guides bookspublished in that Edwardian

(05:51):
period before 1914 and the MeninGate was a gap in the ramparts
by the eve of the Great Warguarded by two Flemish lions the
lions are a symbol of Flandersthere was a pub right into the
ramparts the walls at this pointon the Menin Gate which the

(06:12):
locals came to later destroyedand only uncovered when the
foundations of the Menin Gatewere memorial were eventually
built here in the 1920s.
The road itself was a main road,it would have owed its origins
to the Roman period we can seethat by its straightness and its
directness of route betweenYpres and Menin itself by

(06:36):
1913-14 it would have been acobbled road with horse-drawn
transport going to and fro andconsidering that Ypres had been
very much part of the clothtrade had been a trade city then
this itself was a trade routeessentially as part of its
history cloth was taken by bargeup to the northern part of

(06:59):
Europe.
The Issa Canal was speciallybuilt to take those barges from
Ypres up through that canalsystem along the Issa itself but
things could be also transportedby road.
But by the eve of conflicts thiswas a route I suspect that took
locals doing localised trade inwhatever the crops were planted

(07:21):
in the fields around the city ofYpres and close to the town of
Menin and all kinds of otherprovisions besides so
horse-drawn transport would havebeen going up and down this and
there are some images of that inthe EAP archives there was a
local photographer Anthony ofEAP that photographed what we
would describe as Edwardian EAPin that period leading up to

(07:42):
1914 and we see this kind ofthing very much expressed in the
images that he took and are nowpart of the wider archives that
are available in EAP today andthere was a very good book
published of his pre-war imagessome years ago and if that's
something that interests youit's well worth looking out
because he went on to take ahuge number of wartime and then

(08:05):
post-war images and they toohave appeared in recent books as
well so we're at the men in gatewe know what that is gap in the
ramparts and the road the men inroad we know how that's named it
would have passed through it andout into the countryside beyond
but of course it became muchmore than just a road much much

(08:26):
more than a gap in some citywalls.
It became really a highway inits own right to the front line
in these four years of conflicthere during the Great War.
And in 1914, Ypres was largelyoccupied by French troops that
were British, of course, closeby, taking part in the First

(08:50):
Battle of Ypres.
And we know some British andperhaps even some Indian
battalions marched through theMenin Gate and down this section
of the Menin Road to take partin the fighting beyond up
towards Zonnebeek or PolygonWard or Gellerveld and many
other places besides during thatOctober-November 1914 period.

(09:10):
At that stage the people ofYpres would have still been
living here and they remainedwithin the city until April of
1915 when the use of poison gasby the Germans made it
impossible for the British toallow civilians to continue to
live in the city of Ypres.
But as the war went on While theMenin Gate was used frequently,

(09:32):
by 1915 it was in full view ofthe enemy who occupied the high
ground in a kind ofsemi-circular shape, the
so-called salient, just outsidethe city of Ypres.
So from the Pilkelm Ridge acrossto the Freisenberg Ridge and the
Bellawada Ridge and ObservatoryRidge in the beginnings of the

(09:52):
Messines Ridge, the Germanscould see movement around the
Menin Gate area and that initialpart of the Menin Road.
So movement was only at nightmuch more movement was done from
the little gate something thatwe've looked at in previous
podcasts but nevertheless to thesoldiers who came to eat there
was something symbolic aboutpassing through the city going

(10:15):
through this gate wreckedeventually by shell fire huge
chunks of the ramparts blown outby large caliber shells there
were casualties frequently herefrom shell fire often the bodies
of horses that have been killedfrom some of the limbers and the
wagons moving up towards thefront line area around Hellfire
Corner one of the main junctionsas you move up onto the next

(10:38):
part of the Menin Road whichwe're going to get to shortly in
this journey we're going to takealong the Menin Road but as the
battle moved on as the war movedon by 1917 and the fronts
following the third battle ofYpres captured those bits of
high ground from Pilkelm acrossto Freisenberg and Bellowarda

(10:58):
and the Menin Road Ridge, whichwe'll also come to in this
journey.
That meant that the Germans nolonger had eyes on the Menin
Gate and this initial stretch ofthe Menin Road, and it was used
much more frequently.
And when you read accounts ofthe Third Battle of Ypres, you
see it referenced time and timeagain.
It then become very much aconduit for troops going up onto

(11:22):
that battlefield.
No longer countryside with lanesand fields and copses and
hedgerows but this huge morassthis lunar landscape of shell
holes that the battlefieldsaround it became in 1917 as
depicted for example in artworkby paul nash which we're going

(11:43):
to use as the artwork image forthis episode of the podcast and
which we've discussed in anotherpodcast on art of the great war
and you can go back through thereally a completely kind of
different meaning in that lastphase of the war because such a

(12:05):
high percentage of soldiers camethrough here and that would
continue up until April of 1918when the Germans attacked in
what would be later described asthe Battle of the Lys and
recaptured all of that highground and got even closer to
Ypres with Hellfire Cornerbecoming the front line and the

(12:27):
gates was no longer used at thatperiod because it was literally
under the eyes of the enemy whowere only now hundreds of yards
away rather than on the otherside of the ridges beyond the
city itself and that wouldremain like that until the
summer of 1918 when thebeginnings of what became the
fourth battle of Ypres inSeptember and October of 1914

(12:49):
would take British andCommonwealth and American and
Belgian forces across thatFlanders landscape and following
the line of the Menin Roadfinally to Menin itself and that
would of course be the the finaldestination of our journey in
this podcast.
And when we today leave theMenin Gate and we walk through

(13:12):
the gate, it's currently in itsfinal stages of renovation.
Most of the names in the centralpart of the memorial are
visible.
You can't go to some of theupper levels still yet.
And you can still feel, I think,despite that, that sense of what
the gate stands for, those morethan 54,000 British and
Commonwealth names names of menwho were denied a grave, a

(13:37):
sepulchre, due to thecircumstances of war.
Not all disappeared into themud.
Some are buried as unknownsoldiers in the many cemeteries
around Ypres, for example.
And again, there is a previouspodcast about the Mendingate if
you want to find out more aboutthat.
But today, as we leave the gateand follow that road, no longer

(13:57):
cobbled, a modern road thattakes us up to a junction where
we turn right and the roadbecomes more apparently straight
and directional taking us outinto the immediately begin to
see signs of the past on thismodern landscape.

(14:18):
We look over the wall as we turnonto that first straight section
of the Menin Road, over the wallof the neighbouring civil
cemetery, and we can see a crossof sacrifice in the distance,
and some white splash of stonenear the gate, which are the
graves in Eap Town Cemetery.
And a little bit further downthe road, we come across the

(14:40):
first proper military cemetery,defined military cemetery that
we see, which is the Menin RoadSouth Cemetery.
This was a battlefield cemetery,a wartime cemetery.
There was in fact a Menin RoadSouth and a Menin Road North
Cemetery at one point, but theNorth was eventually closed and
concentrated.
But when we look at the burialsin here, we can see some neat

(15:04):
rows where graves have beenmoved in after the war, but we
can see a lot of erratic burialstyles, which is always a good
indication of a wartime cemeterybecause the men were were not
thinking about architecturalstyle when they buried their
mates in cemeteries like thisone.
They wanted to bury them, honorthem, but not hang around too
long in case the shells began todrop and they would end up

(15:25):
joining them.
So we see a lot of these kind ofstaggered graves indicating
wartime, often hasty, burials ofmen, some of whom were killed
going along this road, some ofwhom were killed just up the
road at Hellfire Corner, andothers brought in from the front
line.
So the trenches, which we'regoing to go up to that area

(15:46):
close to Hoog, the trenches inthat front line area there on
the Bellawada Ridge and close tothe Menin Road, men who were
killed up there were oftenbrought back here for burial in
this cemetery so there's a plotfor example of men from the 9th
battalion the Royal SussexRegiment in here who were killed
on the 14th of February 1916when a mine was exploding

(16:07):
underneath their positions up onthe Bellawada Ridge and the ones
that could be recovered andbrought back were buried in this
cemetery here and their gravesare quite close together
indicating that this was acommunal burial and following a
mine explosion, I guess that'snot difficult to understand.
It's a cemetery that I'm sure wewill return to, to have a look

(16:29):
in greater detail at some point,but what it reflects really is
the history of this part ofFlanders.
These wartime cemeteries arereally important in that way,
they're part of that culturethat we've been speaking about
because they tell us a lot.
They are time capsules.
They're not there by accident.
The men are not buried in thereby accident.

(16:50):
And they're all kind of pathwaysand indicators to the events
that took place here during thewar.
So knowing that in this part ofthe city of Ypres, close to the
city walls, there were gunpositions, it's not unsurprising
that we find a lot of gunner'sgraves in here.
And there was a lot ofengineering and pioneer work
going on to repair roads, workon buildings put in dugouts dig

(17:13):
gun pits so it's notunsurprising that we find the
graves of sappers from the RoyalEngineers and men from later on
from the Labour Corps who workedon the roads in this area so all
of it kind of reflects what washappening in the wider landscape
around where this burial sitewas located and there was

(17:33):
medical positions here as wellso we find the graves of Royal
Army Medical Corps men if youlook if you're there in the
spring or the winter if you lookin the garden of the rather posh
house kind of small chateauthat's right next to the
cemetery there is the remains ofa British bunker and they're a
concreted structure that waspart of the dressing station
that was at this particularpoint where the wounded were

(17:55):
brought in from the battlefieldso some of the men buried in
here died of their wounds inthose medical facilities so
again we're kind of seeing apattern as to how these
cemeteries evolve and this istrue of so many of course on
that landscape of the FirstWorld War and a little bit
further up you can't see ittoday there's a very thick hedge
I remember in the early days ofgoing to Ypres it wasn't quite

(18:18):
so thick and you could see andsee on the left hand side of the
Menin Road as you moved uptowards Hellfire Corner that
there was a big chateau in thereand that is the replacement of
what was called the WhiteChateau it was a chateau set in
some very ornamental grounds andit was made out of a white stone
thus its name it was theheadquarters of Douglas Haig

(18:40):
when he was a corps commanderduring the First Battle of Ypres
in October and November of 1914,from which he could almost see
the fighting up on the ridgesbeyond, knowing that his men
were up there fighting justbeyond the Menin Road plateau
and Hooge, up towards PolygonWood and Zonnebeek and places

(19:00):
like that.
And of course, commanders in1914 were often a lot nearer to
their troops on the battlefieldbecause of the communications
issue.
This was an army, the BM theBritish Expeditionary Force that
had come to war in 1914 preparedfor a mobile war and in a mobile
war without radio communicationwhich they didn't have it was

(19:21):
difficult to establishcommunications so it was only
once the war became static thatcommunications really came into
their own and you couldestablish a proper network so in
1914 it was very important forgenerals like Haig to be in
chateaus near to the battlefieldso they could send staff
officers out who didn't havevery far to travel to find out

(19:41):
what was happening.
Dispatch riders could be sentout on motorbike to deliver
messages to divisional andbrigade and even battalion
headquarters if need be but thatwas a kind of different
philosophy from when the war didbecome static.
Many commanders tried to remainnear the front and in the
battles of the following year of1915 both at Ypres and then in

(20:02):
northern France we see many ofthese senior officers becoming
casualties because of thisbecause they are too near the
sharp end of the war and it'srealised that really their task
is to be away from thatbattlefield use the
communications that can be builtup in a static war the ability
to talk to people by telephonecommunications this vast network

(20:25):
of it that was built up andcertainly between Menningate and
up towards the front line therewould have been a vast network
of telephone communicationsconstructed over the four years
of conflict here but you coulduse all that to gather
information and use a bigbuilding much further away from
the battlefield to make yourcommand decisions anyway we're

(20:47):
kind of going slightly off thesubject there but this then was
a kind of beating heart beatinghub of really command on the
battlefields here during thefirst battle of Ypres in October
1914 and while we kind of whizpast the white chateau it's
important to remember itssignificance in that early
period of the conflict and ofcourse staying on the road that

(21:10):
brings brings us up to what wasonce one of the most infamous,
perhaps most feared spots forthe British soldier and the
Commonwealth soldier on theWestern Front, and that was
Hellfire Corner.
So-called because it was sweptby shellfire, it was a main
route up to the front line, theenemy knew that it was used, the
Germans knew that it was usedall the time, and it was hit by

(21:32):
shellfire and gas and shrapneland everything else that they
could throw at it.
And we've done an episode onHellfire Corner, and how it
worked, the approaches to it,how it changed over the course
of the war.
And again, if you want to findout more about the location, you
can go and have a listen tothat.
In 1914, it was, despite thefact that the French were very

(21:56):
much evident in this part of thebattlefield, this was still a
route up to the front line.
Some of the early photographs ina period when there were no
official photographers, and alot of the images that we have
from that period were taken bysoldiers on the ground.
There are images, for example,taken very close to Hellfire
Corner, showing horses going uptowards Hoog, further beyond

(22:18):
Hellfire Corner itself, and thenlimbers coming back.
And as the war goes on becauseof the importance of this spot
it is photographed again andagain and again and there is an
iconic image from 1917 showing Ithink Australians coming down
the Menin Road with limbers andtroops and a little signboard by
the side of the road indicatingthis hellfire corner so you kind

(22:40):
of know where you are it'schanged a lot over time again
when we kind of look at thisculture of the old front line
and see how the changes havechanged the landscape When I
come here today, it's a verybusy roundabout.
It's a massive modern roundaboutwith bike lanes, with trucks and
cars and coaches full ofbattlefield pilgrims coming to

(23:02):
visit these sites in and aroundYpres.
When I first came here in the1980s, 1982 in my school, it was
a quiet junction.
Traditionally, it had been aroad and rail junction.
And the railway line coming outof Ypres had crossed through
here together with a network ofroads.
And although when I came here in1982 the railway was gone it was

(23:25):
now a footpath across thebattlefields it was still an
important road junction and theremnants of the railway were
still there and the buildingsand the layout was not really
that dissimilar to what it oncewould have looked like in 1914
replacement houses replacementbuildings replacement railway
crossing but the actual layoutwas pretty much identical

(23:48):
eventually by the 90s and intothe 2000s all of that change and
what we know today is the endresult so that landscape has
changed dramatically i think onone of the podcast episodes to
do with hellfire corner or thispart of the battlefields i put
some of john giles's photographsfor aerial photographs from the
1980s and you can see just howapparent the changes are by by

(24:12):
looking at those and when i camehere in 1982 the reason we
stopped at hellfire corner wasnot just because of its historic
significance but the there was aBritish demarcation stone here
and these demarcation stones andit's still here today it's
tucked in the corner of theroundabout just as you come out

(24:32):
of the city of Ypres from thatdirection it's a stone about
kind of two thirds of the heightof an average human being with
the shape in this case the shapeof a British helmet on the top
there are other designs somewith French helmets on some with
Belgian helmets on and they weredesigned by Paul Moreau Vautier.

(24:54):
He was a veteran of the Battleof Dunn and in the 1920s came up
with this idea of marking theWestern Front.
Again looking at the culture ofthe old front line we see it in
the years immediately followingthe war already begin to develop
because people like Vautierwanted to remember what the war

(25:16):
was and remember and mark whatthis landscape had once been and
by the placement of stonesdemarcation stones you are
marking where that old frontline had once run and his idea
was to do it from the very topfrom the coast right down to the
borders of Switzerland andhundreds and hundreds of these

(25:38):
stones were planned now it'slong overdue for us to do a
podcast on the Vautier stonesthe demarcation stones we will
get there but Standing here withthis one, and the British ones
are the rarest of them all, themajority have French helmets on,
the purpose of the stones was tomark the limit of the German

(26:01):
advance in 1918, because each ofthem states, here the invader
was brought to a standstill, andin this case, it marks the
nearest the Germans ever got toYpres in April of 1918, when as
we were discussing earlier, thisbecame the front line during
that period of the Battle ofYpres.
the lease.
Now this stone has been moved afew times I've got postcards of

(26:24):
it in the 20s and 30s when Icame here it was tucked up
against one of the buildings onthe left hand side of the road
and it's now back on the cornerof this junction in the road
that comes out of Ypres itselfbut it pretty much still marks
that front line of 1918 and actsas they all do as a beacon to

(26:45):
the events here during the GreatWar and when we're standing here
at on Hellfire Corner it'salways worth pausing and
stopping when you walk thebattlefields that's really
important it's not just the walkyou need to stop and you need to
look and you need to absorb thelandscape and hear the sounds of
the landscape, the modern world,the birdsong, everything else.
But when you stand here and youlook beyond Hellfire Corner, up

(27:10):
that line, that straight line ofthe Menin Road, you can see the
ground beginning to rise aheadof you.
Over to your far left, thePilkelm Ridge, close to
Bozinger, and then theFreisenberg Ridge, the Bellawada
Ridge, where we can see thetrees and the top of the crest
line there and the road itselfrising going through the Hamlet

(27:33):
of Hoog up onto the Menin RoadRidge over to our right the
wooded area of Sanctuary Woodand Hill 62 and then Observatory
Ridge and continuing roundtowards Zillebeek beyond that is
Hill 60 and pretty much thebeginnings of the Messines Ridge
so it's an important vantagepoint and when we stand here

(27:56):
today as a pilgrim to the We cansee the importance of this
ground as a conduit, as a routeto the front line for men,
supplies, ammunition andeverything else.
But we can also see how thelandscape beyond it dominates
it.
Those ridges, which in mostcases are no more than tens of
metres above sea level, they'reenough of a rise on this pretty

(28:19):
flat landscape of Flanders forwhoever occupies them to
dominate the ground.
And for a big chunk of the warfrom mid-1915 to mid 1917 it's
the Germans occupying thatground so Hellfire Corner that
nightmarish place that prettymuch every soldier who came to
Ypres at some point would havepassed through it was that route

(28:42):
to the front line for thewounded coming back it was their
route to safety once they werebeyond the Hellfire Corner they
were getting nearer to thedressing stations nearer to
having their wounds treated andnearer I guess in their hearts
to going home and all Also inthe post-war period, when this
became an area of battlefieldpilgrimage to those coming to

(29:05):
visit graves and sites wherethey'd once fought, this became
another kind of important routeto take them up to a landscape
now not of war, but ofremembrance.
And Hellfire Corner was a keystop on all of the interwar
battlefield tours during WWII.
that period.

(29:25):
Much more difficult today unlessyou're walking it because of the
fact it's such a busy, busyroundabout.
So continuing beyond andcontinuing along the Menin Road,
beyond Hellfire Corner, we beginour walk along this straight
section of the road.
Again, as we walk furthertowards the Hamlet of Hoogh, We

(29:46):
can see the development of theridges ahead of us but we come
across pretty soon anothermilitary cemetery and this is
Burr Crossroads Cemetery.
This again was a wartime burialsite where the dead who were
killed in this part of the MeninRoad battlefield were brought to
for burial and then it was usedpost-war as a concentration site

(30:09):
for dead from the surroundingarea because there were quite a
lot of farmsteads here wherethere were burial sites where
there were gun positions wheregunners who'd been killed are
buried and again you see thatkind of reflected in the burials
here there were communicationtrenches close to here the
famous one China Wall which wasa long communication trench that
went from near Zillebeek uptowards Hill 62 and was built in

(30:32):
a breastwork style with sandbagscoming up out of the ground
level creating a trench aboveground level to enable men to
walk through it in safety to getup to the front line area
soldiers were killed by shellfire there and buried in field
graves they had to be moved inand one of those field graves
that was moved here from aposition called Gordon House

(30:54):
which was just south of HellfireCorner was 2nd Lieutenant
Raymond Lodge of the 2ndBattalion South Lancashire
Regiment who was killed nearhere on the 14th of September
1915 so not during a majorbattle during a quiet period of
that long long static period oftrench warfare at Ypres and then

(31:14):
his grave was concentrated herein the 1920s.
So what's the significance ofSecond Lieutenant Raymond Lodge?
Well he was the son of SirOliver Lodge who became one of
the great spiritualists inBritain, perhaps one of the
leading proponents ofspiritualism in Britain during
that period of the First WorldWar.

(31:35):
Many turned to spiritualism,this idea that you could talk to
the dead, have contact with thedead because loss weighed so
heavy they had to make sense ofit somehow and for many they
couldn't bear the idea thatdeath was the end and many
search for meaning in that.
We will all have our opinions ofwhat this means and what its

(31:56):
veracity is but for people likeOliver Lodge and he was not
unique it was very strong intheir culture, their identity
and I think it is a part of theculture of the old front line
this unwillingness for people toaccept that death was the end
and that there was some way tostill stay in contact perhaps to

(32:18):
a degree we all feel that nowwhen we return to the
battlefields the connection wefeel that we have to the men of
that generation those that we'veresearched those in our own
family tree those whose medalswe have or photographs whatever
it is we feel a strongconnection with these men which
in its way is a kind ofspiritualism so I'm pretty much

(32:41):
sure that this is really a partof what this culture if there is
one of the old front line mustreally be but the interesting
thing as well as apart from thewhole story of Sir Oliver Lodge
and he wrote a book calledRaymond which was his
conversations with his dead sonwas the inscription that he
chose to put on his son's graveand it reads Raymond who has

(33:04):
helped many to know that deathis not the end and I think
within that is this whole debateabout the whole meaning I guess
of both life and death andremembrance of and everything
that we connect to theremembrance of the dead of the
Great War.
Not far away is a specialmemorial to Captain Harold

(33:25):
Ackroyd, VCMC of the Royal ArmyMedical Corps.
Harold Ackroyd was theregimental medical officer of
the 6th Battalion of the RoyalBerkshire Regiment and he'd
served with them from thebeginning, was awarded a
military cross for his braveryat Delville Wood in July 1916.
There's a part of the wood whenyou go to those Somme
battlefields today where they'vecleared a section of trench

(33:47):
through the trees and you canwalk it and you can certainly
see it and that's very close towhere Harold Aykroyd was and
where he was carrying out thesebrave deeds of recovering and
treating the wounded thatresulted in the award of his MC.
Amongst the wounded, when he gotinto the wood, he wasn't just
treating the men from his ownbattalion, they found a lot of

(34:07):
scattered wounded from the SouthAfrican Brigade who'd been
fighting in those desperate daysof battle in the initial phase
of the fighting for DelvilleWood and he was particularly
credited by them for the workthat he did to save those South
soldiers like Noel Chavasse whonot far away at Guillemont was
awarded the Victoria Cross forhis bravery there under very

(34:30):
similar kind of circumstancesgoing out to rescue the wounded
on the battlefield he wasoffered a safe job but as a
medical officer the battalionwas like his parish the
connection between medicalofficer and Padre and again this
kind of religious aspect of theGreat War I don't think we can
understate that really too muchbut he remained with his
battalion and they fought insome of the later acts actions

(34:51):
around Arras and then he movedup to take part in the 3rd
Battle of Ypres and his VictoriaCross was for bravery on the
31st of July 1917 the openingday of the 3rd Battle of Ypres
when his unit was fighting notfar away just across the
Bellawada Ridge further down theMenin Road and same period again
as Chavasse who we mentioned whowas just to the north on the

(35:13):
Pilkelm Ridge near Wiltshire outthere with the Liverpool
Scottish recovering the woundedin the water filled shell holes
in that area and And HaroldAykroyd, similar kind of man,
similar kind of mentality.
I mean, these medical officers,to say that they deserve our
praise, our admiration, is amassive understatement.
But he, like so many, believedhis place was with the men and

(35:35):
often...
Simply, these men ran out ofchances and his chances came to
an end on the 11th of August1917 when he was killed at
Jargon Trench.
So Chavasse is the more famousone.
I mean, he was Victoria Crossand Barr, one of only three men
to achieve that distinction.
But he speaks for a multitude ofmedical officers, some who were

(35:58):
decorated like Aykroyd with theVictoria Cross in his case and
the Military Cross, others neverdecorated but yet carried out
brave deeds.
I always, always think of thatstatement that one of the
veterans that I knew very wellused to say, there's only two
types of crosses, the VictoriaCross and the wooden cross and
most got the latter.
And I think that's true of somany soldiers' stories of

(36:20):
bravery of the First World War.
So leaving Burr CrossroadCemetery, we continue along the
next stretch of the Menin Road.
It begins to rise visibly, andour journey kind of takes us up
a bit of a slope then towardsthe Hamlet of Hoog.
And it was a hamlet in 1914,just a small collection of
houses right by the Menin Road.

(36:41):
There was a chateau there whereBaron de Vink lived, quite an
ornate chateau taken over by theBritish staff.
The scene of a major disasterwhen German shells interrupted a
staff meeting there.
took out senior commanders andstaff officers, and the whole
command structure on this partof the battlefield was suddenly
obliterated in one bombardment.

(37:02):
And men on the ground had tokind of pick up the mantle and
take charge themselves.
And that's when BrigadierGeneral Fitz Clarence, formerly
of the Irish Guards, now BrigadeCommander, up near Polygon Wood,
took command of the men in thatarea of the battlefield and
appointed himself OfficerCommanding Men in Road and
filled that gap until it couldbe replaced further down the

(37:23):
line.
in his case not until after hisdeath as a brigade commander
leading his old regiment intoaction on the 11th of November
1914 right at the tail end ofthe first Battle of Ypres the
whole area here at Hoogobliterated because While it was
behind the British lines in 1914and early 1915, following the

(37:43):
German gas attack and thecapture of the high ground, Hoog
became this pivotal point.
We spoke about the curvature ofthe ground around the city of
Ypres, creating this kind ofsemicircle.
At the easternmost position ofthat semicircle was Hoog on the
Menin Road and that became thepoint of which really it was the
pinnacle of the fighting, theday-to-day activities of trench

(38:06):
warfare at Ypres for that long,long period from the summer of
1915 through to the summer of1917 with lots of local actions
here with charges with attacksand counter-attacks the Battle
of Wye Wood and the BellawadaRidge on the 16th of June 1915
when units of the 3rd Divisionattacked up the slopes close to

(38:28):
where we're standing now to thehigh ground across to our left
and then when the trenchessettled down once more both
sides went underground there wasa lot of mining activity here
from small scale mines up on thecrest of the ridge and we can
see the cross of the RoyalEngineers grave where the men of
the 177 Tunnelling Company wereactive for so long and if you

(38:50):
want to find out more about thatthere's a video about that part
of the battlefield on the OldFrontline YouTube channel but of
course Hoog is famous for thecrater the Hoog crater blown
here in August of 1915 and manysearch for it it isn't there
it's very close to where theHoog crater cafe and museum is
located.
There's a little road that goesoff to the side and then to the

(39:13):
right of that road in thegrounds of the Chateau and what
is now the Bellawada Fun Park.
That's where the 1915 craterwas.
No trace of it as such on groundlevel today.
But who creates a cafe that sitsat this point and will very
quickly come up to it because onone side of the road is the cafe

(39:33):
and the museum.
It's an old girls school thatclosed in the 1980s and then was
bought and turned into a cafeand a museum and Nick and Ilse,
his wife, have been running itfor many many years now it is in
my mind the best private museumon the British part of the
Western Front essential to anyjourney to Ypres and a place

(39:55):
that you can go to for a bit ofrespite and some decent food and
also look at the incrediblearray of exhibits which are
added to all the time and I wentearlier this year to stay at
Nick's cottage that he's got onthe high ground at Hoog there He
showed me a whole series ofstereoscope viewers that he just
had installed into the museumwhich had once been part of the

(40:16):
original Sanctuary Wood Museumand then when the original owner
of that died some of them wentto his brother who set up a
rival museum eventually at Hill60 and they remained there until
that museum shut I think in thelate 90s early 2000s and they've
sat in a shed somewhere eversince and Nick has now got them
and they're on display and theyhave some of the most incredible

(40:38):
images of the First World Warthat you are ever likely to see
and Nick is in the process ofhaving them digitised so there's
always something new there it'san amazing place Nick and his
wife and his family are amazingpeople real credits not just to
themselves but they aretorchbearers of remembrance in
this part of the battlefield andwe owe them a lot of thanks for

(41:00):
many of the things that they'vedone over the years all of us
really and opposite of coursewhich makes this such an
interesting place to come to isthe is the vast Hoo Crater
Cemetery, one of the largest inthe Ypres Salient battlefields,
with this almost never-endingrow after row after row of
graves disappearing down theslope towards the site of Zouave

(41:24):
Wood, which was never replanted,and what is now Canada Land,
Canada Street, that runs fromthe Menin Road across to Hill 62
and Sanctuary Wood.
When you wander in thiscemetery, one of the things,
rather than looking at the kindof named graves and the stories
of some of the men that areburied in here and there are so
many of them one of the thingsthat always strikes me and as

(41:44):
I've said previously in thispodcast I find myself going to
these graves more and more it'sthe vast number of unknown
unidentified soldiers that arein here a staggeringly high
percentage of them in thiscemetery and also one of the
unique elements of that here isthe graves that are of multiple
unidentified soldiers tens ofmen in one grave and in some

(42:09):
cases.
And it kind of shows how theGreat War destroyed not just the
landscape, but the bodies ofthose who lay on that landscape,
even were buried in thatlandscape.
They could be destroyed and weredestroyed on such a regular
basis.
It's an insight, I think, forthe average visitor, the casual

(42:30):
visitor who comes here and walksto a headstone that says 18
unidentified soldiers of theGreat War.
It's a kind of reminder of thehorror of what the Great War
really was.
And we mentioned the Chateau.
You can walk further up the roadjust past Hoog Crate, a museum
and cafe and the cemeteryitself.

(42:51):
And there is the rebuilt Chateauon the left-hand side, which is
now a hotel.
I stayed in there last year.
Really nice place to stay.
And in the grounds of it, thereare some mine craters.
They look like ponds, really,today.
They aren't the Hoog Crate,although many books and websites
say they are.
They are in fact German minesblown underneath Canadian

(43:13):
soldiers here during the battlefor Sanctuary Wood and Hill 62
and Observatory Ridge in June of1916.
And I think it was the Canadianmounted rifles that were holding
this part of the line when theseparticular craters were blown.
So it's from a slightly laterperiod than the Maine Hoo Crater
but nevertheless part of theunderground war story of this

(43:37):
part of the battle fieldsthere's a lot of battlefield
detritus in around the minecraters today later bunkers were
built into the side of thecraters you can see those and
there is a trench system in thewoods here close to the chateau
which is now the hotel theyaren't original trenches again
i've seen many websites andaccounts that claim they are

(43:58):
they were dug and i saw thembeing dug in the 1990s possibly
along the lines of trenches thatmay well have been there but
they are not and are originaltrench museum in the same way
for example that Sanctuary Woodjust down the road is.
So pushing on along the MeninRoad past Hoog we come into an
area on the left where the vastBellawada Fun Park is today.

(44:21):
This family-friendlychild-centric amusement park
really for many people kind ofleaves a bit of disquiet when
they see it but this is a formof battlefield.
Is there a better use ofbattlefield to create a place
where children can laugh and behappy?
I mean, I'll leave you to decidethat one.
But it dwarfs a memorial,though, just by the side of the

(44:44):
road, which many pass by noteven realising is there, and
that is a memorial to the King'sRoyal Rifle Corps, the old 60th
Regiment of Foot.
And they served with distinctionthroughout their history, but in
the Great War had a vast numberof battalions, and many of them
served at Ypres, and the detailsof them are noted on the
memorial itself.

(45:04):
It once overlooked open groundwhere some of these battalions
had fought in almost every yearof the war for example but today
it's easy to pass it by and itwas on the kind of tour
itineraries of the interwarperiod because just up the road
from it was a place called theTank Cemetery now this is where

(45:25):
during the third battle of Ypresin 1917 a number of tanks, Mark
4 tanks had moved up across thisground to go and take part in
the fighting further up on thebattlefield but had got stuck
Stuck in the mud, got hit byshell fire and shed tracks and
things like that.
And there was a lot of tankwrecks here that remained here

(45:46):
for the rest of the war andremained here as kind of
monoliths, almost like monolithsto an ancient civilization in
that interwar period.
And these massive wrecks ofrhomboid tanks sat there on the
embankment of the road thatwe're walking up now.
You can see to your right, itdrops, visibly drops away quite

(46:07):
sharply.
and some of the tanks were upagainst that there's a little
road that goes off to the left abit further up just before the
bend in the road and in thatinterwar period that is a place
where pilgrims went to to findmore of these wrecks and there
are many many postcards andphotographs of them almost every
photo album that I have of abattlefield pilgrimage at Ypres

(46:28):
during that period has picturesof these tanks in it because
they were very much part of theculture of that remembrance
landscape in that interwarperiod Sadly, no trace of them
today.
They were scrapped in the SecondWorld War by the Germans,
although battlefieldarchaeologist Simon Verdigham,
when he was doing a dig veryclose to where we are now, found

(46:50):
some artefacts from one of thetanks, including a signboard
that told soldiers to leave italone and they couldn't souvenir
things from it.
So beneath that landscape, thatlast witness of the Great War,
the landscape itself, once againstill has things to tell us.
That brings us up to a roadjunction.

(47:10):
There used to be some carshowrooms on the left-hand side
up here, and there was a bookthat came out in the late 70s,
early 80s, which is kind of aphoto book of the Battle of
Passchendaele, and the authorwas a professional photographer,
a guy called Paul Womble, and hephotographed this bit, showing
the kind of contrast between amodern car dealership and the

(47:32):
lunar landscape that had onceexisted here in 1917.
And over to our right in thetrees, we have Stirling Castle,
another one of these chateausthat was set in a kind of park
ground.
an area of very intensivefighting during the First Battle
of Ypres.
There's two memorials here aswell.
There's a kind of plinth on theleft-hand side to the

(47:52):
Gloucestershire Regiment, andthe Gloucesters wore what was
called a back badge, which was abadge that was worn at the back
of their cap and later theirhelmet, and the memorial
perpetuates that with aGloucesters cap badge on the
front of the memorial and a backbadge behind it.
It largely commemorates,although it commemorates all of
the battalions of theGloucesters that fought at
Ypres, it's very close to wherethey were fighting the first

(48:15):
Battle of Ypres in 1914 and onthe opposite side of the road so
this is a memorial to the kindof regular army the red little
dead little army as HenryWilliamson once called it and on
the other side of the road isthis another kind of plinth to
the 18th Eastern Division whichis a new army a Kitchener's Army
Division formed in 1914 famousfor its actions on the Somme

(48:38):
where it has two memorials oneat Trones Wood and another one
at Chapvale indicating itsinvolvement in the fighting
there in July through toSeptember of 1916 although it
remained on the Somme for a muchlonger period then fought at
Arras and then took part in thefighting here in the third
battle of Ypres so on one sideof Gloucester's monument really
connected to 1914 the earlyphase of the fighting here and

(49:01):
this one connected to the latterstage in 1917 during that
critical period of the thirdbattle of Ypres when this was
sacrificial ground over whichthe British army was fighting in
its engagements across these lowridges and it's brought us up
onto another ridge the MeninRoad Ridge and this was the
scene of the battle of the MeninRoad Ridge which the 18th

(49:24):
Eastern Division was a part ofCaptain Harold Aykroyd who we
spoke about earlier this was hisdivision he was medical officer
with the 6th Royal Berkshires inthis unit so it connects us to
him and it's also I discoveredthrough collecting images of the
First World War they can give usan insight into the kind of
layered history of these places,I found some images showing a

(49:46):
German gun crew with a Pak 37set up right by the 18th Eastern
Division Memorial in May 1940during the fighting around Ypres
in that early period of theSecond World War.
So it's all part of thosecriss-cross paths of the First
World War and how theyintermingle both with their

(50:08):
past, the period before theFirst World War and the period
yet to come, the later historyin a second great conflict as
well and continuing along theroad here we come to the next
really important village in thisarea which is Gellivert
Gellivert sitting on a plateauthe Gellivert plateau dominated
this ground vitally important tothe events here in 1914 the

(50:32):
British army when they came todefend the ground around Ypres
was able to take the high groundthemselves and defend it so they
chose the defensive points itwas for them first battle of
Ypres largely a defensive battlewith the Germans coming straight
at them heading towards theChannel Ports and because of its
really dominant position thisplateau around the village of

(50:54):
Gellivert again became a pivotalpoint during the fighting in
October of 1914 and at one stagethe Germans attacked and overran
most of the village of Gellivertsurrounding what was left of a
battalion of the South WalesBorderers the 1st Battalion
commanded by Lieutenant ColonelBurley Leach and they were cut

(51:15):
off a message had got back thatthey were still there still
fighting and one of the localcommanders during this period in
which the senior officers hadbeen wiped out in the Hoog
Chateau disaster back down theroad sent Major E.B.
Hankey of the 2nd Battalion theWorcestershire Regiment to
launch an immediate counterattack with what was left of his

(51:36):
battalion his commanding officerhad gone off to command a
brigade he was now in charge ofthe battalion and he got what
was left of his unit to launchan attack from near what became
known as Blackwatch Corner onthe edge of Polygon Wood across
the field straight into thevillage of Gellivert and ahead
of him was a whole load offarmland with agricultural

(51:57):
barbed wire fences this wasbefore the barbed wire of no
man's land and all that kind ofstuff this was just farm wire
but it still offered an obstacleto his men so he sent the
pioneers out with their wirecutters to cut that to allow a
passage through across thosefields they got into the edge of
the village of Gellervelt andpushed their way into the park

(52:17):
of the chateau at Gellerveltwith Beinitz fix glinting in
what was left of that autumnsunshine and they bumped an
entire German unit that was sosurprised by their arrival that
they pulled back and thatenabled Hanke and the Worsters
to link up with the South Walesborderers and temporarily

(52:37):
unfortunately retake thatposition Gellervelt was
subsequently overrun captured bythe Germans and would remain in
their hands until October 1917when British troops reached this
point during the Third Battle ofYpres and what was left of a
chunk of Gelavel was retaken bythem at that point.
We can come here today and wecan see on this landscape of the

(53:00):
present tucked away in a littleside cul-de-sac are the
memorials to the South WalesBorderers and the Worcestershire
Regiment.
There's a kind of plinth with across on to the South Wales
Borderers and there was a plaqueon an old soldier's home built
for Belgian old soldiers thatthe Worcestershire Regiment had
helped fund and the plaque wason there to honour their
contribution to the fightinghere at Gellervilt.

(53:22):
Those two memorials are nowtogether in this little
cul-de-sac and you can stare inthrough the gates of the chateau
into the chateau grounds it is aprivate residence you can't just
go wandering in there but youcan see where Major Hankey came
into that ground with his men hewas subsequently awarded the
distinguished service order forhis bravery there was a famous
painting of the Worcesters atGellervoort that was

(53:43):
commissioned and a park inWorcester the Gellervoort park
was named in the honour of thisbattle in the post-war period
and there's another kind ofsimilar connection to that in
the church not to do with theWorcesters but to do with the
Royal Warwickshire Regimentbecause when you go into
Gellivert Church there's aplaque in there to Lieutenant
Wilfred Evelyn Littleboy who waskilled with the 16th Royal

(54:06):
Warwick Birmingham Powers in thefighting near to Gellivert on
the 9th of October 1917 and wasoriginally buried near to
Polderherk Chateau which is justto the north of Gellivert
Village.
His grave is in Hooke CraterCemetery that we walked past
earlier on in this journey.
But as a further memorial totheir son, Lieutenant Little

(54:28):
Boy's parents, purchased anddonated a plot of land in the
town of Thornaby-on-Tees inmemory of their son and it
became known as Little Boy Parkand it was opened to the public
as a recreational park by hismother, Agnes, in 1930.
So we can see through littletiny memorials like this, a

(54:50):
plaque on a church wall in avillage in Flanders links us to
a park in Britain that was givenin in memory of a son who died,
it's all part of ourunderstanding of the depths of
grief and how people coped withloss and how they memorialised a
generation that never, in theireyes, returned, although, of

(55:10):
course, most men did come home.
And when we go to the edge ofGellivert, we can see the view
that was so important to bothsides.
We can look from the crest ofthe ridge of the plateau down
into the ground beyond, lookingtowards the town of Men who we
can now see in the far distance.
We can see how vitally importantthis would have been to a

(55:33):
British defence here in Octoberof 1914 and why the Germans
subsequently were so keen tohang on to it.
It wasn't properly cleared andthis view was not restored until
the final battles here in 1918.
But we'll continue along theMenin Road to the next village
which has a very similar name toGellerweldt and that's the

(55:54):
village of Helua Gelui to theBritish troops who were very
good at murdering Flemish nameslike this probably as I've just
done but this village was thescene of some fighting in 1914
and then it was well away fromthe battlefield for most of the
rest of the conflict it was abilleting area for German troops

(56:17):
there were German cemeteries inthis area and they built up
their kind of own infrastructurethat supplied their forward
trenches but in the oppositedirection to the British and
Commonwealth troops.
And when we come into thevillage today, it was eventually
completely destroyed in 1918.
Outside the church in the centreof the village, there is a

(56:38):
memorial to that earlier periodof the war.
It's a recent bronze memorial toCorporal of Horse William Thomas
Leggett of the First Lifeguards,who was killed here on the 14th
of October 1914, aged 23.
Now, the First Lifeguards werecavalry regiments part of the
British Expeditionary Force buthe wasn't British he was

(57:01):
Australian he was one of 11children whose father had worked
on the Australian railways andhe had left Australia in the
Edwardian period and joined theBritish Army in 1912 this wasn't
that uncommon when you look atthe background of quite a lot of
regular soldiers in the BEF in1914 they come from all over the

(57:22):
different parts of the BritishEmpire because identity as
Australian, Canadian, NewZealand was strong but many of
these men kind of saw themselvesas British as well or perhaps
British first.
It was kind of reality I guessof growing up in communities
that had once been dominated bythe whole essence, the sense of

(57:44):
being British.
But he's an important casualtyWilliam Thomas Leggett because
he's one of the firstAustralians killed in Europe in
the First World War.
Probably the the firstAustralian killed in Flanders.
There were other Australians, asI've said, in the BEF, and one
of them, Lieutenant WilliamChisholm, was killed at the

(58:05):
Battle of Le Cateau as anofficer in the 1st East
Lancashire Regiment in August1914, so killed before William
Leggett, but Leggett animportant early Australian
casualty here in Flanders.
But this area in this villagewas an area that did eventually
see combat, but during the 4thand final Battle of Ypres in

(58:28):
September and October of 1918when British units advanced down
the Menin Road with to the norththe Belgian army sweeping across
places like Passchendaele andliberating finally liberating
that area and also Americantroops taking part in this final
phase of the fighting as wellbut in this area three divisions

(58:49):
in particular were heavilyinvolved in the battle and that
was the British 29th Divisionthe 35th Division and the 41st
Now those are all veterandivisions by this stage.
The 29th had been at Gallipoliin 1915 and then on the Somme,
Arras, Passchendaele and allthose many other battles
besides.
The 35th had been a bantamdivision originally made up of

(59:09):
men of smaller stature and the41st had been involved in the
first use of tanks at Fleurs onthe 15th September 1916.
Now very few of the originalmembers of any of these
divisions were still servinghere but we've got quite a few
different accounts of men thatwere in these divisions amongst
them Francis Hitchcock of theLeinster Regiment his unit was

(59:31):
now part of the 29th Divisionand took part in the fighting in
this area during that 4th Battleof Ypres and his book Stand To A
Diary of the Trenches highlyhighly recommended as a
fantastic memoir diary of anofficer and his front line
service in the Great War butthis was an area that because it
had been behind the lines didn'thave exactly the same kind of

(59:52):
network of trenches there weretrench systems here there were
quite a lot of bunkers and whenyou traverse this landscape
around this village you'll findevidence of those bunkers and
it's a village I've come to alot over the years because I
have a personal connection to itmy great uncle Archibald Nibbs
which is a fantastic nameArchibald Nibbs he was a

(01:00:13):
conscript who joined the army in1917 was trained and then sent
overseas as a post spring 1918German offensive replacement for
the casualties lost during thatfighting and and he joined the
12th Battalion of the EastSurrey Regiment that were part
of the 41st Division, and he waswounded here in October 1918.

(01:00:34):
I have his medals and his CivilWar badge and a letter that was
sent to his parents by a padre.
He was admitted to the 3rdCasualty Clearing Station with
his wounds being evacuated fromwhere we are now, down the Menin
Road into Ypres, and then fromYpres to Popperinger to
Remisiding to Lissenhoek, and hewas in the 3rd CCS there in

(01:00:55):
October 1918.
and the padre wrote to his mumand dad and said he's doing okay
and wrote that in ink and thenafterwards wrote in pencil so
far and you can see thedifference in the ink of the
pencil and the parents must havelooked at that and thought I
wonder if he is doing okay buthe did survive and he lived a
long life although I never knewhim he lived on until the 1960s

(01:01:19):
I believe and I'm the custodianof his medals and papers and I
mention him because he's typicalof the men who were fighting
these final battles here in thatautumn of 1918 when we started
at the Menin Gate we weretalking about regular soldiers
and with Ackroyd and the 18thEastern Division volunteers but

(01:01:39):
we've now got to a period of thewar in which the vast majority
of the British Army areconscripts men who are not there
by choice they're there bynecessity and Archie Nibbs my
great uncle is really a verygood example of that really and
when we continue beyond thisvillage we're coming into the
final approaches to the town ofMenin the end of the Menin road

(01:02:05):
this is our journey's end reallyas we come into the outskirts of
Menin we don't visit Menin do weWhy not?
Well, it's not a battlefieldarea.
This whole area that we've justcome through in this latter part
of this journey, there are noBritish cemeteries on the scale
that there are around Hoog andPasschendaele and Zonnebeek and

(01:02:26):
Zillebeek and the MessinesRidge.
There's no evidence as such ofthe war.
There is a vast German cemeteryin Menin with 48,000 dead.
It is the largest Germancemetery from either World War.
A lot of people think thatthat's Langemarck or La
Targette, but it's not.
It's here at Menin in theMeninwald in the Menin wood
that's on the far side of thetown but Menin is important in

(01:02:51):
the story of the Great War butnot so much I guess in the
British and Commonwealth storyof the Great War because this
was behind the German linesswept up in their advance of
October 1914 used by them as abilleting town it had a good
railway system they could bringin things by train it had a road
system beyond which they coulduse to take supplies up towards

(01:03:12):
their front wherever that was atdifferent periods of the war in
Flanders it was really part oftheir eternally turning wheel of
war in the same way thatPopperinger and Balliol the
towns behind the front line inFlanders for the British and
Commonwealth soldiers were sofrom a German perspective this
was a vital important town thatevery German soldier who came to

(01:03:35):
Flanders during the Great Warwould have known would have
passed through the civilianpopulation would have stayed
here for most of the war Andwhen you read some of the
accounts of British troopsliberating Menin in October
1918, they discover civilians inthe process of doing that.
Not everyone has been evacuated.
But when it was right away fromthe front, when it was this

(01:03:56):
billeting town for the Germanarmy, the streets would have
been thronging with Germantroops.
The cafes would have been fullof German soldiers with pay in
their pockets.
And the same kind ofbehind-the-lines infrastructure
and culture that had developedin places like Popperinger It
would have been identical forthe German soldiers here.
I guess we could say that Meninwas their Popperinger.

(01:04:19):
I don't think that's anexaggeration, really.
But it wasn't just a rest area.
It wasn't just part of aninfrastructure for the German
army.
Once it was captured, it becamea battlefield fought over only
for a matter of a very shortperiod of time in October 1918.
But then beyond it was theScheldt River, and that was the
scene of some of the last majorbattles in Flanders in November

(01:04:43):
of 1918 involving Belgiantroops, involving Portuguese
troops, involving British andCommonwealth troops as well.
So not only is Menin the end ofour journey from Ypres, it is
close as well to where thosefinal embers of the Great War
burned out, leading to thearmistice.

(01:05:05):
So this road, the Menin Road,has taken us across that
tortured landscape of the past,a landscape of war, of sacrifice
and suffering, and now themodern landscape, a landscape of
peace and remembrance, where thepeople of Belgium live their
lives just as they should.

(01:05:25):
These roads on the Great Warbattlefields are so important, I
think, so important in how weaccess the landscape of this
conflict, how we discover it,understand it and see it through
those different layers of thepast.
They act like veins across thatlandscape, our route to the

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history and all that meansthrough the modern pathways of
today.
And we will return to them hereagain and again because these
roads, well they are the truepathways of that old front line.

(01:06:09):
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(01:06:37):
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front line links to all of theseare on our website thanks for
listening and we'll see youagain soon