Never forget

"WE will remember them."

They stood in their hundreds, still and expectant, on a sunny spring evening in a small town in Belgium.

There were old men with banners, young girls with wreaths, all awaiting the ceremony held there every day at the same time.

This was the Last Post at the Menin Gate, the great memorial bearing the names of more than 50,000 men who died in Flanders in the First World War, and have no known grave.

No more veterans gather to remember their fallen comrades for, after the best part of a century, practically none remain.

Instead this is a kind of national pilgrimage for British people. Nearly half the visitors to Flanders are English-speaking and, of those, 22 per cent have a close relative who was involved in the fighting here.

Why, after nine decades, is this so? It seems this war has become part of the national consciousness, probably due to the sheer scale of the loss, and the sense of tragedy surrounding it.

It is fitting that the British flock to the Ypres area and to the town itself, more properly known as Ieper to try to find answers about this chapter of our history.

British troops were stationed here for most of the war, and three great battles were fought in Ypres.

In the first, in 1914, the remnants of the old regular British Army destroyed an attempted breakthrough by young German recruits. In the second, in 1915, the Germans first used poison gas.

But even that grim debut was surpassed by the third battle, in 1917, when the British attacked the so-called Ypres Salient from the end of July until the beginning of November. Unfortunately that August was unusually wet, and the war-torn, lunar landscape became the infamous sea of mud in which the attack was literally bogged down.

But it was continued, and had some success in September, until it stalled again, and was finally ended in early November. A recent estimate suggests the British and Germans each suffered about a quarter of a million casualties.

"This was a major tragedy in the military history of Europe," said local historian Piet Chielens.

He said Ypres had no strategic value itself. But in 1917, British commander Douglas Haig was under pressure to attack towards the Belgian ports from where U-Boats were threatening Britain with starvation; he needed to draw attention from the mutiny-hit French army; and it was his favourite battleground, close to his Channel supply base.

But coming to Ypres you can see for yourself the landscape, so flat it makes the Vale of York look rugged, with nowhere to hide. And you can see just how few miles these men fought over.

If you go to the huge and hugely moving Tyne Cot Cemetery, you find that it was once the centre of an important German defence system.

You can look back and see the towers of Ieper's massive medieval Cloth Hall, and it isn't difficult to believe the claim that the defenders could clearly see the British forming up, all the way back there.

The battle finally ended at Passchendaele, a little east of Tyne Cot, and just eight miles or so from Ieper.

The war devastated Ieper, leaving the Cloth Hall a shell-blown wreck. But local people restored their town, including the hall and the pretty cobbled square outside, to much the way it was before 1914.

Farmers reclaimed their rich land too, saying that, unlike the French in their much larger country, they could not afford to leave battlefields as uncultivated memorials.

Locals were shocked when they were accused of being "guilty" of trying to pretend the war had not happened.

They took the message to heart. Recent moves to extend a motorway through the battlefield were halted after opposition from Piet and other campaigners.

The Cloth Hall contains the In Flanders Field Museum and presently holds a major exhibition, The Last Witness: The War Landscape Of The Ypres Salient, which runs until November 19.

You can see weapons and munitions, inspect helmets and gas masks, view contemporary photographs taken by both armies, and even trace the lives of ordinary men and women of all countries caught up in the conflict placed within the context of the Ypres landscape.

One innovation, especially useful to those seeking to understand the experiences of relatives who took part in the fighting, is a computer console which allows you to focus on places of particular interest in the Salient.

In the countryside the scars of war are only partly healed. There are still shell holes and huge mine craters, clearly visible from the air when we took a helicopter trip over the Salient, as were the smaller British and Commonwealth war graves which, unlike large ones such as Tyne Cot, are actually within farmland corners of foreign fields which remain "forever England".

As we waited for the flight, a Flemish guide pointed out at the roadside another legacy of the fighting a small shell, found a couple of weeks before, and still awaiting collection.

Later, when visiting the restored "Yorkshire Trench" near the Yser Canal, which was occupied by the 49th West Yorkshire Division in 1915-16, we saw two much bigger shells, left standing in the entrance to a local factory.

Amid this evidence of war, we also learned of a sanctuary where soldiers could find peace and fellowship, for a time.

A few miles west of Ieper, in Poperinge, a chaplain and another officer bought a house and some adjoining buildings to create this haven, called Talbot House, where soldiers could rest, have a chat and a cup of tea, attend religious services and enjoy concerts and films.

Visitors can stay in this remarkably peaceful place, with its rooms, chapel and concert hall kept as they were in the war years.

English is spoken widely in the area. And the Flemish can show their French neighbours a thing or two about food. A highlight of the cuisine we sampled was a meal in the remarkable surroundings of the Pegasus Restaurant at the Hotel Recours in Poperinge.

We were also very well looked after on the journeys to and from Belgium, with P&O North Sea Ferries between Hull and Zeebrugge. If sampling the sea air does not hold the attention for the whole trip, the ferries have a great variety of onboard entertainment, including live music and a casino, plus activities for youngsters.

Fact file Tourism Flanders: www.visitflanders.co.uk Brochure ordering line is 0800 9545 245 Telephone number for further inquiries is 020 7307 7730 P&O Ferries: Central Reservations 08705 20 20 20, or online via www.poferries.com Talbot House: www.talbothouse.be