TOM MORGAN'S SOMME DIARY - PART 7

YPRES, HILL 60
AND BACK TO THE SOMME

In this, the last part of my Somme Diary I describe the last full day of my visit to the Somme. Actually, this day was spent, for the most part, out of the Somme Region and, indeed, out of France, because I drove 80 miles North, to Belgium.

My destination was Ypres, where I had arranged to meet a friend. He lives in Belgium and we don't meet as often as we would like. However, as I was on the same continent, the opportunity was too good to miss.

The journey took me past many other legendary places - Arras, Lens, Lille, Armentieres and then out of France, towards Ploegsteert, Messines, St. Eloi, on to Flanders.

The most striking aspect of the Flanders countryside is its flatness. The land had been largely reclaimed from the sea centuries ago and it is only by the careful maintenance of drainage channels that it is kept dry.

There are very few hills or ridges in Flanders and when war came to the area in 1914, these areas of high ground became very important. Whichever side held them enjoyed the benefits of observation over enemy positions and as the war developed and the opposing armies moved underground when the lines of trenches were formed, any area of high ground became a prize to be fought over.

One long slope with a village on the top - the Passchendaele Ridge - has become a symbol of the squalor of the war. In 1917, the Allies launched an offensive lasting several months aimed at dislodging the Germans from their positions on the top of the ridge and the whole area became a muddy graveyard. Today, at the top of the ridge, stands Tyne Cot Military Cemetery, the biggest British Cemetery in the Ypres area. It contains almost 12,000 graves. This is a staggering number in itself but panels around the wall stand in awe-inspiring memory of a further 34,000 who have no known grave.

At the foot of the Passchendaele Ridge and about four miles away from the village of Passchendaele itself, lies one of the jewels of the Flanders Plains - the moated medieval town of Ypres. In the middle ages, Ypres was one of the most important towns in Europe, and the centre of the Flanders woollen trade. The town was dominated by the Cloth Hall, built in the 13th Century and designed to be at one and the same time, a symbol of the town's prosperity, an administration centre, a market-place and storage depot for the goods produced in the area.

In 1914, Ypres was a busy market-town. All around were treasures of Flemish architecture. Next to the Cloth Hall stood St. Martin's Church, also built in the 13th Century. The word "church" is something of a misnomer. St. Martin's was built as a spiritual symbol of the greatness of the town in which it stood. It was meant to look grand and awe-inspiring. It certainly did, for to the men of 1914-18 it was always known as "The Cathedral".

In 1914, before the trench-lines were established, the British Army found itself defending Ypres. The first shells fell in Ypres in November of that year. The Cloth Hall, with its high bell-tower (an excellent artillery observation-post for the defenders) was one of the first targets and was badly damaged. The German gunners were good, but a crowded medieval town such as Ypres gave them no margin for error. Shells which fell short of the Cloth Hall crashed into the market place, or the surrounding houses. Shells which went "over" exploded against the ancient walls of "the Cathedral". The citizens of Ypres came out of their cellars when the shelling stopped and, looking around them in the dust-laden silence, must have hoped that the war would quickly pass them by. But the "Agony of Ypres" was only beginning. For Ypres, the war had come to stay and over the next four years the very name was to become synonymous with terror, danger and suffering.

The armies took to the ground where they stood to spend the first winter of the war and the trench-lines which developed swung round Ypres in a giant curve, half encircling it from North to South. This bulge became known as the Ypres Salient.

A salient was always a liability to the troops holding it. A salient was costlier to hold in terms of men than a straight stretch of line and the defenders were open to fire from in front and, depending on their position within the salient, from both sides or from behind. Steps had to be taken to guard a salient against capture, too, as there was the risk of attack from both "ends" of the bulge, with a subsequent attempt to "pinch out" the projecting part of the line. The Ypres Salient was considered a key position by both sides. The Germans saw its capture as the first step in a general advance to the Belgian coast. This was not lost on the British, who, throughout the war, were extremely tenacious in their defence of Ypres.

Ypres itself was open to shellfire from any German batteries within range, from the North of the town to the South. The Germans, determined to ensure that their enemies would find no comfort in Ypres, saw its destruction as a legitimate means of conducting the war. By November 1918, when the war came to an end, the town had been literally flattened. (After the war, the decision was taken to rebuild the town as it was before. This work was finished in the late 1960s).

The Menin Gate, Ypres

I had arranged to meet my friend, Chris Sims, at the Menin Gate, the massive Memorial to the Missing on this part of the Western Front. This monument was designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, one of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's principal architects, whose other great contribution to the idea of Remembrance was the tall Cross of Sacrifice which stands in almost every British cemetery. He was the most classically-inspired of the Commission's architects, and his monument represents the features of a victory arch and a mausoleum at the same time. It is also a part of the living Ypres, as one of the main roads to and from Ypres - the Menin Road, passed under it as it enters the town. Every night at 8.00 p.m., policemen stop the traffic and the the Last Post is sounded by member of the Ypres Fire Brigade, on silver bugles presented by the Royal British Legion. On special occasions there may be thousands of spectators, but this ceremony takes place every night of the year, without exception, and there is always someone there.

Chris and I walked from the Menin Gate and into the town which was busy on this Saturday morning - market-day. We sat outside a cafe and began the business of catching up on the latest family news, against a background of some fairly serious drinking. (My favourite beer in the whole world is a Belgian brew called Duvel.) There seemed to be all the time in the world on this sunny morning. The spot in which we sat was right next to the part of the Cloth Hall called the Nieuwerk - the new work - which was the "youngest" part of the original building, being added around the middle of the sixteenth century. It says a lot for the timelessness of pre-war Ypres that a part of the building was still called "new" even though it was almost four hundred years old. So complete and detailed, however, was the rebuilding of Ypres, that this sense of immense age is still felt. At least, I still feel it. I experience a strange sentiment whenever I visit Ypres. As I stepped out of my car into the town square on my first visit, I recognised it at once. It is the feeling one gets when one returns home.

On the wall of my home I have a photograph of the centre of Ypres, shelled flat. Artillery drivers are passing through the square, the Groot Markt, with their limbers, heading out for the Menin Road and the trenches. Just behind them is the first flattened building next to the Cloth Hall. It was in front of this building that Chris and I sat, watching the world go by.

The Cloth Hall has an excellent museum on the upper floors, but we did not plan to visit it this time. After lunch, we set off, under the Menin Gate, away from the town and out towards the Salient. There are probably more Great War sites of interest in this area than anywhere else, but I had come to Ypres to meet Chris and visit just three places - one museum, one battlefield and one cemetery.

HELLFIRE CORNER

This was the first significant road-junction on the Menin Road, after leaving Ypres. In those days, a railway crossed the road at this point, running up past the small clump of trees known as Railway Wood. Every night wagons carrying supplies to the forward positions in the Salient had to cross this point, and it was generally accepted that this was the Most Dangerous Spot on the Face of the Earth in the second half of 1917. Because the road junction and railway crossing were marked on all the maps, the German artillery officers could calculate their ranges most accurately, and drop shells on it to within a metre or two. Direct observation was not necessary. A slide rule was all they needed. To cross Hellfire corner by day, when the German observers on the Passchendaele Ridge could see the junction, was tantamount to suicide. By night, the crossing of Hellfire Corner became a nerve-tightening game of hide-and-seek in the dark. A very old and lamented friend, Frank Holmes, once told me how things were done here, when he was a driver with the Royal Horse Artillery.

From Ypres, a long traffic-jam of wagons headed out towards the Line waited its turn at the junction. Beyond the junction, in trenches at either side of the road, sat traffic-controllers. They had red and green lamps, their lenses shielded against observation from the German side, and their job was to let each wagon across, one at a time. Frank Holmes told me of the long, boring wait to reach the head of the queue. Smoking was prohibited, and each driver had to remain with his pair of horses, sitting astride one and driving the other by means of a short whip, the off-horse being trained to respond to light touches from it. When the wagon, limber, or whatever reached the junction and was next to cross, the driver of the lead pair watched the lights. When the shielded red lights were covered and the green ones exposed, the whole team spurred on their horses and raced headlong into the darkness, aiming for the dark, invisible space between the green lights as fast as they could go, at full gallop. Once over the crossing, the drivers pulled the horses up to a trot, then to a walk and continued on their way. Unless they were hit by a random shell. All night long there were random shells, and there were teams of men stationed nearby to drag away the debris, human, animal and material, and mend the road ready for the next passage. Imagine all this, and then consider the difficulties arising out of the fact that there had to be two-way traffic across this important junction as traffic came back. An endless bottle-neck of snorting horses and tired men. You may say what you like about about your favourite General. The war was won at places like this, where the ordinary man waited and endured and in the forward positions, even more dangerous, where the infantry waited for their supplies, food and ammunition.

For many years, well into the nineteen-eighties, Hellfire Corner remained as it was before the war - a quiet crossroad with the smallest traces of the old railway crossing, if you knew where to look. Today, the site is marked by a large traffic roundabout.

A little further along the Menin Road, one comes to Hooge. Here there is a recently-opened museum owned by M. de Smul. I think it was his father or grandfather who began the collection, which is quite stunning. There are fully equipped, life-sized cavalrymen on display, complete with horses. Every item on display seems to be in excellent condition, the finest example which could be obtained. The museum gives details of everyday life in the war for soldiers from the nations who fought in and around this area. It's a small museum in terms of its buildings, being housed in a former chapel and school, but inside, it's a treasure-house filled, almost literally, from floor to ceiling.

Across the road from the museum is the Hooge Crater Cemetery, which contains the graves of almost 6000 Commonwealth soldiers. The cemetery has a circular centre-piece, representing the crater, one of three in the immediate area, the other two having been turned to peaceful use by converting them into ponds in the grounds of a large house nearby.

From Hooge, we drove slightly South of the Menin Road, to Hill 60.

HILL 60

Over 130 years ago, in the 1860s, the railway had come to Flanders and a line was built from Ypres to the nearby town of Comines. Where the line passed through the Southern edge of the Passchendaele Ridge, near Zillebeke, a cutting was dug to ease the gradient. The spoil from these cuttings was piled up into three low mounds, one on one side of the highest point of the cutting and two on the other. The single mound on the North side of the line was 230 metres long and 190 metres wide. It had become, by 1914, a grassy bank, popular with picnickers and day trippers from Ypres. There must have been a fair amount of clandestine nocturnal activity there too, for the locals called the mound "Cote des Amants" - "Lovers' Knoll". On the British army maps of 1914 it was unnamed but marked simply "HILL". The hill's height above sea-level (in metres) was also given -"60", so it appeared on the maps as "HILL 60" and this became its name to the soldiers of 1914 -18.

The mounds on the other side of the railway cutting were called "The Caterpillar" and "The Dump" by the soldiers, but it was Hill 60 which they feared most. Whichever side was able to place its soldiers on the crest of the "hill" was able to look down far into the rear areas of its enemy. For the Germans, Hill 60 was the perfect place to observe Ypres itself as well as a huge part of the British-held parts of the Salient. For the British, the view over the German lines from Hill 60 was probably less important than the view which their occupancy denied the Germans.

From very early on in the war, the importance of Hill 60 as a point of observation made its capture an important target for both sides. The Germans captured it from the French, who held that part of the line at the time, on December 10th, 1914 and it was decided in the same month to prepare a series of underground mines to blow up the German fortifications on the top.

In February, 1915, the British took over the Hill 60 area from the French and continued the mining work. Five tunnels were excavated, each with a chamber at the end and the five chambers were charged with a total of 58000 pounds of explosive.

Just after seven o'clock on the evening of April 17th, 1915, the mines were fired. Hill 60 heaved for a few moments as the huge underground eruptions forced their way to the surface and then the heart of the hill was flung skyward, taking with it trenches, machine-gun posts, and hundreds of German defenders. Before the last of the debris had fallen, British troops rushed the craters and almost two months of savage back-and-forth fighting began. When the Germans finally dug in as victors, towards the end of May, this small mound was littered with hundreds of bodies. The Germans strengthened their grip on Hill 60 with fortifications which were not to be broken until the Messines Mine attacks of 1917 - the precursor to the Third Battle of Ypres.

Even so, Hill 60 was never quiet. Sudden whirlwind bombardments would open for no apparent reason and end just as mysteriously. There were always casualties. The lucky ones were carried away along the smashed railway-cutting towards an aid post near a small coppice of larches. The aid post is gone now, and so have the trees, but the little cemetery started nearby is still there, right beside the railway line. It was this cemetery we had come to see, to visit the grave of Private Harry Woods.

PRIVATE 3/7283 H. WOODS, 1st Battalion, The Dorsetshire Regiment

Private Woods was killed in a trench at the foot of Hill 60, Trench 39, on 5th July, 1915, by one of those sudden bombardments. On this occasion the Germans were using a heavy trench-mortar. Given good visibility, the soldiers in the trenches could see the huge projectiles coming, as they rolled lazily up into the air and tumbled down towards them. There was a space of a few seconds to decide which way to run before the shell landed, blowing in the trenches and causing devastation over a wide area. At the end of this particular bombardment, seventeen men had been killed. Two men were found to have been blown out of the trench, and across the railway, where they were found about seventy yards away. Other bodies were frightfully mangled. Harry Woods was found in eight pieces.

In spite of all this horror, their comrades gathered up the bodies and took them to the little cemetery in the larches, where they still lie in one row, Harry Woods among them. From the cemetery, Hill 60 seems very close, and one can easily see the present-day fence marking the position of Trench 39.

I learned about Harry from an old soldier's diary and after visiting the site and finding that the name was real and the story true, I tried to find out about him, and about his life before the war. I spent some years doing this, but found out very little. Harry almost disappeared without trace (quite literally) and his earlier life seems to have vanished, too. He seems to have had no next-of-kin, and so his name doesn't appear on any war memorial in the UK, as far as I know. During the course of my research I met and made friends with some very kind people but of all the friends I have made through Harry the first and best is Chris Sims, so it was fitting that we should stand together before Harry's grave - the first time, strangely enough, that we had both visited the grave at the same time.

We drove back to Hill 60 where there is, incidentally a cafe with a home-made museum well worth visiting, to call at a shop there to buy a small supply of Duvel for friends at home. I noticed a new house nearby, whose owners had named it "Trench 39."

Saying Goodbye to Chris, and arranging to meet again in August if possible, I drove back the way I had come, back to the Somme.

I packed away most of my belongings ready for an early start to the journey home next morning and as I finished, Julie and Michael Renshaw invited me into the guest-house for coffee with their guests, who had just finished dinner. We had seen very little of each other during the week, as each of us had our own plans and destinations for each day. We said "Good morning" to each other if we happened to meet, but that was all.

There were two men from Oxfordshire, both called Brian, and Dick from Norfolk. At about 11 p.m. someone suggested a walk to the Newfoundland Memorial Park, and we set off along the moonlit track that was the Old Beaumont Road in 1916.

My visit to the Somme ended in this way, standing in the Trenches of 1st July, 1916, lit by the brilliant light spilling from around the Caribou Memorial. It was a warm night, and we stood talking quietly for a long time, leaning comfortably against the sides of the trench.  We were not cold, or thirsty or hungry. There was nothing to be afraid of.  There was no hurricane bombardment passing overhead. We were not fearful for the morning. My thoughts went to the thousands of others who spent their last night on the Somme in trenches like these.

Copyright © Tom Morgan, July, 1996

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