Battlefield Trip

Gus Hoyt
06 Jul 2014

History has always been a keen interest of mine. Discovering where we came from, how our culture, our language and customs came to be is essential to understanding who we are and why we think the way we do.

Viewing events neutrally from differing perspectives that the passing of time allows helps us to evaluate what happened, what went wrong, and what we might now do differently.

At school I studied the Great War in history books. We discovered ‘the Steps to War’ – analysing the multiple steps each taking us closer to the inevitability of all-out war.

By the time we reached mid-1914, it seemed, with hindsight, that nothing could have averted such conflict.

The actions of war itself were not covered in our coursework but of course we were familiar with the horror, the unspeakable conditions soldiers endured. It had become so ingrained in our consciousness that the horror was almost familiar, expected, normalised.

It remained separated from us by generations, by the differences of ages (the black and white world of then contrasted with the bright colours of today).

Blackadder goes Forth had normalised it further, made us laugh and come to terms with a very specific view of the war told through characters so familiar they were almost family.

To help us empathise with the enormity of what we were studying, my teachers organised a trip to the battlefield of Ypres in Belgium.

At first it was a normal field-trip for teenagers. We clumsily flirted with the girls, teased each other, joked, discovered new music sharing each other’s cassette tape (writing this makes me realise I come from a different era to today as well) and generally enjoying being away from school and begrudgingly doing a bit of learning when we had to.

We visited museums, saw the levelled city, looked at unexploded bombs found in local fields as recently as a week ago, and saw bits of barbed wire that were still scattered across the surrounding countryside.

We visited mass graves of white crosses stretching as far as the eyes could see, walked around immense monuments covered with the names and ranks of the fallen - yet it still felt other-worldly. The tragedy was obvious: the waste, the pain and suffering that accompanied the names could be dimly imagined but it was still too disconnected from our daily reality.

Then we visited a German grave; a small plot of land where the Allies had allowed the enemy to hurriedly bury their dead.  In numbers as great as ‘our boys’, these soldiers were thrown into mass graves - denied the dignity and respect offered to the victors. No enduring headstones, no names on a great wall. All these men received was a deep pit covered in nothing but a black marble floor marker of about 10 square metres.

It was at this stage that I got my first real insight into how they must have been feeling during and after the war. What was to happen next led to me becoming a committed pacifist for the rest of my life.

We arrived at Vancouver Corner near Langemarck where the Canadian Memorial of the Brooding Soldier towers over the surrounding trees. It commemorates Canada's first major loss in the conflict and remembers the victims of the first ever use of poisoned gas. First used by the Germans, gas was very soon after adopted by the Allies.

I left the group and wandered to a nearby battlefield. Having done my research the previous day I knew this was a spot where Canadian troops arrived to replenish numbers and marched (in file and in an orderly fashion) over the Allied trenches to join the fight at the front. These trenches were heavily fortified and would have consisted of barriers and barbed wire designed to slow any German advance.

Onward the troops marched until they joined the battle, their numbers already greatly depleted by shell fire.

Alone, I decided to retrace their steps.

From the very rear line of the extensive trench network I was aware that the enemy trenches had a very clear line of sight towards me. The hill, now covered in grass and meadow flowers, sloped gradually downhill. Making sure my friends weren’t watching, I set off. Even without obstructions it was slow going. Imagining the ground slick with mud, I tried to imagine myself in the midst of the battle itself.

Finally reaching the Allied front line, I made my way across no-man's land to the other side of the meadow and the ‘enemy'. I imagined the bullets flying through the air, mud being thrown by regular explosions from shells and mines, tearing my friends to pieces right before my eyes. I stooped and picked up a rusty piece of barbed wire, imagining how it would have torn at my legs, pulling me down into the mud. I could feel my lungs burning from the chlorine gas, my skin blistering.

It seemed to take for ever to make it to an outpost of the German trenches. The outpost would have housed a machine gun. It slowly dawned on me that I would never have made it this far. No matter how skilled I was, how fast and agile, there was absolutely no way I would have reached this far. I would have been one of the 20,000 that fell in that one day of battle.

Slowly I fell to my knees and finally felt I understood the war. I really felt it. Unexpected emotions overcame me and uncontrollable desperate tears sprang forth. It was as if I had become a conduit for all the anxiety, pain and desperation felt on that small patch of earth.

You can read all the books you like – but nothing will crush your soul with the immensity of what happened in those Flanders fields, a century ago, than going there and walking alone through these deep ditches, the trenches of the Great War.

Notes

A review of the Ypres battlefields about ten years after the First World War. © IWM (IWM 1059)

Author

Gus Hoyt is a Green Party councillor for the Ashley Ward. Follow him on Twitter at @MrGreenGus

Comment

Beautifully written. I can't possibly imagine what those poor soldiers endured, and the horrors of war. This was a good reminder to count our blessings for how 'easy' we have it, even though at times we feel life is so hard. It was good to stop for a moment today and just remember them all. Thank you for writing such a poignant piece.