The Menin Road was the old Roman road which ran between Ypres and Menin in Flanders. During the Great War much of the fighting revolved around the area where the road passed and as such it was turned into a virtual moonscape by the close of the war in 1918.

This image from 1920 shows an area which appears to be north of the Menin Road close to Hooge. The houses in the background could well be those on the Menin Road, then being rebuilt and the large crater could be a smaller mine crater, one of many in this sector. Again the photograph gives a vivid insight into the desolation of the Great War battlefields just a few short years after the war.

The village of Ploegsteert – ‘Plugstreet’ to the British troops during the Great War – was at the southern end of the Ypres battlefields and was dominated by a huge expanse of woodland: Plugstreet Wood. The area saw fighting in the First Battle of Ypres in October 1914 but then settled down to static trench warfare and rapidly became known as a ‘nursery sector’ where units fresh from England could acclimatise to the conditions of trench warfare. Many famous people served here in WW1: author Henry Williamson in 1914, war poet Roland Leighton in 1915, and Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden in 1916. The wood was overrun in the Battle of the Lys in April 1918 and finally taken by the Hull Pals in September 1918.

This image – another of the Nightingale stereo-cards – dates from 1920 and is taken on the Ploegsteert-Messines road, just south of Hyde Park Corner. The trees on the left are the western side of the wood and show what state it was in by the end of the war. The buildings ahead are close to the site of Hyde Park Corner (Royal Berks) Cemetery, opposite which today is the Ploegsteert Memorial. The rising ground in the distance is Hill 63, beyond which was Messines and the Messines Ridge. Although not a lunar landscape like the ground immediately around Ypres, the photo once again gives an insight into the desolate state of the battlefields at this time.

I recently purchased some more of the George Nightingale & Co Stereocards, produced in Britain around 1920 and sold in aid of ex-servicemen. They give a real insight into the Aftermath of the Great War and they will feature on the site over the next few weeks.

This image shows Hooge Crater Cemetery around 1920. This cemetery had been started by burial officers in October 1917 and there were less than a hundred graves by the end of the war; however it was chosen as one of the sites to become a main concentration cemetery and burials were moved in from 1919 creating a burial ground with more than 2300 graves.

Given the angle of the photograph, it is taken to the rear of the cemetery looking up the slope of the Menin Road Ridge towards Hooge itself. Among the standard wooden crosses with their metal ‘ticker-tape’ name tabs are numerous individualised graves brought in from other cemetery to form the neat rows visible here. Great War period duckboards form the walk way and the gentlemen in the photo is likely to be an early Imperial War Graves Commission gardener.

The town of Armentières was in Northern France, just short of the Franco-Belgian border. It was reached by British troops in October 1914 and trench lines established east of the town which would hardly move until 1918 – in fact they only moved at the time this German aerial photograph was taken during the Battle of the Lys in April 1918. The Battle of the Lys was one of the final German offensives of the war and launched in Northern France and Flanders on 9th April. Armentières was assaulted with mustard gas and was abandoned, not re-taken until September 1918. By that stage it’s buildings, many of which survive as this photo from Spring 1918 shows, were now in ruins and it became part of the Zone Rouge – the devastated area of France.

Although the scene of heavy fighting, Armentières was much more famous for the Great War song Madamoiselle from Armentières. First recorded in 1915, it was arguably one of the greatest ‘hits’ of the war and a song forever associated with the generation of WW1.

The Hindenburg Line was a system of defences built by the German Army during the winter of 1916/17. They officially called it the Siegfried Stellung (not to be confused with the Siegfriend Line) but the British believed it was called the Hindenburg Stellung – and the name Hindenburg Line adopted.

It was built as a response to the outcome of the Somme and the Germans believed that with a model system of defences with deep and wide trenches to stop tanks, thick belts of wire and bunkers, it would be impregnable. The battles of 1917 and 1918 proved otherwise as the British Army showed it was capable of dealing with

This image shows the Hindenburg Line around the village of Le Tronquoy on the Aisne; as yet untouched by shell fire. A sense of the depth of the trenches can be seen and the thick black marks are the belts of barbed wire, showing what a formidable obstacle they were. This section of the Hindenburg Line did not see serious fighting until the final stage of the war when it was breached in October 1918.

Aerial imagery of the Great War gives a fascinating insight into the battlefields of WW1 and this week on the site we will feature three German images showing different locations on the Western Front. While it is likely they were originally taken for intelligence purposes these images had been transferred to postcard as souvenirs for soldiers at the front. Some of these were later re-sold to British soldiers during the occupation of the Rhineland from 1919.

This image dates from 1915 and shows the city of Ypres from above. By this stage of the war Ypres had seen two major battles – First and Second Ypres – and the buildings come under a terrible hail of shells of every calibre up to 420mm: one account of a commander based at nearby Potijze in early 1915 recalled watching 420mm shells descend on the Cloth Hall and St Martin’s Cathedral and take huge chunks out of these buildings: both part of what pre-war guidebooks called a ‘medieval gem’.

And it is indeed these two buildings that feature in the centre of this image; the Cloth Hall on the right, by this stage a shell, and St Martin’s Cathedral above it still recognisable but also a shell. Modern visitors find it incredible to gaze on these two buildings today and think that not only were they once in this state by they were almost just rubble by the end of the war. Post-war they were rebuilt using the original medieval plans along with the rest of the city, but to give some idea of how long it took – the Cloth Hall was not finished until 1962.

Le Crapouillot – no, this is not a French swear word or a turn of phrase the British Tommy secretly used to describe the French Poilu, but the name given to French Trench Mortar weapons in the Great War. As we saw from the post on Wednesday the French Army was quick to react to the situation of trench warfare and realised that essentially WW1 was a huge siege war – and that in previous siege wars mortars had been used to propel projectiles towards the enemy positions and try and break that siege.

The name Le Crapouillot was one used in the trenches; the mortars were described as ‘little toads’ and a toad is ‘crapaud’ in French. In fact far from being the centre of humour the Crapouillot units of the French army were elite troops with specialist kit. The sort of mortars shown in this illustration from 1915 could fire substantial projectiles hundreds of metres across the battlefield and cave in trenches, dugouts and strong-points. Various examples existed and their role on the battlefield from 1915 was vital giving the French Army a good weapon to counter the German Minenwerfer and other types of trench artillery being used at that time.

The experience of 1914 taught the French Army that to be conspicuous on the battlefield meant certain death; especially on the modern battlefield with massed machine-guns and artillery. In 1914 alone France had lost over 300,000 Poilus killed in action and despite going to war locked in the mentality of the Franco-Prussian the French Army proved remarkably quick to adapt to the war when it went into stalemate during the winter of 1914/15.

The French Army was the first to introduce a steel helmet; a first this was a light steel skull cap worn under the issue Kepi. Then an officer called August-Louis Adrian adapted the design of the Paris fire helmet to produce the M15 Adrain helmet, worn by the men in this illustration, which became the standard French helmet for the rest of the war. The French also discarded the dark blue serge and red trousers and adopted the Horizon Blue uniform, also seen here; it was felt the blue would blend in with the skyline when French soldiers attacked, rather than attempt to develop a uniform colour that would blend in with the shattered landscape.

New uniforms also meant new weapons and stuck in trenches unable to emerge and fire their weapons, both sides turned to using the periscope rifle, also seen in this illustration; in this case enabling the Poilu to fire his 8mm Lebel rifle remotely and safely using the periscope fitted to the frame. It was just the start of adapting old weapons to work in a new way, or re-introducing old weapons from earlier siege wars.

The French Army of 1914 was a truly massive one; the infantry alone numbered 173 separate regiments each made up of 3000-4000 men. It was armed with one of the best field guns in Europe – the 75mm – and it’s soldiers carried a powerful 8mm Lebel rifle. The soldiers – who would quickly become known as the Poilu – were all conscripts who would spend most of their adult life committed to French military service; first as full-time regulars, then reservists and finally as territorials.

While the Poilus weapons were modern, his tactics and uniforms were not. As can be seen in this contemporary image from 1914, showing a French infantry regiment marching to war, the men are wearing uniforms that have changed little since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. The men wear bright red, somewhat conspicuous, trousers and blue serge tunics. They advance en-masse with their officer at the front and the flag flying. While this is obviously an illustration the facts reflect the awful truth; that while France was prepared for war in 1914, it was not prepared for the Great War. By the 31st December 1914, just five months of conflict, France had lost more than 300,000 men killed on the battlefield; nearly a fifth of their loss for the entire war. Troops in column easily visible to an enemy with powerful artillery and a large number of machine-guns stood little chance, something the casualty figures reflect.

But as will be seen on Wednesday, despite or perhaps because of these losses, France was one of the first combatant nations to truly adapt to the conditions of trench warfare.

More than 220,000 British, Commonwealth and French troops were casualties at Gallipoli; Turkish casualties were at least a quarter of a million, although some estimates put the true figure at many more than that. The British buried their dead but many bodies remained unburied at the time of the evacuation in 1916. When British parties returned in 1919 they found several cemeteries desecrated, and in the majority of cases the final resting place of British and Commonwealth dead could not be ascertained.

This image dates from 1919/20 and shows a ‘collection of bones & skulls’ – whether these are British and Commonwealth, French or Turkish, is impossible to say but they show the huge problem facing the burial parties that returned after the war and in this ANZAC week the image offers us a sobering insight into the sacrifice made in Turkey – by all sides – in 1915.