Preface

George Henry Hughes is a name that will mean nothing to you and nor should it. He was my grandfather. In 1916 he found himself in a previously unremarkable area of northern France which I am sure will be familiar to you: the Somme. Unlike the 19,240 on the first day alone who were not so lucky, George survived the battle and the war but spent the rest of his life plagued by ill-health brought on by the wicked toll of shrapnel wounds.

In 1995 I first visited the battlefields of the Great War as a fourteen year old student. The experience was humbling, emotional and ultimately life-changing. It is a pilgrimage that I have subsequently taken every year since becoming a teacher, taking hundreds of students around France and Belgium, both as an accompaniment to their history studies and, more importantly, as a wider aid to their human understanding.

This book is the distillation of some of that experience. It is not meant to be exhaustive, nor even a full tour guide. There are many great sites and memorials that do not make it onto these pages. What it is, however, is the highlight reel.

This book is primarily written for secondary school history departments who wish to undertake a one to three or four day tour of some of the iconic sites of the battlefields of the Western Front. However, it will also be of interest and use to the inexperienced and perhaps first time general visitor to the battlefields. The major focus is on the Somme and Ypres areas, with a few suggestions for those looking to go a little further afield. The book is aimed largely at the non-expert departments (i.e. History Departments who do not specialize in this area/have not taken these trips before or who have previously relied upon tour guides whilst abroad) but will also be useful to those departments which are more confident on the Western Front as a one volume ‘pick-up-and-deliver’ resource.