In Flanders Field – on touring the World War I battlefield

Fittingly, it is raining on Flanders fields, just as it was 92 years ago when these farmlands became a major killing field of the World War I Western Front.

That autumn of 1917 was the wettest for 70 years and the flat Belgian landscape was churned by four million German and Allied shells into a sloppy porridge that swallowed anything and everything. All that was left were matchstick trees.

Massive opposing armies were locked together here in a landscape of unbelievable desolation. The battle lines barely moved for more than two years.

One can't visit Flanders without being deeply moved by the tragedy. The statistics are horrendous. In four years of fighting in this cramped corner of the Western Front, one million men on both sides were killed or wounded or went missing.

The battle of Passchendaele in the summer and autumn of 1917 alone cost half a million casualties. In 100 days of heavy fighting between July and November, the Allies made a gain of only eight kilometres.

Thirty five men fell for every square yard taken. The dead comprised mostly British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and South African troops. And the battle was all for nothing.

Today, the scene around Ypres and Passchendaele is very different. The desolate battlefield landscape has long since gone. Nothing we see now is older than 90 years – no farm building, no fence, no tree.

It is hauntingly peaceful. Ordinary farmland, in fact. We look at fields of head-high corn and lush green pastures where cows graze contentedly.

Beneath these pastures still lie tens of thousands – even hundreds of thousands, it has been estimated – of young men cut down in the bloodiest of bloody wars and most of whose bodies have never been recovered.

Even today some bodies are still being found. On the day we were there, Australian government officials and the family of one Australian Digger were there to see him re-interred with military honours.

For every life lost there is a story. Author Rudyard Kipling lost his only son John on his first day in battle here. Kipling spent three years looking for his son's body which was found only after Rudyard's death.

Australia's contribution to the war effort was out of all proportion to our then 4.5 million population. Our volunteers numbered 313,000 – 65 per cent of whom became casualties.

While Gallipoli has become a major shrine to the memory of Anzac and a place of pilgrimage, the Western Front claimed more – many more – Australian and New Zealand lives.

In 1916, Australia had 180,000 men on the Western Front, three times the number that had served at Gallipoli. Ypres has become particularly associated with Commonwealth forces who were here continuously from October, 1914, to the end of the war in 1918.

The area was thickly sown then with hundreds of soldiers' cemeteries, many more than the 150 remaining today.

Tyne Cot, with 12,000 graves, is the world's largest Commonwealth war cemetery and is splendidly maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

Tyne Cot WWI cemetery, near Ypres, Belgium. With 12,000 graves, it is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world (David Potts).

The names of 34,957 soldiers missing in action are also listed at Tyne Cot. Originally, Tyne Cot was a bunker on the German line. On October 4, 1917, Australian soldiers captured the position and used it as an advanced dressing station.

Soldiers who died of their injuries were buried on the site. Several German blockhouses remain as a grim reminder. Nearby, too, is what's left of two German machinegun positions.

Two Australian Victoria Crosses were won in actions here. The rear wall of the cemetery bears the names of 35,000 British, including Australian and New Zealand, servicemen who died there after August 16, 1917.

A visitor centre at Tyne Cot and Memorial Museum Passchendale 1917 opened in 2007 and attracted 300,000 visitors in its first year.

The museum exhibits memorabilia – letters from solders, uniforms, badges, equipment. The names and ages of the dead are broadcast in continuous slow and reverend readings.

For a closer look at the battlefield, you can walk a three-kilometre historic walking route, The Road To Passchendale.

Along with the remains of soldiers, every year 300 tonnes of munitions are recovered by farmers tilling their farms. Local residents have become accustomed to putting out for collection their household rubbish on one side of their driveway and unexploded World War I munitions on the other side. We see an example – a rusted shell.

It's an iron harvest among the harvest of corn. The growing number of visitors, including more and more Australians and New Zealanders, is evidence of an increasing pilgrimage to Flanders.

Just days before our visit, a group of Australian schoolchildren had toured the battlefields. The Menin Gate in Ypres is a memorial to British and Commonwealth officers and men missing in the Ypres salient (district).

It straddles one of the town's busiest roads and is a constant reminder of sacrifice. It bears panel after panel of 54,896 names of those who died in the salient and have no known graves.

To stand beneath the great arch is very moving, especially any evening at 8pm. Volunteers from the local fire brigade have played the Last Post here at that time every night since 1928 –except for four years during World War II .

Ypres, or 'Wipers' as the Diggers called it, was once a great commercial centre, specialising in cloth. The quiet market town was destroyed and rebuilt between 1922 and 1926 in a style faithful to the original.

It again suffered terribly in World War II, falling to the Germans in just one day and occupied until being liberated on September 6, 1944.

A number of tour companies offer tours of the battlefields. We chose Salient Tours whose guide, Chris, is an ex-British Army officer and student of the Great War. We stop at Essex Farm Cemetery which was part of the front line between April, 1915, and August, 1917. Here is one of the few tangible reminders of the war – a concrete building used as a field dressing station.

Here, too, Canadian surgeon John McCrae wrote his classic poem In Flanders Fields which has become the anthem of the Great War. And further along our tour we pass a monument, a brooding Canadian soldier, at Vancouver Corner where chlorine gas was first used to kill 2000 Canadians.

In the Ypres city centre is an In Flanders Fields Museum (8 Euros ($A15.70). On the first floor of the restored Cloth Hall on Market Square, this is a must-see.

The In Flanders Fields museum at Ypres, Belgium, which graphically tells of the horror of the WWI battles in the area (David Potts).

The visitor is plunged into surroundings of the Great War through documentary film, sight-and-sound exhibits, interactive and hands-on displays, and many contemporary documents.

We had arrived in Ypres on a fast, comfortable intercity train from Paris, via Lille, and finished the journey by local train. It had taken less than four hours.

If you go:

Cathay Pacific has fares to Paris for travel between April and end October, 2009, starting at $1612 plus taxes and surcharges from east coast mainland capitals and $1452 plus taxes/surcharges from Perth. 

There is a daily service to Paris via Hong Kong from the mainland capitals and six times weekly from Cairns.

The intercity and local trains provide a quick and cheap way to get from Paris to Ypres.

* The writer travelled with the help of Cathay Pacific and Eurail

AAP