This is the fourth guide in the Battle Lines series and covers the region that is loosely referred to as French Flanders, an area running from the Franco-Belgian border south of Ploegsteert to the Loos battlefields. Often referred to as the ‘Forgotten Front’ it has, up until now, not benefitted from the popularity that other areas, such as Ypres and the Somme, have enjoyed. Certainly the often flat, featureless and dreary nature of the landscape may not immediately endear it to the battlefield tourist, but it was here that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) fought several of its most important – and bloody – battles in 1915, battles which served as rites of passage enabling it to stand alongside its French ally as an equal, if not senior partner, in the struggle against the Germans on the Western Front by the summer of 1916. It became another battleground more than twenty years later in May 1940 when another BEF fought a series of rearguard actions during its retreat to the Channel ports. Physical scars of this fighting still remain to be seen on many of the Great War memorials and the human cost of the struggle still lies alongside the dead of the earlier fighting in several cemeteries in the area.
Although the main emphasis of the guide is on the battles of 1915, we do look at some of the early encounters of 1914 and those of 1916 and late 1917 and, in addition, visit several locations around Festubert and Givenchy where units of the 55th Division fought so tenaciously in April 1918 during the German Lys offensive.
We offer twelve routes around the battlefields – roughly arranged in the chronological order in which the battles on them were fought – which can be walked, biked or driven and which are supplemented by visits to over forty other sites where we describe what took place and why. The guidebook focuses on what the battlefields look like today and thus you will find very few contemporary Great War photographs. When designing routes we have provided coordinates for the start of each route and looked carefully at ensuring vehicles are not left at isolated points; however, please take the usual sensible precautions when leaving a vehicle unattended by not putting valuables on display but by locking them securely in the boot. On the majority of routes it is possible to cycle and walk, but on some of them cycling is only possible with a good off-road bike. Where possible we have directed the battlefield tourist onto quiet and little-used minor roads as well as local pathways and tracks but be aware that even on the quietest of rural roads there is always the likelihood of meeting unexpected farm machinery.
The depth of historical information devoted to each route has, by necessity, been limited by available space but we have provided enough of an outline around which to develop your understanding of what took place and why. Nevertheless, we have made a number of suggestions for further reading which will widen your appreciation of the events that took place in this sector of the Western Front and also point readers in the direction of other useful guidebooks and publications. Visitors to German, Portuguese and Indian cemeteries and memorials will find the section on equivalent ranks useful when wandering amongst the headstones in the Portuguese cemetery or puzzling to understand the hierarchy of Indian Army ranks.
In acknowledging the assistance of others we must thank Dave Rowland for reining in our sometimes wayward enthusiasm with his common sense approach and practical questioning. We owe a debt of gratitude to ex-Australian War Memorial historian Dr Peter Pedersen for his valued support and to Peter Barton, who was kind enough to discuss some of his ground-breaking research for his new book on Fromelles and loaned maps unearthed in German archives. Thanks also go to Sebastian Laudan in Berlin who once again translated a great deal of German material on our behalf, to Michelle Young, who scrambled around the Loos Memorial for us, and Merlijn van Eijk and Pierre Vandervelden for allowing us to use some of their images.