Activity

If this is your first visit to a cemetery with the group, then five minutes to walk the rows whilst coming to terms with all the information they have just been given would be wise. Some will want to study the headstones, others simply contemplate.

Leave the cemetery. Turn right and walk back to the museum.

2. Sanctuary Wood Trench Museum

45 minutes to one hour

If booked in advance as a school group then approx. €6. As of the end of 2013 it is now €10 for an adult.⁹

Context

Without doubt, one of the most popular destinations for all battlefield tourists in the Ypres Salient. Jacques Schier, who sadly passed away in July 2014, was the famous custodian for many years. It was his grandfather who took the prescient decision to preserve this land as it was found at the end of the war. It still lives up to Rose Coombs’ moniker as ‘the only really authentic sector of trenches remaining in the salient’. There is an eccentric, but wonderfully so, museum which famously has old 1920s 3D photo viewers. The photos are unlike most that you or your students will have seen before; many are taken by the Germans and they are brutally uncensored – it is a good lesson for young minds to learn about the reality of what war actually does to the body of a man. There are also good examples of shell art and many original and unique artefacts are strewn outside as you enter the battleground area. The early German headstones are a particular favourite of mine.

Orientation

There is some disagreement amongst historians and battlefield guides as to exactly what part, and of which exact system, these trenches were. Some believe them to be part of a British second line from 1915/16 whereas others say that they are front line. It is quite possible that they are largely communication trenches. What is clear is that they are original (in situ and not reconstructed in entirety) and that it should not be a surprise that it is difficult to work out exactly their origin – remember that these trenches will have changed hands numerous times during the war, meaning that each side would have adapted them as the need arose.¹⁰

Spiel

Most students just want to explore the trench systems, bunkers and dug outs and get a feel for the place. This is probably the best way, but I would – with a pedant’s hat on – urge you to try to stop youthful enthusiasm from turning into a full enactment of the war with hordes of groups running at each other making machine gun noises.

The visit does provide a useful opportunity to run through the basics of trench life:

Trenches developed in late 1914 when General Erich von Falkenhayn, after the German retreat to the River Aisne following the Battle of the Marne, ordered his men to dig continuous trenches that would provide them with protection from the advancing French and British troops. The Allies soon followed suit when it was clear that they could not break through the defences.

However, the crucial difference was that the Germans generally had been able to choose where they would stand, and then dig their trench systems there. That meant that they, as you will see, seemed always to hold the highest ground and choose positions that were hidden from Allied sight. Many Allied soldiers, when capturing German positions, were shocked to discover the relative luxury that their enemy had been living in: concrete bunkers and even electricity were found.¹¹

The British and French, therefore, had to live in much worse conditions. As you can see here at Sanctuary Wood, this often meant the low lying land, which in Ypres, because of its clay soil and poor drainage basin, means water when you dig.