Polygon Wood

Our second tour took us to...

Hill 60

The high ground of Hill 60 was created in the 1850s

by spoil dumped from the cutting for a railway line.

On the west side, a long irregular mound atop the ridge was called

The Caterpillar and on the east side of the cutting,

at the highest point of the ridge,

was the mound known as Hill 60,

about 60 feet (18m) above sea level,

from which First World War artillery observers

had an excellent view of the ground around Zillebeke and Ypres.

Artillery-fire and mine explosions during the war

changed the shape of the hill and flattened it considerably.

Today the peak of Hill 60 is only about 4 metres higher than the vicinity.

The distance between the German and British front line

was alarmingly close...

Andrew stood here and took the photo below,

I'm in the centre of the photo standing on the British Front Line.

Today it is a quiet and tranquil place.

The bodies of many soldiers still lie undiscovered in this area. 
It has never been cleared.

Apparently there is a huge discrepancy between the number

of soldiers known to have died on the battlefields

and the number of bodies recovered.

We walked to the other side of the railway line to the

Caterpillar Crater where 70,000 pounds of explosives

blew a crater with a diameter of 380 ft across the top.

It was detonated by the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company.

This memorial honours their sacrifice.

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Andrew's paternal grandfather served with the Australian Army

for just over 2 years in France and Belgium.

During this time he was gassed and also suffered gunshot wounds.

He was hospitalised on each of these occasions

and then returned to the field of battle.

On September 26^th, at the Battle of Polygon Wood

his actions resulted in him being awarded a

Distinguished Conduct Medal.

Andrew was 17 when his grandfather passed away,

he remembers him well.

The family knew that he had served and been awarded

a medal but he never spoke of his experiences during the war.

It wasn't until after his death that the family discovered

that he had been wounded during the war.

We're beginning to understand why these men

didn't want to talk about what happened here.

Today Polygon Wood and indeed all the battlefields

we've visited seem to be places of peace, tranquility and respect.

Our guide personalised this part of the tour for us and spoke
about Andrew's grandfather.

It was very moving to stand in Polygon Wood
and hear about his part in the battle. 

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Our final stop on the tour Hooge Crater Trenches.

A large crater was blown at Hooge in July 1915.

This occurred during a time of relative quiet

on the British part of the Western Front,

when few major assaults were made.

The crater (now water-filled) is quite large, and there are also pillboxes around it, one of which you can enter, it was an interesting experience.

There is a suggested route to follow in the grounds, and around the back of the crater are some shallow trenches; it's not clear if these are original or recreated. Our guide told us that using a GPS trench map navigation system, they do seem to line up quite well with wartime trenches.

Today we walked 6.4 k's

Flanders Fields

In March this year, before we left home we booked

two tours of Flanders Fields. Today we took the first of them.

The Ypres Salient was the curved Front Line which formed

around the city of Ypres in the First World war.

The grave of Valentine Strudwick.

Our first stop was Essex Farm Cemetery,

to the north of Ypres, not far from the Yser Canal,

which actually formed the front line

in this part of the salient between April 1915 and August 1917.

We visited the concrete buildings used as dressing stations,

(the most forward of the army's medical facilities)

this station was just behind the front line for a long period of time.

Many soldiers could not be saved and the haphazard burial patterns in the cemetery, made under the constant threat of shellfire,

brought home the extremely difficult and

dangerous conditions in which the medical services worked.

It was here that John McCrae wrote his poem

In Flanders Fields

while serving with the Canadian Medical Corps.

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row.

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still singing, fly

Scarce hid among the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow.

Loved and were loved. And now we lie

In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch, be yours to hold in high

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders Fields

The grave in the first photo today

is the most visited in the cemetery.

The soldiers first name was Valentine,

he was born on Valentine's day,

and was only 15 years old when he died,

2 days before his 16^th birthday.

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Langemarck German Cemetery

44,000 soldiers are buried there.

25,000 soldiers are buried in a mass grave in this area.

Their bodies were exhumed from

other cemeteries in Belgium.

Adolf Hitler visited in June 1940.

A new addition to the cemetery is this group of poppies

made by the people of Ypres. There is one white poppy

to remind us of the soldiers who were killed as a result of friendly fire.

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Tyne Cot Cemetery – Zonnebeke, Belgium

With nearly 12,000 graves it is now the largest Commonwealth

war cemetery in the world in terms of burials.

More than 8,000 are unidentified.

At the suggestion of King George V,

who visited the cemetery in 1922,

the cross of sacrifice was placed on the original blockhouse.

You can see the blockhouse wall behind this wreath.

The inscription relates the fact that the bunker and surrounding area was captured by the 3^rd Australian Division on 4 October 1917.

In the countryside surrounding Tyne Cot the battle of Passchendaele was fought. In the mud of Passchendaele, in the month of October 1917 alone, 6673 AIF soldiers were killed.

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Last stop for the day was Hill 62.

The hill is 62 metres above sea level and the

museum houses an amazing array of

artifacts found in the area and

features a large area of reconstructed trenches.

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Some other things we learnt today...

The road the soldiers walked along from Ypres to the Salient

was often under enemy fire. In particular one section

where there was a bend in the road, was very dangerous

and named Hellfire Corner by the soldiers.

 German artillery was always aimed at this spot.

Today there is a roundabout there.

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Rudyard Kipling's son, John, was very keen to join the British

war effort in 1914. Barred from the navy because of his poor eyesight,

John used his father's connections to get a commission in the infantry,

in the 2nd Battalion, Irish Guards.

He arrived in France on 17 August 1915 - his 18th birthday

- and six weeks later was sent to the Battle of Loos.

On 27 September, John's battalion was ordered

to cross open ground and head towards Chalk Pit Wood.

They dug in opposite the Germans and faced brutal machine gun fire. Sometime in the next hour John disappeared.

John Kipling's body was not found.

Rudyard Kipling spent four years searching for his lost son.

He tracked down men from John's battalion and quizzed them.

He wrote to the most senior military figures he knew,

and asked the Red Cross to investigate.

In June 1919 Kipling wrote a letter to the Army,

accepting that his son was most probably dead.

"It is one of the great ironies that Kipling should have been

the person to select the phrase 'known unto God'

for all unknown soldiers,

and then not know what happened to his own son,"

says Phillip Mallett, author of Kipling: A Literary Life.

Kipling worked with Winston Churchill

to ensure that all gravestones were the same shape and size,

regardless of military rank.

The long lines of matching gravestones lining war cemeteries

are their legacy.

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We went for a walk after dinner and Andrew took

these photos.