With the British Army in Flanders & France

Across the road from Bethleem Farm East Cemetery Baldrick, still shell-shocked, attempts to clean the mud off his car with handfuls of grass!  No, it was never really going to work, now was it. Continue reading →

A story of commitment to the cause.

“It’s down this track to the left”, says I to Baldrick as we drive south from Messines* searching for the next cemetery on our tour.  We turn off the main road and before long our task appears a tad more problematic than it first appeared (see above).  “Never fear, we’ve encountered worse than that”, chorus your intrepid adventurers.  Except, as it turned out, we hadn’t.

*No, you haven’t missed anything.  On this tour we shall find ourselves up on the ridge at Messines in Parts Eight & Nine. Continue reading →

One of two waterlogged mine craters that still exist at Kruisstraat.  A third crater has long since been filled in. Continue reading →

Just a few hundred yards west of Spanbroekmolen British Cemetery, a CWGC signpost points the way to our next stop, Lone Tree Cemetery. Continue reading →

On leaving Irish House Cemetery we must head back along the main road (far left) towards Wytschaete for a few hundred yards, before we follow the course of the front lines south.  The first of the mine craters blown on that morning of 7th June 1917 that we shall see on this tour, Peckham Farm Crater was formed when some 87,000 pounds of ammonal were exploded at a depth of 240 feet beneath the German lines here. Continue reading →

We are now a little over a mile west of Wytschaete, in an area that was just behind the British lines when the Battle of Messines began.  Our next stop, Irish House Cemetery, is just a short distance north of the main road at this point, as the signpost confirms. Continue reading →