Fields of Flanders

We travelled along River called the Leie in Belgium to cross the unmarked border into France where it is called the Lys. Soon it met the major canal which carries commercial traffic south, but we turned right to continue along the river which now carries only smaller barges. Our first stop was Armentieres, a name vaguely remembered from the World War one popular song "Mademoiselle from Armentieres". Like most towns along the Lys this was part of the front, at some times in German hands and sometimes held by the allies during World War 1. Mostly though it was just behind the Allied lines and was used for billeting, R and R, hospitals and headquarters. We discovered that the British Forces, which of course included those from all the Commonwealth Countries, were responsible for this area while the French fought further to the East. Like every town in this area, Armentieres was massively damaged and had to be almost entirely rebuilt after the war.   

Belfry at ArmentieresThroughout this district there are many Commonwealth Military cemeteries, looked after by the Commonwealth War Graves on land donated by France. They are in immaculate condition and carefully tended but devastating in their message- thousands of young men from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Newfoundland, India, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia are buried here, marked by rows of sobering white crosses. Many have names and dates but there are thousands of unknown dead. Often the dead soldier's nationality and affiliation is known and acknowledged even when his actual name is not matched to the burial, but in some cases the cross simply states "Unknown". We discovered that on the battle field the name tags of the dead were removed to be sent back to relatives, and the bodies quickly buried often non- identified dead are usually displayed on huge monuments in these cemeteries.

We cycled the 11 kilometres to Fromelles, the scene of devastating loss of Australian lives. Each cemetery has an account of the events of this terrible slaughter. In one, Australian Memorial Park, we found a moving sculpture of Sergeant S Fraser who crawled back towards enemy lines to rescue injured comrades. It is called "Cobbers". The local primary school in Fromelles is named "Cobbers School" and proudly displays a kangaroo in its logo.

The newest cemetery, at Pheasant Wood, was established in 2010 after a mass grave of Australian soldiers was found there. With the availability of DNA matching now, a proportion of these men were identified and named. Touchingly, each grave here bore a small wooden cross and poppy inscribed by a student of the Bush School Wahroonga.  

There are many German graves in the area as well. In one town held by Germans for most of the war, German graves are one end, Allied the other, with one Russian grave which we did not find. One German cemetery in this area has 45,000 burials.

Cite Bon Jean, near Armentieres. This and the 2,400 others are tended by over 300 French gardeners
Two of very many unknown soldiers

As we continue through this area we become more and more aware of the horrors of the First World War and sadly find that the same towns were subject to terrible events in the Second World War as well. In a beautiful town called St Vernant the woods were used to house a German rocket launcher, as London is not far away across the channel. The wood was stripped to be used for trenches in WW1 and to barricade the beaches in WWII. There is a memorial to the hostages executed by the Germans in retaliation for some act of defiance, and a very long list of civilian casualties.

"Cobbers"

A significant number of towns had destruction of eighty per cent or more of their houses and especially significant buildings as the belfries and church steeples were good lookout posts and therefore destroyed.
We seem to have been travelling along the WW1 "front line" very often for the last three years and we have finally realised why: that line stretched for 800 kilometres from Switzerland in the East to the Belgian coastline in the West, often along the canals and rivers.

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave