Our Flanders Adventure III: Silent Witnesses

A silent memorial: the black marks on this tree stump (left) at the In Flanders Fields Museum (see my previous blog post) bears witness to the terrific bombing and shelling of Ypres during the Great War. The tree first grew in 1760, the year when George III came to the throne, and it was 235 years old when felled in 1994.
The tree ring marked #4 is 1815, the battle of Waterloo; #7 is 1865, the end of the American Civil War, and #10 marks the start of WW1 in 1914.

Storm clouds and rain over the Flanders fields behind the 'Cross of Sacrifice' at Tyne Cot.

Our next stop on our Belgian journey into the past was a visit to Tyne Cot near Passchendaele. It's the largest CWGC graveyard and memorial in the world, and it was sobering to see how many brave men are remembered there; almost three-quarters of the graves are of unknown soldiers. Like all the war grave sites, it's immaculately kept, and a very peaceful place. It's very difficult to imagine that battle raged here for so many months. 

If your ancestors died in the Great War, you can search the CWGC website for their memorial.

 

The remains of a German pillbox at Tyne Cot.

The remains of a blockhouse or pillbox, now a memorial, at Tyne Cot which was captured by the 3rd Australian Division in 1917.

All photos © Sue Wilkes.

Our Flanders Adventure II

Ieper Cloth Hall today.

Our first stop on our visit to Belgium was an afternoon in Ypres. It's hard to believe that this bustling city was left a smoking ruin by repeated enemy shelling in the battles for the Ypres Salient.

The town's beautiful medieval Cloth Hall and St Martin's Cathedral were both reduced to a pile of rubble, but the city was rebuilt after the war.

The Cloth Hall is now home to the In Flanders Museum, and this is an amazing site to visit, whatever your nationality.

Photo postcard of the Cloth Hall before and during a fire in November 1914.

A display inside the In Flanders Field Museum.

When you enter the museum you are given a 'magic bracelet', which you use to log in to the museum computer, and you type in your surname and place of origin.

Then as you explore the museum, you use your bracelet at various points to access information, images and displays (in your own language) of stories and people caught up in the 'war to end all wars'.

Photo postcard of the ruins of the Cloth Hall in 1919. 

At the end of your visit, the museum computer tells you how many people with that surname died in the war (very interesting), and you can choose to have your museum 'experience' printed off or emailed to you. Then you can have a coffee in the cafe or rummage in the museum bookshop.

All modern photos © Sue Wilkes. All postcards from the author's collection.

Photo postcard of the ruined south portal of the Cathedral, postmarked 1918.

Sacrifice in the Trenches: WWI Ancestors

This blog post is a tribute to two relatives who died in the Great War long before I was born. They made the ultimate sacrifice for King and Country.

Two of my great-uncles, Herbert and Harry (Henry) Dickman from Pendlebury, were killed in France in 1916.

Herbert Dickman (service number 15647) born c.1899, served as a private in the 8th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, and his date of death is given by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website as 7 March 1916, aged twenty-five. He was a POW, and died of his wounds.

His brother Harry Dickman (service number 15080), who was two years younger, was a private in the 16th battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers (2nd Salford Pals); his date of death is given as 30 July 1916, during the battle of the Somme. I believe that the battalion was at Haillicourt around that time. Both soldiers are commemorated on the Loos memorial.

Brothers Harry and Herbert worked at Agecroft Colliery before the Great War, and their names can be seen on its war memorial, along with the names of many others from the pit who died in the ‘war to end all wars’. 
If you have a Lancashire ancestor who served in the armed forces, some sources for military history are included in my new book Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors, which has just been released.
Update May 2014: If you have an ancestor who served in WW1, you may like to visit the Lives of the First World War website.

Images: Agecroft Colliery War Memorial. © Sue Wilkes.
Private Harry Dickman, from an undated, unattributed news cutting in the author’s collection.

Postcards in the author’s collection, date circa 1919:
Lens (near Loos) before and after the war, Boulevard des Ecoles.
Lens before and after the war, Pit No.5.
Ypres Cloth Hall before the Great War.