War graves.

Boohbah

In the spring, I'm planing to visit the war graves and some battle sites of WW1 in Belgium & France. Staying over for 2/3 days.

Googleing brings up plenty of company's offering various tours but, they are very expensive, so its going to be a diy job.

Has anyone any tips or advice to offer. ie places to stay and visit.
Traverling by Euro train is the best way to get there I guess.

funky-footprints

i will ask my dad this weekend, he did it 2 years ago !! (by bus !!!!!!!)

ariba10

If you contact the 'War Graves Commision' they have maps for sale that show all the British war grave cemeteries for the WW1.
It is a very humbling expirence to visit them.
We did it about 15 years ago on our own and think it should be a must for all school children.
You will find the people of North Eastern France are very helpfull.

spender

There is a very good coach touring company that specialise in these tours, starting from £219.00 for 5 days (pm if you want the name).

We ourselves have travelled on eurotunnel and then driven the hour or so to Ypres. We visited the war graves which moved us beyond belief. We were there for rememberance day (2 years ago) when they filmed the ceremony from the Menin gate.

They have excellent tourist information and maps of the war graves and the accommodation is very reasonable.

Whether you agree with war or not I feel everyone should at least once visit the immaculate war graves. I walked around and was shocked to find out that most of them were late teens early twenties. They are kept beautifully the graves, unfortunately if they were in this country there would be graffitti and broken graves.

SammyD_2

We did this as a day trip - like spender we took the Eurotunnel and drove up to the Somme region. The major cemetries and memorials were marked on the map. It really was one of those things that I will not forget - such a lot of waste, especially sad were the graves that said "an unknown soldier from [whatever country their uniform was from]. We went in January in the freezing cold and mist, and it brought home to me what hell it must have been. Although my great grandfathers were in the British Army, as a New Zealander I felt really moved by the number of New Zealanders, Australians, Indians etc who died so far from home.

The Canadian Battlefield Memorial Park is really worth seeing - it is at Vimy and has some of the trenches and things still in place. It is the best way of getting a real sense of what it was like.

The lonely planet guide to France has a useful summary of what to see in the Somme region (I have it open in front of me) and we based our trip on that. You should be able to get it from the library if you don't have a copy.

LesD

Boohbah wrote:

Traverling by Euro train is the best way to get there I guess.

Hmm...not sure about that. Most of the cemeteries are out-of-town. If you don't want to go on an organised tour, you'll need a car to get around.

I guess Spender is refering to Leger tours. I think they're the biggest in this field.

VickyA_2

My dad has been on two tours with www.holts.co.uk - Holts History and Battlefields Tours. I think that they are ultra-specialists and he had many veterans on both the tours he went on (for both the 50th and 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings, so slightly different to your request!). He found that the accommodation that they had was good, food good, transfers good, and knowledge was excellent. Even my dad learnt things.

It may give you an idea of an itinerary, if nothing else!

trisontana

Your best bet is to travel directly to Ypres and visit the "Flanders Field" museum located in the market place. While there you can pick up maps and information about the various war cemeteries in the area. There is a marked motoring route, called (I think) "Route 1914-18", which will lead you to to most of the major cemeteries. Don't forget to also walk around Ypres itself . You will see the Menin Gate ( inscribed with nearly 100,000 names of men with no known graves) and a couple of small cemeteries on the city ramparts. If you visit the church just behind the museum there are various monuments to different regiments and units who were stationed in the area.

When you visit an actual cemetery always look in the information and visitor's books, which are usually located in a small compartment in the entrance building. These will tell you about which battles were fought in the area and the history of the cemetery. The entries in the visitor's books can be interesting, and an insight into the human and personal stories associated with the graves.

stellagypsy

OH and I are going at end of March - we are taking the car and crossing with Norfolkline, then staying in Poperinge and will tour round the relevent sites. I will go to the Flanders Field museum to get the maps, thanks for that tip.

Through doing our family histories we discovered OH had a great uncle who perished in 1918 and has no known grave - he is name is on the wall of remeberance at Tyne Cot cemetery, so that will be our first stop. It's a bit spooky as he has the same name as our son. We found details of his regiment and the battles he fought in, etc.

Just an aside. when we were in France last time, we were near Compiegne (sp>) where the 1918 Armistice was signed, so we visited there - another "must do" in my opinion, it's east of Paris and easy enough to find.

Stella

xnikkix

I visited most of the above with school - The Menin Gate, Vimy, The Somme and Langemarc the German graveyard. You should lso go to Tyne Cot - I think it has 12000 graves, very impressive and humbling.

Nikki

Merlin139

Like stellagypsy I had an experience when I went on a Battlefield Tour with the Army in 2001, we went by coach and visited many places over 3 days. When we went to Tyne Cot cemetary I looked to see if anyone with my surname was buried there. What I found freaked me out.

A young man had died in 1917 and his inital and surname matched mine. The day he died was 70 years to the day before my daughter was born and then the most freaky part.

His 6 digit Army Number was 291950.

My Army Number was 24591950

I looked on the war graves site when i returned to check it out, and one day will try to find out if we are related.

I would recommend visiting war graves at least once to get some idea of where all the fighting took place and to spend time reflecting on all the sacrifices that were made by all those people so many years ago.