Apocrypha – WW1 Battlefield Tour Sneak Peek

I partnered up with Military Historical Tours to guide a World War One battlefield tour this week, and I figured I’d give you a bit of a peek into it. We are looking at the war chronologically, starting with a day in Belgium to look at the German attack in 1914, visiting the remains of Fort de Loncin in Liege and the Mons cemetery. Next was a day in Ypres for the stagnation into trench warfare in 1915, seeing the Dodengang up on the Yser and then the Bayernwald trenches, Passchendaele Museum, and Kitchener’s Wood. The year of 1916 marks two of the huge Western Front offensives, and we took one day on the Somme (Beaumont-Hamel and Lochnagar Crater) and a day at Verdun (Driant’s command post and tomb, Fort Vaux, Fleury Village, and the Douaumont Ossuary). Today we move to the Chemin des Dames to look at the disastrous French Nivelle Offensives at the Plateau de Californie and the Caverne du Dragons, and tomorrow we will see the arrival of significant American forces and the Hundred Days Offensive the ended the war, through the sites of Les Mares Farm, Belleau Wood, and Blanc Mont. We have a great group of people along, and it’s been a lot of fun, if quite sobering at times. I hope to see you on a future tour!

4 Comments

  1. Sad, so sad. Good to show it to N/A population. Every time I look at war memorials in our towns and cities, I imagine something like this. The Newfoundlanders in particular were loyal and selfless soldiers of the Empire but so were Ontarians and others.

  2. Just a picky historical point,but an important one. The Newfoundlander’s were not in the Canadian army in WW1. They were British subjects and served in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment of the British army. Only after 1949, when Newfoundland joined Canada, was the RNR was part of the Canadian army.

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