As I write this small passage for my latest installment of a Corner of a Foreign Field I do say from a wet and soggy Port of Dover, awaiting a ferry to take me to a northern French port whose name is synonyms with British Military History, Dunkirk.
However it is not Dunkirk that I am visiting but a small medieval textile town just across the Belgian border, where 110 years ago this autumn the British Army would be deployed. They would stay guarding this town for the next four years, the town is Ypres or Iper, in its Flemish spelling which is how you will find it on maps today, and to the Tommy's of the Great War who had trouble getting their tongues around the French and Flemish names, Wipers.
Over the course of those four bloody years 1/3rd of the casualties sustained by British and Imperial troops would occur in what was known as The Salient.
Taking a leaf out of my trip to the Somme last September the plan for this trip is to leave the car behind, put on my hiking boats and walk the ground that was so bitterly fought over. To try to understand something of the landscape that these battles were fought over and judging by the weather forecast see this land at its worst for mud.
I will check in with you all when I get home but I will leave you with this one question.
What battlefield have you learnt the most from, from walking its fields.
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