Reclaiming the Salient: Resurrecting the Great War Battlegrounds of Flanders

Reclaiming the Salient: Resurrecting the Great War Battlegrounds of Flanders Fields


The end of the First World War saw the fields of Flanders contaminated by incalculable amounts of unexploded munitions and thousands of rotting corpses still exposed on the old battlefields. This is the story of how the battlefields of Belgium were, and still are, being cleared of the legacy of the Great War. By the end of the Great War, the destruction of the Ypres Salient was complete. The fabled Flanders Fields were devastated, hardly a building or tree was left standing in the battlefield areas that surrounded the city of Ypres. This once proud and prosperous medieval city and been reduced to rubble by years of German artillery fire. Such was the level of destruction it is said that in 1919, a man on horseback had an unrestricted view from one corner of the city to the other. The rural areas surrounding the city faired no better with the armies firing millions of artillery shells in an area of roughly 100 square miles. The landscape had been transformed from its peace time agricultural scene to one of death and horror. The Ypres Salient was now a lunar surface of deep mud and millions of flooded shell holes whose murky depths concealed the horrors which lay beneath its surface. In November 1918, the war ended, and the warring factions laid down their arms and started to think of a life post war back at home with their families. For the people of Ypres however the war had left an indelible imprint on the fields of Flanders. The detritus and horror of war lay all around to see. The industrial armies of the Great War had retired back from where they had come leaving a scene of complete annihilation behind them.