Traces from the past

Traces from the past Discover traces from the past in Hauts-de-France and West Flanders — from bunkers and graveyards to memorials and battlefields.
(2)

Every place has a story waiting to be told. 🌿

🌿 Mont Noir Military Cemetery lies on the southern slope of Mont Noir, or Zwarteberg, near the village of Saint-Jans-Cap...
19/06/2026

🌿 Mont Noir Military Cemetery lies on the southern slope of Mont Noir, or Zwarteberg, near the village of Saint-Jans-Cappel in northern France, close to the Belgian border. The hill takes its name from the dark pine woods that cover its slopes and held an important position during the First World War.

Mont Noir was captured by the British Cavalry Corps on 13 October 1914 and remained in Allied hands throughout the war, including during the Battles of the Lys in 1918. The cemetery was created between April and September 1918, when the fighting in the region left a growing need for burial grounds close to the front. By the end of the war, it contained 91 British and 33 French graves, many of them belonging to men of the 26th Dragoons and the 88th Infantry Regiment.

After the war, the cemetery was enlarged with additional British and French graves from nearby battlefields, as well as graves brought from Wolfhoek British Cemetery in Saint-Jans-Cappel. Today, Mont Noir Military Cemetery contains 149 Commonwealth burials from the First World War, 15 of which remain unidentified, together with 84 French graves. Two unidentified British soldiers from the Second World War are also buried here.

----------------

Mont Noir Military Cemetery
59270 Saint-Jans-Cappel

Follow the page to discover more interesting places from World War history.

🌿 Bruce Bairnsfather was a British officer in the 1st Royal Warwickshire Regiment during the First World War. While serv...
18/06/2026

🌿 Bruce Bairnsfather was a British officer in the 1st Royal Warwickshire Regiment during the First World War. While serving near St Yves, close to Ploegsteert Wood, known to British soldiers as “Plugstreet Wood,” he experienced the daily reality of life at the front: the mud, the cold, the shellfire and the long hours spent in uncomfortable shelters. In these harsh surroundings, he began to sketch the world around him.

One of the places that shaped his drawings was his dugout. It was a dark, cramped and damp shelter, far from any idea of comfort, but it became a place where soldiers tried to rest, share a joke and hold on to a sense of normal life. Bairnsfather observed these moments closely. With dry British humour, he turned the hardship of trench life into cartoons that felt honest, human and instantly recognisable to the men who lived through it.

From this world came his most famous character, “Old Bill”: a weather-beaten soldier with a large walrus moustache. Old Bill was not a traditional hero, but an ordinary front-line soldier who faced the war with stubborn humour and resilience. That is why he became so popular among the troops. His sketches began as drawings made close to the front and shared among fellow soldiers, before reaching a much wider audience through British newspapers and magazines such as The Bystander.

In April 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres, Bairnsfather suffered shell shock and hearing damage and was sent back to England. His time at the front was short, but the cartoons he created there continued to lift morale. They showed trench life with humour, without hiding its discomfort and danger. An original work by Bruce Bairnsfather can be seen in the free museum in Messines.

--------

Captain Bruce Bairnsfather's cottage Memorial
7784 St Yvon

Follow the page to discover more interesting places from World War history.

🌿 Pont-à-Vendin is a village in the Pas-de-Calais, in northern France. It lies close to Lens, in a mining region that be...
17/06/2026

🌿 Pont-à-Vendin is a village in the Pas-de-Calais, in northern France. It lies close to Lens, in a mining region that became part of the front during the First World War. By October 1914, the German advance had been stopped along a line running from Ablain-Saint-Nazaire to Pont-à-Vendin. From the early months of the war, the village was therefore close to the fighting around Lens.

The area was important because of its coal mines. Before the war, the mines around Lens played a major role in French industry. During the German occupation, many mines and industrial sites were damaged, looted or made unusable.

The German Military Cemetery at Pont-à-Vendin was established by German troops in the autumn of 1914. It remained in use until July 1917. Most of the soldiers buried here died during trench warfare on this part of the Western Front. Heavy losses were caused by Allied attacks in 1915, by continued trench warfare in 1916, and especially by the Battle of Arras in the spring of 1917. Of the soldiers buried here, 261 came from a single Bavarian infantry regiment.

After the war, French military authorities added more German soldiers to the cemetery. Their bodies had been found during clearance and reconstruction work in ten nearby communities. Today, the cemetery contains 779 German graves from the First World War. Each soldier has an individual grave, although 41 remain unidentified.

-----------------

Pont-à-Vendin German Military Cemetery
62880 Pont-à-Vendin

Follow the page to discover more interesting places from World War history.

🌿 The Tunnellers Memorial commemorates a part of the First World War that often remained invisible: the war fought benea...
16/06/2026

🌿 The Tunnellers Memorial commemorates a part of the First World War that often remained invisible: the war fought beneath the ground. While the front line above was dominated by trenches and shellfire, tunnellers worked deep below No Man’s Land in narrow, dark galleries. They moved silently towards enemy positions, listened for signs of enemy tunnelling and prepared mines beneath the battlefield. It was slow and dangerous work. A gallery could collapse without warning, or be destroyed by an enemy explosion before the men inside had any chance to escape.

The memorial is closely linked to the story of Sapper William Hackett of the 254th Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers. On 22 June 1916, Hackett and four other men were working in the Shaftesbury Mine near Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée when a German mine, known as the Red Dragon, exploded beneath the British lines. The blast tore through the underground gallery and trapped the five men below ground. Rescue teams then began the difficult task of trying to reach them through the damaged tunnel.

After two days, three of the men were brought out alive. Private Thomas Collins, however, was badly injured and unable to escape through the narrow rescue hole. Hackett had the chance to leave, but refused to abandon him. He stayed with Collins in the tunnel, knowing that the gallery could collapse again at any moment. It did. Hackett and Collins were never recovered, and they still lie beneath the fields of Givenchy today.

For this act of courage and loyalty, William Hackett was awarded the Victoria Cross after his death. What makes Hackett’s story so powerful is not just the bravery itself, but the deeply human choice behind it. In a place of darkness and fear, he chose to stay with another man rather than save himself.

The design of the memorial gives this story a physical presence. The central slate panel has the same dimensions as the Shaftesbury gallery, showing just how cramped the underground space was. The dark slate frame refers to the wooden structure of the gallery, while the circular base has the same diameter as the original Shaftesbury Shaft. The memorial is also carefully orientated so that, when visitors look through its central axis, their gaze is directed towards the site of the original shaft head.

The Tunnellers Memorial stands next to the 55th (West Lancashire) Division Memorial. A separate post about that memorial will follow soon.

--------

The Tunnellers Memorial
62149 Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée

Follow the page to discover more interesting places from World War history.

🌿 While visiting the cemetery in Watten, a village in northern France near Saint-Omer, I came across the graves of two F...
15/06/2026

🌿 While visiting the cemetery in Watten, a village in northern France near Saint-Omer, I came across the graves of two French soldiers. I also found the grave of a Commonwealth soldier: Arthur Gornall.

Gornall served as a Private in the Army Service Corps, with M.T. No. 4 Pontoon Park. The “M.T.” stood for Mechanical Transport, suggesting that his work was connected with transport and logistics behind the front lines.

He died on 6 October 1917, aged 33, and was buried in Watten Churchyard, on the north side of the church. Watten was not occupied during the First World War, but it served as a rear base for the British Army. Sadly, a pension record relating to his widow shows that he died of “self-inflicted wounds”.

He was the husband of Emily Alice Gornall, of 26 Green Street, Chelsea, London.

-------

Watten Churchyard
59143 Watten

Follow the page to discover more interesting places from World War history.

🌿 After the fighting in the La Bassée sector in late 1914, the front gradually stabilised around Illies. The German army...
14/06/2026

🌿 After the fighting in the La Bassée sector in late 1914, the front gradually stabilised around Illies. The German army then began to reinforce its positions in the area. The wet ground, with many natural springs, made it difficult to construct and maintain deep second- and third-line trenches. Concrete therefore became an important part of the German defensive system here.

Between 1915 and 1918, a large number of blockhouses were built in and around Illies. Some sources mention nearly 200 structures within the commune and its surrounding sector. In several cases, existing houses were incorporated into the defences, with concrete added directly over or around them.

At Le Hameau de la Bouchaine, several of these German fortifications are still visible. The most notable structure is the command and observation bunker, recognizable by its raised observation tower. From this position, German troops could observe the surrounding flat landscape and monitor movement near the front line. Inside the structure, traces of brickwork show how the bunker combined existing buildings with military adaptation.

Nearby are several smaller concrete shelters, including six ammunition storage bunkers. These formed part of the support system behind the front, allowing ammunition and equipment to be stored close to the German positions while offering protection against artillery fire.

--------

German Bunkers at Le Hameau de la Bouchaine
59480 Illies

Follow the page to discover more interesting places from World War history.

🌿 Klein Vierstraat British Cemetery is a First World War cemetery near Kemmel, about 2.5 kilometres north-east of the vi...
13/06/2026

🌿 Klein Vierstraat British Cemetery is a First World War cemetery near Kemmel, about 2.5 kilometres north-east of the village church. It lies along Molenstraat, close to the crossroads with Vierstraat, and takes its name from the nearby hamlet where an inn called Kleine Vierstraat once stood.

The cemetery was first used in January 1917, when field ambulances and fighting units began burying soldiers who had died in the area. Many of the original graves belonged to men from artillery units. In April 1918, during the German Spring Offensive, the area around Kemmel and Mont Kemmel became the scene of heavy fighting involving British, Commonwealth and French troops. More soldiers were buried at Klein Vierstraat during this period.

After the Armistice, the cemetery was enlarged with graves brought in from smaller burial sites and isolated battlefield graves around Dikkebus, Loker and Kemmel.

Today, the cemetery contains more than 800 First World War graves. Most of the men buried here came from the United Kingdom, but soldiers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa are also commemorated, together with a member of the Chinese Labour Corps. More than one hundred graves remain unidentified, and two special memorials honour soldiers who are believed to be buried in the cemetery.

-------------------

Klein Vierstraat British Cemetery
8956 Heuvelland

Follow the page to discover more interesting places from World War history.

🌿 Between 26 May and 4 June 1940, the beaches near Dunkirk became the scene of Operation Dynamo, one of the best-known e...
12/06/2026

🌿 Between 26 May and 4 June 1940, the beaches near Dunkirk became the scene of Operation Dynamo, one of the best-known evacuations of the Second World War. As the German army advanced, thousands of Allied soldiers were trapped near the coast. They waited on the beaches, at the harbour and in the shallow water, hoping to be taken across the Channel to Britain. In just nine days, more than 338,000 soldiers were rescued by naval ships, ferries, fishing boats, barges and many smaller civilian vessels.

Today, parts of that history can still be seen along the coastline between Zuydcoote and Bray-Dunes. At low tide, several shipwrecks appear in the sand. Some are connected to Operation Dynamo, while others were already there before the war.

One of these wrecks is the Claude London, originally known as HMS X-37. It was built during the First World War as a flat-bottomed military barge, designed to carry men, horses, equipment or water close to shore. In 1940, the Claude was brought to the beach near Zuydcoote with a simple but vital cargo: drinking water. It was run ashore and later abandoned on the beach. The next day, officers found it lying dry on the sand, still full of water. Trucks and containers were then gathered so the water could be distributed to the soldiers waiting nearby.

The Crested Eagle has one of the most tragic stories on this stretch of coast. Before the war, it had been a Thames paddle steamer, carrying passengers on leisure trips between London and seaside towns. During Operation Dynamo, it was sent across the Channel to help evacuate troops. On 29 May 1940, after taking soldiers on board at Dunkirk, the ship was attacked by German dive-bombers. Bombs hit the vessel and set it on fire. The captain managed to beach the burning ship near Zuydcoote, but more than 300 men are believed to have died, many of them burned, drowned or trapped on board.

Further along the beach is the wreck of the Devonia. Built in 1905 as a passenger steamer, it had already served as a minesweeper during the First World War. At the start of the Second World War, it was requisitioned again and converted for military use. During Operation Dynamo, the Devonia was damaged during an air attack on 30 May 1940, while operating near La Panne and Dunkirk. After the attack, the ship was deliberately beached.

Not every wreck on this coastline is linked to Operation Dynamo. The Vonette had already been lost before the Second World War. This three-masted schooner was sailing from Lisbon to Gravelines with a cargo of salt when it was caught in a storm in December 1929. Its chains broke, its rudder became stuck, and the ship was driven onto the coast between Bray-Dunes and Zuydcoote. The crew survived, but the vessel could not be saved. With each tide, it sank deeper into the sand, while the sea slowly broke it apart.

The Empress was a small Thames steam vessel launched in 1895. It is sometimes associated with Operation Dynamo, and according to accounts of the evacuation, it broke down while being taken toward the French coast. After the towline slipped and its engine was no longer working, the vessel drifted and ran aground. The crew was transferred to another boat and eventually returned to Dover. Today, very little of the Empress is still visible, so it is easy to miss among the other remains on the beach.

Between the Claude London and the Crested Eagle, I also came across another wreck. I could not find any information about its name or history.

-------

Shipwrecks of Operation Dynamo
59123 Zuydcoote

Follow the page to discover more interesting places from World War history.

🌿 Bauvin German Cemetery is a First World War military cemetery in the Nord department of France, between Armentières an...
11/06/2026

🌿 Bauvin German Cemetery is a First World War military cemetery in the Nord department of France, between Armentières and Lens. German troops established it in June 1915, during heavy fighting in this part of the front. The cemetery also includes soldiers who had died earlier in the war and were added later.

As the war continued, more soldiers were buried at Bauvin after the major Allied offensives near Arras and on the Flanders front. Others died during the German offensive of March and April 1918, and in the trench warfare that followed until the area was evacuated in October 1918.

Today, Bauvin German Cemetery is the final resting place of 2,211 German soldiers from the First World War, together with 7 Russian, 2 Austrian, 1 French and 1 Portuguese war dead. All German soldiers are buried in individual graves, although 31 remain unidentified. A memorial stone at the cemetery carries the inscription: “You have fought a good fight — 1916.”

-----------

Bauvin German Cemetery
59221 Bauvin

Follow the page to discover more interesting places from World War history.

Adres

Nieuwkerke

Website

Meldingen

Wees de eerste die het weet en laat ons u een e-mail sturen wanneer Traces from the past nieuws en promoties plaatst. Uw e-mailadres wordt niet voor andere doeleinden gebruikt en u kunt zich op elk gewenst moment afmelden.

Snelkoppelingen

Delen

Type