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This page is an overview of a tour my wife and myself attended to some of the Somme and Ypres battlefields.
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We saw an advert for a tour starting on the 30th June, 2002, with Professor Richard Holmes. Having seen a number of his series on BBC, it seemed too good to miss. The tour was excellent, the
weather less so.
It poured with rain a great deal of the time, but surprisingly it did little to spoil the trip. The rain and lowering skies added something to the poignancy of those cemeteries and the German cemetery at Langemark is known as being a little ‘dark’, it was especially so in the constant rain.
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I will use the next couple of pages to give an overview of the tour, including some of the photos I took, and some of my impressions.
It may encourage others to try a similar trip, or refresh memories for some who have been before. As I mention on the TocH page, I did go when I was about 16, but interests
and priorities were a little different then!
On the right we see Richard in full flow, Polygon Wood to the right horizon. We are close to the Chateau in Gheluvelt while Richard describes the charge of the Worcesters during 1st Ypres.
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In some of the photos I have used a little ‘artistic licence’, and, where I felt appropriate, modified the colour original using Photoshop.
In this case the monument is to the Canadians who fell in the first German gas attack, April 1915.
Apologies to photography purists.
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A poem by Patrick MacGill, London Irish Regiment, at the Ulster Memorial.
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I wish the sea were not so wide
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That parts me from my love.
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I wish the things men do below
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Were known to God above
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I wish that I were back again
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In the glens of Donegal;
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They’ll call me coward if I return
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But a hero if I fall.
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Neil Hampson went on a trip of his own to see the area where his great-grandfather died in the 1918 German Spring offensive where my grandfather was captured. Neil’s great-grandfather’s unit, the King’s
Shropshire Light Infantry, were on the left of my grandfather’s unit. Neil sent me a number of photos of the area and these can be seen on separate pages.
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I was contacted by James Power who operates ‘Somme Battlefield Tours Ltd’, if you are thinking of visiting the battlefields you might want to
visit his site at www.battlefield-tours.com
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