The Ardennes Offensive 2008

Update to come soon.

The Somme 2007

After last years trip to Ypres, the other great killing field of recent British was next. The Somme is perhaps more synonymous with the industrial nature of death on the Western Front than Ypres as it's perceived as a shorter timescale by many. "The first day of the Somme" is regularly quoted to exemplify the barbarity and waste of war. While this is undeniably true, (the 1st of July 1916 is still the worst day in the history of the British Army) the battle was much more of a slog than this snapshot shows.

The Battle of the Somme officially took place between the 1st of July 1916 and the 18th of November 1916. Nobody won, land that was gained in the early days was soon lost and this giant stalemate cost over a million men either their life, or a serious wound of one sort or another. Prior to this the area was considered a quiet sector of the front, and whilst not exactly peaceful, was a respite from the unrelenting slog of Ypres to the north and Verdun to the south.

Great technological and tactical leaps took place in those months, along with a change of attitude from the public. The tank made its debut, provoking alarm at first, but the terrain and tactics employed was to prove not best suited for this future battle winner. The use of a 'creeping barrage' greatly increased the usefulness of artillery and while successful here, would lead to victories in the future. The public mood of patriotic fervour would be sorely tested by the huge numbers of casualties in such a small period of time, and it could be argued that the army itself was tested by the conditions. In 1914 and 1915 there were 56 executions for desertion, leaving your post or cowardice. In 1916 there were 83, and 94 in 1917.

The Somme today is a mixture of small villages, small towns, and a smattering of small cities. The vast majority of the land is picturesque rolling farmland. There's much to tempt the holiday maker other than history. Cycling and walking holidays are very popular (but some of the hills would put me off biking it!), but the area is festooned with sights and destinations relating to the calamitous conflict that occurred in 1916.

We were based in the village of Beaucourt-sur-l'Ancre in this ideal gite. It was handily placed, being at the heart of the main areas of battle including Beaumont Hamel, Thiepval and Pozieres. Throughout the week we travelled far and wide, from Arras and Vimy in the north, Villers-Bretonneux in the south and west and Peronne in the south and east the now peaceful land threw up continual tales of death, destruction and woe.

We drove over this year, on an overnight motorway, morning ferry combination. En route we called in at a cemetery near Ypres. Steve had discovered a relative who was buried there since our trip last year and wanted to pay his respects. He found out quite a lot about his life and recorded it here.

We also called in at La Coupole for a very tired visit. Stu, who sleeps at every given opportunity was zombie like, I felt as if I'd had about fifteen pints without the enjoyment associated and the others just kipped. There's only me who never hits the wall...

To see my pictures from the trip, please click here.

Ypres 2006

This outing saw the first trip of the newly expanded (no jokes about our girth please) NMBS as a quintet. We headed for Ypres by Eurostar to Lille, picked up our vehicle for the journey and made base camp at the village of Meteren, on the outskirts of Bailleul. 

It was a beautiful location and a superb converted barn/farmhouse. I'd heartily recommend staying there if there are a few of you who fancy a trip. It's a big place, so maybe not suited to a couple. You can see the gite by clicking here.

The name of Ypres is synonymous with struggle, suffering and loss. Along with the Somme, the battles around Ypres are amongst the most infamous in the history of the British army. There were five major conflicts around the town, spanning the whole four years of the war. The Ypres Salient became a focal point for Allied tenacity and German determination.

We spent a week criss crossing the area of the Salient and beyond into the German lines. The Salient was named after the bulge it formed into the otherwise quite regular trench lines in the area.

The British stood in the way of the German attempts to get to the Channel ports, taking and holding Ypres in 1914 and clung on to it for the duration of the war along with the French, Belgian, Australian, Canadian et al allied armies.

We were just over the Belgian border and made the daily drive through the old border markets, stopping occasionally for extremely competitively priced alcohol and tobacco. Some of it makes you wonder how they make a living. They were practically giving the stuff away. After last years trip and the christening of our weird wooden hut as The Ponderosa, hilarity ensued when we saw a restaurant called Berg-en-Dal (the village containing our gaff) with a crazy golf course next door called The Ponderosa! Well, after I'd stopped gazing in wonder like a City fan seeing the European Cup the sheer coincidence hit home. Berg-en-Dal is a rather salubrious, although very small suburb of Nijmegen. Why a restaurant chose that name is beyond me.

Ypres itself is a beautiful town nowadays. It was proposed that it be left as a dead village as some in Verdun had as a lasting memorial to the dead. This was quickly reversed however, and the rebuilding began. The town was utterly devastated after the almost daily shelling by the Germans. Few walls, never mind building remain erect. The biggest project was the rebuilding of the Cloth Hall. This iconic building was recreated between 1933 and 1967 and once again dominates the surrounding countryside.

If you're ever passing by, even if you have no interest in the military aspect of the town, I'd strongly suggest a trip into Ypres (or Ieper as it is known today). There are many restaurants, bars, cafes and quirky independent shops around the compact town centre. A stroll around the old fortified walls makes for a lovely end to an evening, and seems to be the done thing judging by the numbers of people you encounter doing likewise. To read more on this delightful, and history laden town, click here. I would however recommend you stay for the Last Post Ceremony held every evening at the Menin Gate. You can't fail to be moved.

Over the days we spent there names of towns and villages that shouldn't be known to the wider world sprung up with alarming frequency. Some are only well known to the more ardent historian, but other such as Passchendaele have transcended into common knowledge. The villages have quite tongue twisting names, and the Tommies over from Grays, Nelson, Barry and Dudley struggled with Ploegsteert, Wijtschate, Dikkebus and Ypres and so they became Plug Street, White Sheet, Dickie Bush and Wipers respectively.

The towns behind the lines became sanctuaries for the men on their all-to-brief stints away from the front. Ale houses and ladies of questionable virtue made hay while the bombs fell, except in one corner of one town where a man of god decided to offer an alternative to the debauchery. In 1915 in the town of Poperinghe (or Pop to the Tommies) a Mister Neville Talbot and the Reverend 'Tubby' Clayton set up an establishment called Talbot House that offered spiritual enlightenment, tea and a good hymn to sing. It was named after Gilbert Taylor who was Neville's brother and had been killed at the fighting around Hooge earlier in 1915. The Talbot brothers were the sons of the then Bishop of Winchester. This institution went on to become the internationally renowned TOC-H. Call me old fashioned, but the birds and booze would have won for me.

The countryside is now unspectacular until you notice the plethora of signs pointing to cemeteries with the young men unfortunate enough to be born in the 1880s and 1890s buried in their thousands. Some are small, some are huge, but they all tell the sorry tale of war on a truly industrial scale. The war to end all wars sadly didn't live up to its name, and the initial rush to the war that would be "over by Christmas" soon became a dreadful slog. Nowhere exemplifies this more than Ypres. Next year we would visit the battles around the Somme and all the horrors that contained, but Ypres is much more compact and was such a cauldron of fire and death that its etched into the conscience of Europe.

To see the pictures of our trip, please click here. They're not all doom laden I promise...

Market Garden 2005

2005 saw the surviving original members all present and correct as Lance returned, newly qualified and itching to get back on the trail of the turbulent history of the 20th century. As it was, we’d see a glimpse of just about as far back as mass battles go on this trip, but more of that later. We were primarily concerned with the sights and sites of the abortive attempt dreamt up by Field Marshal Montgomery to bring the war to an early conclusion. With Germany now almost back to its borders, and with pressure on the Eastern front being exerted by the Russian Operation Bagration, the Allies saw a chance for a swift airborne led attack to cross the Rhine and control Germany’s industrial heart.

The plan called for a series of paratroop drops along the rivers Maas, Waal and Lower Rhine and associated canals to capture and hold the crucial bridges to enable an armoured thrust from Leopoldsburg in Belgium to Arnhem in the Dutch province of Gelderland. Between them lay the cities of Eindhoven and Nijmegen, and the major towns of Son, Veghel and Grave. As simple as the plan was, it was fraught with danger and pitfalls.

The Allies believed the German presence to be light, mainly made up of old men, young conscripts and those men recuperating from the battle in Normandy. This proved to be disastrously off the mark, and the presence of the 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions would contribute greatly to the failure of the attack. To make matters worse, intelligence was received regarding the SS divisions presence but was ignored by senior planners eager to bring about a swift end to the war.

Our trip saw last years travel travails replaced by an overnight coach journey for me, and a flight to Cologne for the other three. I had planned to go to Paris for a few days prior to our trip, but finances scuppered the plan, and flights were prohibitively expensive by the time this became apparent.

I arrived in the morning, exhausted after no sleep, and had a day in Cologne before the boys arrived around ten in the evening. I checked into the hotel around two and planned a nice long kip till eight ish. Lance had other ideas and rang me around four to say how great the airport bar was. The treasure.

This trip was the one I’ve looked forward to the most, and is probably my favourite trip for the subject due to my obsessive devotion to A Bridge Too Far as a lad. Ricko and I would watch it over and over, and to this day I never tire of watching it. Added to that, the prospect of visiting my Nana’s first husband’s grave who had died during Operation Varsity.

We would be staying in the village of Berg en Dal in the hills overlooking Nijmegen sandwiched between two nights in Cologne. There would be some long drives given the size of the battlefield, and one day in particular saw us on a particularly long drive that took in the German towns of Munster and Kalkriese via Apeldoorn on a 275 mile round trip.


Our trip was at times hectic, and on other occasions laid back. I think staying in The Ponderosa helped. The laid back cowboy life suits me. Holland is the most densely populated country on the planet, so another major difference from last year was the number of big cities and towns we’d be travelling through.

These cities would be the lynchpins the operation depended on. The Market element of the task was the airborne attacks, while Garden was XXX Corps tank drive along the corridor the airborne troops would create. Eindhoven and surrounding areas was to be taken by the US 101st Airborne division commanded by Major General Maxwell Taylor, Nijmegen was to be taken by the US 82nd Airborne Division commanded by Brigadier General James Gavin and Arnhem by a combined British and Polish 1st Airborne Division commanded by Major General Roy Urquhart and Brigadier General Stanislaw Sosabowski.

Against the Allies the Germans were lead by Feldmarschall Walter Model in overall control on the ground, Generaloberst Kurt Student of the fallschirmjager, Obergruppenfuhrer Willhelm Bittrich commanding the the SS panzer divisions and General von Zangen of the army. The Germans, while expecting an offensive were forming lines along the Albert Canal and the panzer divisions were placed near Arnhem for rest and repairs. Their presence was therefore either unforseen or ignored depending on the source, and the choice of venue for their recuperation would be unfortunate for the men after months of hard fighting in Normandy and Falaise, but fortunate for the German high command as they were elite battle hardened troops.

The American elements took and held their targets and allowed the armoured divisions to progress towards Arnhem, but their initial timescale of taking control of the bridge at Arnhem two days after the start of the battle was proved to be hugely optimistic. The route today is roughly 85 miles along the Belgian/Dutch road system. In 1944, it was a single road thrusting into enemy held territory. Far from the poor opposition forecast (or hoped for), the Germans responded with vigour.

Eindhoven had been pencilled in to be liberated within two to three hours, but as the sun dipped on the first day, the Allies were only at Valkenswaard, south of the city. The tight schedule was already falling behind the reality of an exposed thrust into hostile territory. The Allies flanks were exposed and the Germans could simply loop back and attack at will from the surrounding cover.

Again the battle for Arnhem and the towns along the proposed route of XXX Corps is well told. After expecting to hold Arnhem for two days, the British and Polish paratroopers were eventually withdrawn ten days later, after suffering horrendous casualties, with limited equipment and little food. They had had to take all they needed with them, and being airborne troops had to rely on what they could carry. attempts were made to resupply them from the air, but these were largely ineffectual. For a full account of the operation, you can’t do much better than this site.

Again, to see and read much more of our trip, visit my photo gallery by clicking here.

Normandy 2004

Our first trip in the new era of what had jokingly become known as The North Manchester & District Battlefield Society (shortly abbreviated to the title of this blog) would be spanning the 60th Anniversary of the invasion and promised to be a stellar affair. Heads of state from around the world were converging on the Normandy countryside, and more importantly, veterans were making a pilgrimage to honour fallen friends, foes and comrades. We flew into Paris and after a series of mishaps were unable to hire a car. The quick thinking and French speaking amongst our group, or Gerry to name him, suggested we take the train and hire a car once in Normandy. Our base for the holiday was Saint-Lo, a small town inland from the beaches, but nonetheless hugely affected by the invasion. As we arrived a party of American veterans were over heard saying, “last time I was here, we were bombing the shit out of the place!”. And evident it was too. Saint-Lo isn’t a typically pretty town, but I guess it was before the bombardment going off the few remnants we were to see in the coming days.

Our second (planned) stop was to be the city of Caen. Events would overtake that and we also spent a night in the tiny village of Canisy, about five miles to the southwest of Saint-Lo. Our three bases were poles apart, Caen has a population of over 100,000, Saint-Lo 20,000 and Canisy just over 1000.

The battle for Normandy is very well known, and very well written on; much better than I ever could hope to, but the generalities of it saw over a million men land in a variety of ways throughout the summer months of 1944 to oppose the German forces of Gerd von Runstedt and Erwin Rommel and his much vaunted Atlantic Wall. Commonly referred to as D-Day, the landings were actually called Operation Neptune, and the whole invasion, Operation Overlord. D-Day is a military term for any battle or operation. It is planned for D-Day and H-Hour to avoid intelligence slips or when the precise timings aren’t yet fixed. The first recorded instance of its use was during the St. Mihiel offensive by the US army in WW1. See our Verdun trip for more on this battle.

We saw many sights and had many memorable moments both moving and funny. Our trips tend to be academically inclined during the day, and beer inclined of an evening. A happy mix I’m a very big fan of! To see the pictures of the trip and read much more about where we went and what we saw, click here.

In the summer of 2003 an opportunity for me to join a group of friends on a holiday I'd have given my eye teeth for as a boy. I'd been a voracious consumer of all things Second World War. It sprung from long weekends and evenings watching films such as A Bridge Too Far, Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone and of course The Great Escape.

It was a big family occasion when one of the classics was on. This was pre-video age (I know, I don't look old enough do I) and the time of three tele channels. We would sit there enthralled by the high adventure and edge of the seat tension. My best friend, Ricko was similarly enthused by the same films, and with him having a brother in the army, and a dad who had been in the RAF, it was like a match made in heaven. We made friends at nursery aged three, and are still best of friends to this day.

Four colleagues had been on trips to the battlefields of Scotland, the Somme, the Ardennes, Ypres and Verdun over the previous three years and were planning a trip to Normandy in 2004.

Unfortunately one of the group moved away for another job and vanished into the civil service nether regions, never to be seen again, and another was attending college part time and would be revising and sitting exams throughout the year so had chosen to sit this year out. Bad news for him, but the two 'spare' slots were offered up to myself and Stuart. We both eagerly accepted and began saving and planning for the trip in June.