A desolate crater zone
During World War One nearly 750,000 soldiers from Britain and the Commonwealth were killed in the trenches surrounding the Belgian city of Ypres. Out of the conflict came names that are forever associated with these huge losses: Hill 60, Messines and Passchendaele among them. One place that never appears in the history books is the small Flanders village of Boesinghe (now Boezinge).
'...a desolate crater zone of shell holes, mud, muck and slime...'
Situated north of Ypres along the Yser canal, fighting came to the area during the gas attack of April 1915. French forces, thrown back across the Pilckem Ridge, dug in just short of the canal and village, and here the front lines were stabilised for the next two years. The British arrived in June, and regiment after regiment passed through this sector of the battlefield until the ground was cleared in the opening phase of Third Ypres in July 1917. By this time little remained of Boesinghe, and the ground east of the canal had been turned into a desolate crater zone of shell holes, mud, muck and slime.
Published: 2002-03-01
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