First day - down the tunnel to Loos.

We stayed last night at the Gatwick Central Premier Inn, then were picked up by the tour coach. Guided Battlefield Tours is a company set up by a husband and wife team - Steve and Susan Cocks who are retired teachers. On a beautiful sunny but cold morning we travelled to the Channel Tunnel terminus at Folkestone. This was a new experience for Claire and me, so we were interested to see how the system works. Well, the coach drove onto a carriage joined to other carriages - effectively a giant train. Once under way we were free to leave the coach and walk around inside the carriages, but the scenery was nothing to write home about! We then descended into the depths of the earth beneath the English Channel and in a very short time were emerging into an equally sunny France. We travelled towards the towns of Lens and Loos (pronounced "Luss" rhyming with "Cuss") close to the Belgian border, stopping on the way for lunch. The 1915 Battle of Loos was a conflict leading to many deaths on both sides and the cemetery there has several thousand graves, many of them marked "A Soldier of the Great War known to God" as so many human remains were unidentifiable. It is known as "Dud Corner" as so many shells have been found there which were duds! The walls there are inscribed with over 20000 names of soldiers with no known grave including Jack Kipling of the Irish Guards, the son of Rudyard.




The name of the elder brother of the late Queen Mother, Fergus Bowes-Lyon, an officer in the Black Watch Regiment, is also there. (The names of both men are highlighted here - they don't appear like that on the memorial!) Both were killed in action at the Battle of Loos.




As we had some time to spare before going to our hotel, we called at the largest French military cemetery in the world at Ablain St. Nazaire (Notre Dame de Lorette).


A total of 40,057 casualties are buried here. Almost all of the remains are casualties of the First World War. Burials also include six French graves from the Second World War, an unknown soldier of the French-Indochina war of 1945-1954 and an unknown soldier of the French-North African conflict of 1952-1962. There are burials of the remains of 64 Russians, one Belgian and one Romanian. Unfortunately the cemetery was closed when we got there. We moved on to our very pleasant-looking hotel, the "Mercure" in the town of Arras. We enjoyed a very nice meal there after an interesting talk by Steve Cocks about the Battle of the Somme, during which he showed us a Lee-Enfield rifle and bayonet dating from 1918. You can see an abridged video of the demonstration here:



All in all, it was a very memorable first day!