Low life | 1 March 2018

Poperinghe, Bailleul, Wytschaete, Gheluvelt, Ploegsteert, Messines, Zonnebeke, Passchendaele. The other week I grandiosely claimed that I have been reading about the first world war, on and off, all my life. What I ought to have added was ‘with little or no understanding’. Because it wasn’t until a fortnight ago, when I bought a 1916 Ordnance Survey map of Belgium (Hazebrouck 5A), and consulted it while reading Anthony Farrar-Hockley’s account of the First Battle of Ypres, that I began to fix these blood-soaked villages in my mind.

The Second and Third Battles of Ypres were disputed over a few square miles. Stated objectives might be a slight promontory or a smashed village. Advances and retreats were measured in yards. Narrative accounts of these battles can therefore be followed with comparative ease. But First Ypres was a wide-ranging battle of movement by the old British army and its cavalry. Frustrated by the pitiful maps included in General Sir Anthony Heritage Farrar-Hockley’s soldierly account, I searched eBay for a better one. Churchill said of the Ypres salient: ‘A more sacred place for the British race does not exist.’ My 100,000 scale Ordnance Survey map (1916) of our sacred place cost just 20 quid.

Several years ago I visited the salient on a battlefield tour, yet still I failed to grasp the geography. We’d hop off the coach next to a neat cemetery and piously inspect the gravestones and read the simple attributions carved in Eric Gill’s font. Then I would look around at the flat, agricultural landscape and wonder which way they were facing when they were killed. Then we would hop back on the coach and move on to the next one. Hill 60, Essex Farm, Sanctuary Wood, Langemark, Tyne Cot — always the same spick and span rows and the same puzzle.