WCB Battlefield Tour to Ypres – 25-27 October 2024
In Flanders Fields
Eighteen intrepid Butchers, partners and guests made the pilgrimage to the Belgian city of Ypres for the first such tour for WCB and we were guided by Mark Smith, no less, battlefield guide, historian and medals expert regularly featured on the Antiques Roadshow.
We gathered at Ebbsfleet Station for 0800 departure by coach to Ypres via the Dover to Dunkirk ferry arriving mid afternoon at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery where Mark introduced the ‘tour’ and told stories about what happened here when this was the site of a field hospital during WW1.
Then we headed into Ypres and after dinner gathered at the Menin Gate for the Last Post Ceremony which has taken place more than 33,000 times at 2000 every evening since July 1928 except for during WW2 when the Germans occupied Belgium.
After the sounding of The Last Post by members of the Last Post Association (members of Ypres Fire Brigade), members of our group led by Past Master Chris Wood laid a wreath in the memory of over one million casualties of all nations from the Ypres battles of 1914-18.
The Menin Gate has the names of 54,000 men who were lost on the Salient and who have no known grave. They still lie out somewhere on the battlefield.
Ypres has many decent bars, cafes and restaurants and after a most pleasant evening at the end of a long day we retired in preparation of a busy Saturday.
Saturday began in light rain, but this had cleared by the time of our first stop at Essex Farm. This was where John McCrae wrote ‘In Flanders Fields’ and was the location of a front-line dressing station for most of the war. The cemetery has around 1150 burials including 15-year-old Private Strudwick. Mark shared his story before we walked around the site before heading to Yorkshire Trench, another front-line location a short distance away. Yorkshire Trench was uncovered during modern redevelopment of the area and Mark explained how life must have been only a few dozen yards away from the enemy . We then drove on to see the German cemetery at Langemarck (visited by Hitler in 1940 as he had served near there in WW1), the Canadian memorial at St Julien (site of the first gas attack in May 1915) where we posed for a team photo in front of yet another most impressive memorial.
After lunching, with a lovely local beer on the side, at the most impressive Brothers in Arms memorial at Zonnebeke which commemorates ‘lost’ brothers in the conflict, we travelled around the salient to Hill 60 and The Bluff. Hill 60 was the site of two of the 21 mines blown on 7th June 1917 which wiped out the German defences leading to the capture of Messines Ridge, one of the most successful actions of the war.
Closer to home, The Bluff was where PM Chris Woods’ grandfather won a DCM, and Mark Smith read the citation for a most brave and gallant action which Grandad Wood fortunately survived, as he did the war. We then headed across to Passchendaele and Tyne Cot cemetery, the largest British/Commonwealth cemetery in the world with almost 12,000 headstones. A truly impressive memorial, resplendent in the late afternoon sun we reflected of the carnage of the Third Battle of Ypres which over 100 days saw almost half a million casualties. Tyne Cot also has a memorial to this missing with almost 40,000 names to add to those on the Menin Gate.