Earlier this year Rod Ingram joined Leger Holidays on our tour – The Underground War – Tunnellers on the Western Front. This exclusive tour explores the ‘lost labyrinth’ of tunnels that played a huge role during the Battle of the Somme.
Below, Rod shares with us his experiences whilst on this tour…
‘Having followed the work of the La Boisselle Project online for some months now, and experienced eight very interesting and enjoyable WW1 tours with Leger previously, when I saw that Leger was advertising The Underground War: Tunnellers on the Western Front tour I jumped at the opportunity to visit the site and see the tunnels first-hand.
And what a wonderful experience the tour turned out to be!
After the usual trouble-free interchange, we crossed to France and arrived at our hotel in Mouscron where we were greeted by our tour guide Iain McHenry (I was delighted to see Iain as he is a veritable walking encyclopaedia on the First World War). The hotel was an excellent choice; the rooms were very pleasant, the staff were friendly and it was quiet in the evenings even thought it was situated right next to the town square.
After a restful evening and a hearty breakfast we began the first day with a tour of the Salient. Our first port-of-call was Hill 60, a location that I had visited only three weeks earlier on the VCs of the First World War tour, but Iain, our guide, brought a fresh perspective to the location and really brought it to life.
Our journey continued to Zonnebeke to see the Passchendaele Museum and Dugout Experience which I found extremely interesting and – despite my many trips to the Salient – I had never been to this location before. Lunch was taken at Hooge where we were treated to an impromptu performance from a visiting pipe and drum band. The sound of the haunting pipes floating across the battlefields was a very poignant moment and it is a memory that will remain with me for a very long time indeed.
The afternoon was spent on the Messines Ridge (the scene of the ‘big bang’) and for the remainder of the day we criss-crossed the Salient to visit the memorials and graves of the many Tunnellers that had lost their lives there. We ended the day with the Last Post service in Ypres during which two bands (who were coincidentally in town for the Ypres Tattoo on the following day) marched through the town centre to the Menin Gate and played at the service. Even the tour guide commented that it was an exceptionally moving service.
Day three saw us travelling to the Somme to visit the La Boisselle Project. We were greeted at the site by Peter Barton (yes, he does wear that hat all the time!) and his delightful team who gave us an extremely interesting tour of the site and took us in small groups down into the tunnels.
It was marvellous to see first-hand the artefacts that were being discovered and the excellent work that is being done there. After a lunch kindly organised by our tour guide at the Old Blighty Tearoom, we set out across the Somme battlefields to the Lochnagar Crater – a site that is always inspiring each time I visit it – then on to Beaumont-Hamel to see the Hawthorn Crater.
On our travels we visited the scene of the Livens Flame Projector which was graphically described by our tour guide who had worked on the project to recover one of the projectors. The day concluded at Thiepval which brought to a close two very long, but very jam-packed, enjoyable and interesting days.
All-in-all The Underground War tour was an exceptional experience and I have returned home with a wonderful set of photographs from the battlefields and an equally wonderful set of memories that will remain with me forever. I would like to thank everyone at Leger (especially Iain) who made the tour such a fascinating, informative – and at times, extremely moving – experience…and now to start planning next year’s tour!’
If you would like to explore the tunnels with Leger Holidays in 2013 you can book online now, and if you use the code “EBM13” and book before the 30th of November 2012 you can save £20pp!
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