The Ypres Salient

We had the best day of our tour today. We started of visiting Hill 60 with the devastation caused by 4 years of continuous artillery fire and the craters from the mines set in the tunnels under the German lines. These 19 mines were set to go off at the same time and killed approx 10,000 German soldiers

 The sound of the explosion was heard across the channel in England. There are the remains of German pill boxes and you could understand how hard it would have been for the allies to capture this area.

Our next stop was the Passchendale Museum which features a recreated dug out. We also stopped for coffee. It was extremely cold today and four layers of clothing wasn’t enough.

From there we went to Tyne Cot the worlds largest Commonwealth war cemetery. Ian looked up WJ Warburton and left a poppy. From the date of his death we found that he would have been killed in Polygon Wood.

This was the next place we visited with the 5th Australian Divisional Memorial. We saw the graves of Sergeant Calder, Private Hunter and Private Storey and 2 unknown soldiers that were recently discovered in the Belgium field and featured in the film “Lost in Flanders”.     

    

We had lunch at Café de Dreve where the owner Johan Vandewalle told us of his discoveries of the bodies. After lunch we went for a walk through Polygon Woods where I discovered some shard (fragments of metal casings) and one of the men on the bus found an unexploded shell. We also came across more German Pill boxes.

From here we visited the Canadian Memorial at Langemarck, marking the site where poison gas was first used in the war. We also visited the only German cemetery at Langememarck which in contrast to the memorials of the Allieds is quite dark and sparse.

Tomorrow - off to Brugges - chocolates !!!