YO U R FA M I LY H I S TO RY40 YO U R FA M I LY H I S TO RY 41M I L I TA RY S P E C I A L 2 0 1 2M I L I TA RY S P E C I A L 2 0 1 2

the rest – and many people findindependent travelling the bestway to go. There is plenty ofaccommodation to suit all tastesand you can choose your paceand things to see.

Where did your soldierserve? In some cases you will alreadyhave an idea of where to go: forexample, if your soldier lies inone of the cemeteries of theCommonwealth War GravesCommission or iscommemorated on a memorial,that is an obvious focal point foryour trip. But how did he getthere? Where did he go ‘overthe top’? What about thevillages and towns in which hewas billeted and trained? Washe perhaps wounded too, andwhere?

It should in most cases bepossible to determine the unitwith which he served from thesoldier’s army service record, ifyou can find it, or from detailsgiven in his entries in the medalrolls (see page 28). The best firststep to assembling your trip isto build as clear a picture as youcan of the geographicalmovements of his unit and to

pin down those places that areof importance to your soldier’sstory.

There is a wide variety ofinformation available to you,and it is worth examining asmuch of it as you can:regimental, battalion anddivisional histories are relativelyeasy to find these days,especially from publishers Pen& Sword (www.pen-and-sword.co.uk) and Naval &Military Press (www.naval-military-press.com). These willgive you good narrativedescriptions of where the unitwent, and in many cases alsoprovide useful maps of the mainactions.

Let’s take an example of asoldier who served with the 1stBattalion of the SouthStaffordshire Regiment, whowas killed in action at thevillage of Bullecourt in May1917. You will have found fromthe history of the 7th Division,under whose command thebattalion came, that they hadbeen at Ypres in 1914, Festubertand Loos in 1915 and theSomme in 1916. The story of hisunit begins to sketch out a routefor you, and in this instance thedivisional history gives some

maps of the main actions so youknow the villages of interestwithin those battlefields.

For real detail, and vital ifyou are to understand theplaces and events if your soldierwas wounded or died, it isworth seeing the war diaries.These are detailed day-to-dayaccounts recorded at the time,and they exist for all but themost obscure units. Some havebeen transcribed and can befound online, for example asdownloadable documents fromThe National Archives’Discovery service via

T he manymemorials,cemeteries andtraces of

bunkers and trenches –on ground often stillriddled withshrapnel, shellfragments and even

unexplodedammunition – create anevocative landscape.

Seeing these things for yourselfwill aid your own appreciationof the battles and theextraordinary feats of thesoldiers, and no trip is likely tomean more to your own familyhistory than following in thefootsteps of a relative who wasthere. It is becoming ever easierto reach the famous battlefieldsof France and Flanders – Ypres,the Somme, Arras, Cambrai and

HOW TO... Plan a Battlefield Tour

A visit to the battlefields of the Great Warmakes for a fascinating, sobering, educationaland fulfilling experience, says Chris Baker,

as he describes how to go about planningthat battlefield trip of a lifetime

Create Your Own

TOURBATTLEFIELD

A TYPICAL MAPfrom a regimentalhistory, showingpositions of units ata given time.

YO U R FA M I LY H I S TO RY 43

Western Front Association(www.westernfrontassociation.com), Naval & Military Pressand Great War Digital(www.greatwardigital.com), butthey are expensive. Again, if allyou need is one or two parts ofmaps, ask around.

Producing a detaileditineraryArmed with your sketched-outroute, you can now produce anitinerary for your trip. The trickis to turn the unitmovements you havedrawn onto yourmap into apractical travelroute that youcan take,identifyingplaces to stopand see; placesyou might walk tospend some goodtime and go walking; andplaces to stay. To some extentthis will be defined by yourroute to get to the right areasfrom the UK and your mode oftransport. You will find thatunits moved very often, goingrepeatedly between rest billetsin a village and the nearby frontline. It may be very wasteful tofollow the unit literally day byday, but you should be able toproduce a logical route tofollow.

While you are in a particulararea, you will also wish to seeimportant battlefield highlightsas well as those features that arespecific to your own soldier. Inour example of the man whodied at Bullecourt, there areseveral memorials and amuseum within the village itselfand military cemeteries a merestone’s throw away. This is notuntypical. You would probablywish to see them all, in additionto the area where the battalionattacked and perhaps the veryspot where the man died. Againthere are splendid resources forunderstanding what is in eacharea and how to find them.

The best guidebookscontinue to be Rose Coombs’Before Endeavours Fade (After the

Battle, 2006) and Major Tonieand Mrs Valmai Holt’s guides tothe Western Front North andSouth (published by Pen &Sword). They are packed withinformation and will inspireyou to see many sites of interest.This will no doubt include someof the WW1 museums as well asthe battlefield features. TheBattleground Europe series ofhandy-sized paperbackbattlefield guides published byPen & Sword are also verypopular and it would be worth

reading those relevant to theareas you wish to see.

Having done all ofthat, you’ll have awonderful, detailedtour plan to follow.Unless you go inthe depths of

winter, you are alsobound to bump into

other fellow battlefieldtourists as you visit the

fields, cemeteries andmuseums. Do stop and chat –you never know, you may havea shared interest. You will alsooften find the hoteliers andowners of the bed and breakfastaccommodation to be informedand to give good local advice.

Very often there areexhibitions going on, or short-lived archaeological digs oreven reburials of recentlydiscovered soldiers’ remains,that are hard to discover beforeyou go. Finally do say hello tothe Commonwealth War GravesCommission gardeners youmay meet: they appreciateknowing their work is admiredand also often can offer greatlocal tips.

There are sizeable andpleasant towns within easyreach of the British battlefieldsand hotel, bed and breakfastand self-cateringaccommodation is easy to find.There is a list of these for Ypres,the Somme and Arras at myown website www.1914-1918.net and you will be able tofind much more information attourist office websites,Tripadvisor(www.tripadvisor.co.uk) andelsewhere. Once again, ask at

the Great War Forum forpeople’s ideas and comments onstaying in a particular place(http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums).

Final points of adviceTry not to take on too much. Itis better to tackle a part of yoursoldier’s story in depth and take

YO U R FA M I LY H I S TO RY42 M I L I TA RY S P E C I A L 2 0 1 2M I L I TA RY S P E C I A L 2 0 1 2

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/war-diaries-ww1.htm.Others must be consulted asoriginal documents at TheNational Archives in Kew (seewww.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/british-army-war-diaries-1914-1918.htm), although someregimental museums also havecopies for their units. If you arestruggling with this or just needa day or two looking up, youcould always ask at the GreatWar Forum (http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums)and are likely to get the detailsfrom the members there. Forour soldier who died atBullecourt, the war diary givesvery specific locations to theextent that once you map it outyou can walk in his veryfootsteps – well, approximately,as these fields are once againfarmland!

Through consulting thesesources you should be able toconstruct a timetable of theunit’s movements and can nowshift your attention to turningthat into a tour plan.

Sketching out your tripNow you know where yoursoldier went and the battlefieldsin which he was in action, it’stime to lay it all out on a map.Depending on the time youhave for your tour and thelength and complexity of yoursoldier’s movements, you mayneed to discard some of it toconcentrate on what you canpractically see in the time. It’suseful to have a decent roadatlas of France and Belgium todo this, but there are excellentmaps online atwww.viamichelin.com andwww.geoportail.fr (the latter isa French language site but hasexcellent IGN maps, theequivalent of the UK’sOrdnance Survey, that you canzoom in, overlay satelliteimages, and so on). GoogleMaps and Google Earth athttps://maps.google.co.uk andwww.google.com/earth are alsogreat resources for thisplanning. Bear in mind thatsome place names have changedsince 1918 especially inFlanders, so if you cannot findthe place mentioned in a wardiary, think laterally or ask forhelp. By the time you have doneall of this, you’ll have a basicsketch of your travel route.

If you are getting down toreal detail, you may also need toconsult trench maps. These wereproduced during the war andshow the precise position of theBritish and German trenchesand strongpoints, and areessential if you are tracing asaccurately as you can the placewhere a man became a casualty

or where he won a gallantryaward.

You can buy reprinted mapsfrom the Imperial War Museumand a few other places in theUK, and at the main museumshops in France and Belgium.The National Archives hasmany original maps (find itsFirst World War trench mapsand battlefield guides atwww.nationalarchives.gov.uk/bookshop). There are excellentcollections of maps on CD andDVD, available from the

HOW TO... Plan a Battlefield Tour

WAR DIARIES oftenprovide place namesand map references.TNA

A TRENCH MAP ofBullecourt. Crown Copyright

Visit FlandersCreate your owntravel guide withthe help of FlandersTourist Office atwww.visitflanders.co.uk

‘A WANDER THROUGH an extant trench systembehind the privately-run museum at SanctuaryWood left a marked impression on me when Ivisited the Ypres Salient,’ said Laura Berry. Still afamily business, the museum was set up by a farmerforced to abandon the land in 1914 when hereclaimed it after the armistice. It is a vestige of thepost-war tourism industry that sprang up in the1920s as thousands made the pilgrimage toFlanders. The farmer’s grandson now owns themuseum. ‘It’s crammed full of relics from the war.Most startling were the series of contemporarystereoviews capturing random moments of theconflict. Gruesome and upsetting though they are,those graphic 3D images really brought home justhow horrific the scene was there nearly a centuryago.’ Some 10km away the recently reconstructed‘Bayernwald’ (‘Bavarian Wood’) trenches inWijtschate are said to be a good example of theGerman lines.

Hill 62 – Sanctuary Wood Trench MuseumCanadalaan 268900 Zillebeke IeperBelgium Tel: 0032 57 466373

Tickets for Bayernwald Trenches must be obtainedfrom Kemmel Tourist Office:Sint-Laurentiusplein 18950 Heuvelland Kemmel Belgium Tel: 0032 57 450455 Web: www.heuvelland.be

Sanctuary Wood Trenches: wearing wellies isadvisable. David Holt

MEMORABLE VISITS

‘TYNE COT CEMETERY was thefirst stop on our tour,’ saidCarolyn Mills. ‘I remember theshock of seeing all those namesfor the first time, it stayed withme for months.’ To find out moreabout visiting the largestCommonwealth war cemetery inthe world, where 12,000 menwere buried close to thesurrounding battlefields and afurther 35,000 arecommemorated on a Memorialto the Missing, go towww.passchendaele.be,website of the nearby MemorialMuseum Passchendaele 1917, ortel: 0032 51 770441.Tyne Cot Cemetery Vijfwegenstraat 1 8980 Zonnebeke Belgium

Tyne Cot Cemetery. David Blaikie

MEMORABLE VISITS

YO U R FA M I LY H I S TO RY44 M I L I TA RY S P E C I A L 2 0 1 2

time to absorb the atmosphereof the battlefield than rusharound trying to see everything.There is so much to see,particularly at the mainbattlefield areas, that yousimply would not see it all inone visit.

Try to get out of the car andwalk, even if it is only aroundthe edge of a field or wood, oralong a sunken lane, for a fewminutes. Go off the beaten trackto the less frequently visitedplaces. You will see much more,get a better feel for thelandscape – and even spot someof those many pieces ofbattlefield debris that remind usthat the war was a real eventand not something confined tothe pages of the books andmaps you have used inplanning. Have a great trip –perhaps I’ll see you there!

HOW TO... Plan a Battlefield Tour

CHRIS BAKER is a freelance militaryhistorian. A former Chairman of the WesternFront Association, founder of the Great WarForum and author of the renowned websiteThe Long, Long Trail (www.1914-1918.net),he carries out research of soldiers through hisbusiness fourteeneighteen(www.fourteeneighteen.co.uk). Chris reportsthat increasing numbers of his clients aremoving beyond the basic research to going tosee the battlefields where their ancestors werein action. He is happy to advise on planningsuch trips but even happier to guide hisclients around the sites of memory.

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM LONDON

International Day of PeaceThe Imperial War Museum London (IWM) iscelebrating International Day of Peace with a specialevents programme on Saturday 22 September. Takepart in a day of free talks, activities, tours and filmscreenings between 10.30am and 5pm. Talks willinvolve, among others, co-curator of the Museum’sBuild the Truce display, Dr Tim Jacoby, and aidorganisations Médicins Sans Frontières and the RedCross.

Last Chance to SeeOver the next two years leading up to the 100thanniversary of the start of the First World War in2014, the IWM will be creating dynamic new FirstWorld War Galleries. For this work to happen, IWMLondon will be closed temporarily from January toJune 2013. The First and Second World WarGalleries and the Trench Experience will close on 10September 2012 in preparation for thetransformation, and other exhibitions will followsuit throughout the autumn, so catch them whileyou can!

‘VIMY RIDGE IS one of the eeriestplaces I’ve visited’, says Nick Barrattof his trip to the mourning statue ofMother Canada looking out over theDouai Plains from the Vimy Memorial in France. The Battle of Vimy Ridgein April 1917 saw the Canadian forces take this strategic crest of land fromthe Germans for the first time since they had captured it in October 1914.During the four days of the battle, over 3,500 men from the CanadianCorps were killed in action and 7,000 more seriously injured. Themagnificent monument here stands as a tribute to all those from Canadawho served during the war and lost their lives in France. Sections of theAllied and German trenches from the time of the Battle of Arras (of whichthe Vimy Ridge operation formed a part), with some areas of No-Mans-Land in between them, were preserved using sandbags filled with concreteduring the landscaping of the memorial park here.Vimy Ridge National Historic Site of Canada Route départementale 55 62580 Vimy France Tel: 0033 321 506868

MEMORABLE VISITS

Carc

haro

th

The preserved Canadian front lineas it was prior to the assault onVimy Ridge. Asenkat

A machine gun emplacementon the crest of Vimy Ridgeand the men who drove theGermans from it during theBattle of Vimy Ridge, April1917. LAC/William Ivor Castle