Lille was occupied German territory during the Great War of 1914-18. The French Flanders city lies on the Belgian border, today a major metropolitan centre and an exciting destination in itself. For many travellers from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and other nations whose young men went into battle there nearly a hundred years ago, Lille is more than that. It’s a convenient base from which to visit the former battlefields, learn more about what happened in Flanders fields, and pay due respects.
A Day Tour of First World War Sites in Belgium and France
Military gravesites dot the Flanders landscape, their grounds and memorial structures meticulously maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. They are a record of the fallen and a commemoration of the sacrifice made by a generation. A day tour around even a sample of these cemeteries requires planning, and the best way to cover the ground is by using local knowledge. Lille Tourist Office can advise on tours available from the city. If you have an interest in a particular site or wish to tailor your own tour, small and knowledgeable operators such as Fromelles and Flanders Battlefield Tours offer the solution.
Whatever the direction out of Lille, it’s not long before you pass the first small cemeteries, their headstones standing out against the farmland that surrounds them. Here and there are modest breaks in the flat Flanders landscape. These are the ridges that formed the high ground so critical to military strategy, and which overlook the most famous of the Flanders battlegrounds.
National Monuments around Ypres
At Mesen (Messines in French), the New Zealand Monument marks the location of one of the Kiwi forces’ best-known engagements. Looking out from the elevated vantage point you can clearly observe where the Battle for Messines took place, and the devastation wrought in fighting for the ridge. Neighbouring the monument, which also remembers New Zealand missing, is the Island of Ireland Peace Park. This striking memorial garden, centred on its traditional Irish round tower, commemorates all Irishmen, regardless of religious or political persuasion, who fought together as part of the British campaign.
Messines kicked off the Third Battle of Ypres, best known today as Passchendaele. Near the small Belgian village bearing that name lies Tyne Cot Cemetery, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s largest site. Tyne Cot is the last resting place of nearly 12,000 soldiers who died in the brutal campaigns around Ypres.
Some eight kilometres from Tyne Cot is the town of Ypres itself, which resisted German occupation throughout the war. Ypres’ position as a bastion against German advances came at a terrible cost, the town all but destroyed by a succession of attacks from three sides.
Today Ypres (Ieper) is a place of pilgrimage for many with family or a general interest in the town’s wartime history. Its most famous landmark is the Menin Gate Memorial, on which are inscribed the names of more than 50,000 men with no known graves. There at 8.00pm every evening without fail, the traffic is stopped and members of the Ieper community play the Last Post in honour of the fallen. The ceremony has been going since 1928, stopped only for a time during World War Two.
Remembering the Fallen at Fromelles in France
Having visited several World War I sites in Belgian Flanders, there’s still time to travel west of Lille to Fromelles, a place of great significance to Australians in particular. In July 1916 members of the 5th Australian Division were thrown into a futile attack on the German lines. Such was the almost daily carnage of battle in those dark days that after the war Fromelles was not among the better remembered of battlefields. That was until 2008, when the graves of 250 Australian and British soldiers were discovered, right where the Germans had buried them behind their lines.
The original burial site can still be seen, its vegetation markedly different from the surrounding pasture as if in acknowledgement of what lay below for over 90 years. Across the road is the new Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Cemetery, where all those men have been re-interred with a proper burial. Just down the road is the Australian Memorial Park with its iconic ‘Cobbers’ statue, across what was No Man’s Land from the VC Corner Australian Cemetery.
These are samples of the sites of significance, in no way overlooking the many other places that recall the bitter battles of World War One. They are all important, and all accessible on a short Lille stopover in memory of the events of Flanders Fields, 1914-1918.
Brian Cross - Brian is a feelance writer specialising in content for the corporate sector, based in Wellington, New Zealand.
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