Echoes of shellfire and selfless bravery
REMEMBRANCE Sunday, tomorrow, comes near the end of what has surely been one of the most poignant years in living memory for commemorating wartime sacrifice.
Through more than 2,500 television and radio hours, including BBC1’s The Passing Bells this week, we have come face to face with so many of the human stories of World War I, says Kate Andrew.
If you have felt inspired to learn more about the world of noise, terror, friendship and loss witnessed by those who fought, then a battlefield tour is a must in 2015, when the centenaries of campaigns at Gallipoli, Ypres and Loos and the first use of poison gas in the trenches are marked.
Not forgetting the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo.
For searing insights, nothing can beat following in the footsteps of the young British soldiers and their counterparts to the spots where so many of them fell.
Shocking, poignant, fascinating — to hear stories of bravery and sacrifice in their actual setting brings a whole new perspective and, very often, a moving sense of pilgrimage.
This centenary year I’ve been privileged to join two memorable battlefield tours by hassle-free coach, made all the easier by pick-up points close to home.
Our friendly group huddled in the small cellar where war poet Wilfred Owen spent the days leading up to his death, one week, almost to the hour, before the signing of the Armistice. And we descended into the Wellington Quarries at Arras where thousands of troops sheltered on the eve of battle.
We walked among the graves of the Great War’s first and last British casualties near Mons and saw vast memorials at Tyne Cot, Thiepval and the Menin Gate.
As a battlefield tour vividly reveals, each of the names so neatly engraved on the acres of Portland stone belonged, a century ago, to a living, thinking, breathing human being — and many an inscription hides a fascinating story. With the help of a brilliant battlefield guide, I was even able to retrace the footsteps of two brothers named on my local village war memorial, finding their names and reading in regimental diaries how they spent their last days — one dying near Sanctuary Wood (Hill 62) on the Ypres Salient and the other holding a waterlogged trench on the Somme.
It was a fascinating journey of discovery, greatly enhanced by the expert guides, who put paint on today’s green canvas. Their passion and enthusiasm brings the peaceful fields of Flanders and the Somme vividly to life with khaki-clad soldiers, clogging mud, horses, trenches and shellfire, while also revealing the nitty-gritty of the men’s daily life and equipment.
What they wore, what they carried, what they wrote in letters home.
How they dealt with the creeping numbness of trench foot, tunnelled underground to lay mines, or in some sad cases spent their last night before being shot at dawn for desertion. There are excellent museums and visitor centres all over Flanders and the Somme, as well as huge craters, reconstructed trench systems, concrete bunkers, peace towers and historic ridges, such as those at Messines and Passchendaele.
Whichever slice of wartime history you dig into on a battlefield tour, there are sure to be a few tears, as you see for yourself why the harrowing stories of destruction, bravery, friendship and sacrifice still resonate so strongly with us today.