IN FLANDERS FIELDS

Alex Clark visits the First World War battlefields and memorials of Flanders and the Somme

Come early, we’d been told. So we left our hotel, only a few minutes’ walk away, soon after 7pm. But as we approached the Menin Gate, the First World War memorial that stands at the edge of Ypres and at the beginning of the straight road that led to the frontline, it was clear that we would not be the first. Already, the crowd was several rows deep; by 8pm, every inch of room around the white, vaulted arch was crammed. In the centre, though, beneath the apertures letting in the last of the evening light, remained an empty space; the place where the buglers play the ‘Last Post’, as they have done every night since 11 November 1929. Only the four years of German occupation during the Second World War have disrupted the ceremony, when it was relocated to Surrey’s Brookwood Military Cemetery.

The familiar, attenuated notes are exceptionally moving, partly because one knows that the buglers — volunteers from the local fire brigade — will sound their envoi to the missing soldiers commemorated here however populous or not their audience. Now, the battlefield sites of Flanders and the Somme are filled with visitors, and will be until at least 2018, as the centenary of the First World War is marked by a series of events.

We had travelled to Ypres, via ferry from Dover to Calais and a straightforward 60-mile drive to Belgium’s Westhoek region, for a three-day immersion in the area and its history. Unsurprisingly, it has geared itself up in impressive fashion, albeit with the odd vulgar flourish such as chocolates in the shape of shell casings. Ignore them and head for the In Flanders Fields Museum, in the imposing Cloth Hall in Ypres’ main square — all apparently medieval but, in fact, rebuilt as accurately as possible after the war — and for the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917, in the nearby town of Zonnebeke; both provide a thorough overview of the conflict. Head, too, for Bayernwald, a fascinating reconstruction of 300 metres of German trenches. Also worth a visit is the unusual Talbot House in Poperinge, whose quiet rooms and beautiful gardens, run by an army chaplain, served as a rest and recreation centre for soldiers in their brief respites from the front; it’s preserved down to the last details, but you can also stay in one of its rooms.