Discovering WWI Relics in Flanders Fields

In 1992, a farmer accidentally stumbled upon the remains of a British dugout, a World War I underground shelter.

During the First Battle of Ypres, on 1 November 1914 to be precise, Bavarian troops succeeded in capturing the West Flanders village of Wijtschate and the Croonaert Forest.

The Trench of Death on the Yser Front in Dixmuide is the only preserved Belgian trench complex from the First World War.

During the excavation work for the railway construction between Ypres and Kortrijk in 1854, a sixty-metre-high hill was created.

Excavation works of the Ypres-Comines canal started in 1864. The canal would realize a connection between the Yser River and the Leie River. However, landslides at the ridge in Hollebeke soon threw a spanner in the works.

West Flanders has never known coal mines. Yet you can still find shafts, drilling machines and other traces of miners in the West Flemish underground.

In early May 1915, Canadian doctor and poet John McCrae wrote the world-famous poem 'In Flanders Fields' from a medical aid station a stone's throw from Ypres.

The Battle of the Polygoon Forest took place in Zonnebeke from September 26 to 27, 1917. Australian and New Zealand soldiers eliminated the German bunkers and fortifications one by one.

For army leaders wanting to survey the front line from Messines across Wytschaete to Ypres, the Kemmelberg was the place to be during the First World War. From 1914 to 1917, the British army controlled the strategic hilltop.

Half hidden underground on a hillside along the First World War battlefield in West Flanders, the German army built a reinforced concrete command post bunker.

The Irish Peace Park in Belgium is next to the Battle of Messines, which started on June 7, 1917.

The British army ruled Ploegsteert woods throughout World War I, except from April to September 1918, when the German army held Ploegsteert for six months.

A sculpted soldier guards the Canadian Forces Memorial near the hamlet of St Julian in Langemarck-Poelkapelle since 1922.

Tyne Cot Cemetery is the largest British military cemetery in continental Europe. More than 10,000 soldiers who died at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917 during the First World War were buried in the monumental cemetery in Passchendaele.

Once a country house set in lush parkland just outside Ypres, Bedford House was blown to bits during the First World War. The ruins were then used as a field hospital and brigade headquarters, among other things.

Langemark in Belgium has the dubious honor of being the place where chemical warfare made its debut: on April 22, 1915, German soldiers opened gas bottles from which 180 tons of chlorine gas hissed away. At least a thousand soldiers died in a blind panic.