Ypres Tours

General  |  2 Days Itinerary  |  5 Days Itinerary  |  View Full Itinerary

Two Days , One Night Trip

£179 per person sharing

Great War Battlefields from the Channel to Ypres.

Mud, Bullets, Shells and Blood

From October 1914 until November 1918, the British, French and Belgian Armies and their Empires, under pressure to show their strength, held on to this part of the line, with grim determination. The cost in soldiers' lives and horrendous injuries was a terrible price to pay, but pay it over and over again they did. The dead were several hundred thousand collectively. In the Ypres salient alone, there are over 120 military graveyards and many memorials listing the names of those 'Known unto God', as Kipling put it. Defending a salient presents great dangers, as you can be attacked on both flanks as well as the front. Poison gas, from 1915, added to the peril. So why hang on to it? To make matters worse, the land surface of Flanders, which means flooded land, can only be kept dry by an extensive network of drainage channels. Once these were shot to pieces, the land became a soggy morass when it rained and stayed that way for months. Drowning in mud was an agonizing death for men and beasts. The animals at least, could be put out of their misery, but shooting a pal was another matter.

The Ypres sector saw fighting in every year of the war, with three major battles, the First, Second and Third Battles of Ypres, as well as other fighting and mining. The men called it 'Wipers' and the town was almost wiped off the map. But such is the human spirit, that it was rebuilt, with German war reparation money, as a replica of the old town, at least externally.

North of Ypres, the Front Line extended to the town of Nieuport, where the sea is normally kept out by a series of sluices and other flood barriers. In October 1914 the Belgian king, Albert, took the decision to allow the surrounding land to be inundated. This wet area, then became the northern tip of the Western Front. The fierce battles that raged in this area are collectively known as the Battle of the Yser. The Belgians held this line with British and French support. The town of Dixmude was the centre of the fighting and was ruined by shelling before being captured by the Germans in November 1914. They held it until September 1918.

FIND OUT...

How did the forces manage the front line near the sea?

How much land was flooded?

Why did Ypres have to be defended at all costs?

How difficult is it defending a salient?

Why did the tunnellers spend nearly 2 years excavating the Messines ridge near Ypres?

'I died in Hell. (they called it Passchendaele);'

Siegfried Sassoon.