Following the 2011 ‘exam season’, around twenty UCS History students and staff piled onto a coach and headed off to explore some of the battlefields and memorials of the Great War (1914-1918). Dr John Greenacre, an occasional lecturer at UCS, was the logical choice to helm this expedition: not only is he a professional battlefield guide but he also possesses nearly a quarter of a century of actual military experience, not to mention a holdall full of (thankfully decommissioned) period weaponry.
We caught an early Eurotunnel shuttle and soon emerged bleary-eyed in Calais. Before much longer we were assembled in the main square of Ypres in the shadow of the magnificent Cloth Hall, originally a medieval structure and meticulously rebuilt following its destruction during the war. Having primed us with Blackadder goes Forth episodes on the coach, Dr Greenacre now described the importance of the Ypres Salient for the Allied and German forces. We then headed off to our next site: the reconstructed Bayernwald trenches.
This German trench complex is in the area in which Adolf Hitler served, and Dr Greenacre pointed out a nearby building which the future dictator had painted while in France. Of course, the war ended while Hitler was in a military hospital recovering from a British gas attack and, at our next site – Hill 60 – we were told about the historical development of gas warfare, from the western front to the last Gulf War. At this point, Dr Greenacre opened his ‘props’ bag for the first time...
Hill 60 itself was the scene of heavy fighting – and much tunnelling – during the Great War (as demonstrated in the recent film Beneath Hill 60). After struggling across the shell-marked terrain and looking at the Australian memorial, we clambered back aboard the coach and headed for Essex Farm. Here, Dr Greenacre stood in front of a concrete Advanced Dressing Station and described the treatment of battlefield wounded, comparing this to his own military experiences. We also visited the adjoining cemetery of 1,199 graves.
From the relatively small cemetery at Essex Farm, we then visited Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery on the western front. An astonishingly vast but peaceful site, Tyne Cot has 11,953 burials, of which 8,366 are unknown soldiers. It also contains memorial panels for 34,984 missing soldiers. The cemetery is kept in immaculate condition but, while the flowers are particularly beautiful, they do not really hide the scale of the killing that took place in Flanders.
After Tyne Cot, we headed back to Ypres for dinner and to watch the Menin Gate ‘Last Post’ ceremony, which had attracted a fairly large crowd. This ceremony has been performed every night without fail since 1927 (except during the Second World War, when the ceremony was performed on British soil). The Menin Gate itself is a memorial for nearly 55,000 missing British and Commonwealth soldiers who died on the Ypres Salient.
The following day (with absolutely no sore heads resulting from the delicious Belgian beers on offer the previous evening) we headed to the battlefields of the Somme, perhaps the area most associated in the British mind with the slaughter of the western front. We began at a section of the Allied front line on the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1 July 1916), now just a small hollow in the ground on the edge of the Sheffield Memorial Park:
Dr Greenacre explained the significance and tragedy of the ‘Pals Battalions’ and then talked us through the equipment each man would have carried as he went ‘over the top’. To drive home the point, he then produced a decommissioned Lee Enfield rifle (the type used by British soldiers during the war) and fixed its bayonet. The assembled staff and students then ‘had a go’:
On 1 July 1916 the first troops went over the top at 0730 and, by the end of the day, the British army had sustained horrendous losses: nearly 20,000 dead out of a total of 57,470 casualties. Today the battlefield is an idyllic farm, albeit with the fields periodically broken up by cemeteries:
At Serre Road Cemetery No. 1, Dr Greenacre told us the story of Horace Iles, a sixteen year old casualty on the first day of the Somme. Horace’s worried sister had written him a letter to say that the army was releasing underage boys who had somehow managed to get themselves into the army (the minimum age was 18) and that Horace had done his duty and should come home. By the time her letter arrived, he was already dead.
We then visited the Lochnagar crater. Much deeper than the photograph suggests, it was created at 0728 on the first morning of the Somme, two minutes before the soldiers began to go over the top. The British had tunnelled under the German lines here and packed the tunnel with 60,000lb of explosives. The resultant debris flew 4,000 feet in the air, and the shockwave broke the leg of a British soldier waiting in the opposing trenches.
Our next stop was the quiet and relatively small Fricourt German Cemetery, where over 5,000 German soldiers are buried with headstones, with nearly 12,000 buried in four mass graves.
Dr Greenacre explained the political and cultural background to the German cemeteries and gave us some time to wander around. The occasional Jewish headstone provided an extra layer of poignancy.
We then made our way to our final stop: the enormous and imposing Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, which lists the names of 72,116 British and South African soldiers whose bodies have not been found or identified. The memorial is also adjacent to British (left) and French (right) cemeteries, symbolising the sacrifice made by the Allies during the war.
Before we left Thiepval, we observed a moment of silence and laid a wreath on the monument:
We then began the long journey back to Ipswich, exhausted, but with much to ponder. Learning history through books and seminar discussion is one thing, visiting the sites where inconceivable numbers of young men died is another. I think we were also all struck by the incredible work undertaken by organisations such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to keep the memory of the Great War alive as the ‘war to end all wars’ heads towards its centenary anniversary.
Many thanks to Dr Greenacre for his enthusiasm, expertise and wide range of anecdotes. His logistical planning was also faultless throughout the trip. Thanks also to Angela Lynch, a second year student, who initially came up with the idea for the trip while taking the Europe in the Age of Total War module during semester one. The history team are already debating where to go next: Normandy, Arnhem or Berlin?
Words and pictures by Dr Ed Packard.
Student Comments:
"What struck me the most were the Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Driving through Belgium and France they are dotted about everywhere as regularly as hop fields or houses. These places do not feel like graveyards but more like gardens; their peacefulness in stark contrast to the sheer number of graves they contain. The craters left when shells and mines took great scoops out of the earth also made an impression on me, and I gained from this trip a better sense of the scale of the First World War."
- Laura May
"Dr Greenacre’s knowledge and enthusiasm were inspiring, enabling me to imagine the scenes which took place on the Somme: an emotional and thought-provoking tour."
- Jennifer Pearson
"John giving us the letter to Horace to read out by his grave was a lovely gesture, I'm sure it has been done a million times before but I don't imagine that matters to Horace or his sister. It totally appealed to my sense of history, how big events affect individuals on such a personal level."
- Charlotte Suleyman
"The thing that struck me most about the whole trip was John's delivery and knowledge of past events, and also his ability to draw parallels with current military methods, equipment and events. His storytelling, sense of place and use of props was fantastic. While we were there, I often thought how grateful I was that it was his party we were in."
- Janet Shipman