Great War Trenches: The Trench of Death in Flanders Fields

Hello everyone, my name is Natalie from the Belgian Alternative Channel and in this video we are visiting one of my favorite sites from World War I, Dalton Hong and Dutch in Flemish or the Death Trench on the Ezra Front, near Dick's city mute dixmed. in West Flanders is one of the best preserved

trench

sites in Belgium and the Flanders

fields

have a bit of history on this side so we are in the early days of the Great War, the Germans entered Belgium at the beginning of August 1914 and, as such, involve this neutral. country as well as the British Empire in the war, so after the fall of Antwerp in early October 1914, the Belgian army and its allies managed to withdraw and headed to the far west of Belgium, where they could no longer be outflanked, so they withdrew. behind the Ezra River and were able to stop the Germans there, however the threat and pressure from the Germans increased and they were outmanned, so the local lockmaster in Newport, not far from here, came up with A very cool idea to open the is blocked at high tide a few nights in a row and as such floods the West Bank of the Ezra River, thus creating a vast area of ​​water and mud between the two sides.

It functioned as a mobile war that stopped definitively here and the front line. from the North Sea to just north of iPod, the so-called Azeri front practically did not change for four years, both sides dug in, so where we are now we are near the town of Dick's mute on the banks of the Ezra river, so the further north the opposing

trench

es if they had had this vast flooded area between them here the

trenches

came dangerously close to each other again on the side of the aires which were the Belgian trenches while on the other the German trenches today the German trenches they have disappeared but they were more or less where the bike path where the bike path is now is basically just this small part that we will see today in the golden Hong, the

death

trench that has survived, but the whole area was basically marked by the trenches . to the creators of the inside of the exploded shells etc., it really looked like a moonscape, not a tree, not even some grass here and there, just mud and some big holes and some poppies coming out, while the Germans were on the other side of the river they also had some forts on this side of the river of the active during the battle of the azer the germans had taken the gasoline tanks on the western bank of the azer which served as an excellent observation post, so they could see all the movements in the trenches of their opponents the Belgians because of this threat the Belgians tried to capture them in a series of assaults but the Germans were able to defend the gasoline tanks with some well-positioned machine guns also because Of course, you have to think that the terrain was terrible , it was muddy, you couldn't really run through it, so after a series of bloody skirmishes with German units they decided to shorten their trench and expand it into an unsaleable concrete fortress with an ominous sinister name.

Death Trench along with the Horsemen reading, the Belgians will continue to advance to fight in this area and defended it to the

death

, so here is the best view of the trench area with the two-story trench, the callback of the Horsemen that's where the trench is that the Belgian front line starts and goes all the way there and we'll also see the German position on this side, so here we can see the two-story trench, the horseman reading. I'm going to go in here, so two levels, as I mentioned before, the bottom one. level or the shelters wouldn't fit in there now it's rained a few days so they're kind of flooded they have a layer they have a little bit of water which is actually

great

because that's how it was in those days of Of course, we also have more shelters here, that's because , of course, because the artillery shells were coming and going all the time, so the soldiers had to crouch down when the artillery, when the shells were flying around their heads, let's go up here to the top. level of the two-story range of the Horsemen's reading and we are going to go to this side, first look here, you can see the view that they had from the Horsemen's reading from the upper level which is the beginning of the supplied trench and at the side that on the right side of the zigzag combat trench you have one of those observation firing positions, it is very important to know what the trench is like now, this would be 1960 1917, so this is a very luxurious kind of modern trench from more or less the second part of the war in the first days this would not have been there there would be nothing but it was made of concrete everything was like holes dug in the ground here we can see another machine gun machine gun position they were all there and you can see that this It's

great

, they also have photos here, they were always with at least three people in one of those positions.

From here you can see the Ezra River and this position is perpendicular to the main trench in the fighting trench and the supply trench and that's because they also had to target their own positions, their own trenches in case they were raided by the Germans to be able to shoot. The intruders The invaders continue like this too, but we are going to go down again a few steps to the sign post this is a sign post be careful with your head when you try to get in there we will try and I will try not to hit my head this was a sign post so from here you know that they were in communication with observation posts and they made signals with hand sounds, light signals behind the line behind the two-story trench behind the reading of their Horsemen, the artillery would have been there, so I told them They warned when they should be ready to bomb here, we're back at the Ezra River, so Of course, we're on an observation deck that no one would have been on in those days.

This would have been too dangerous, but you can also see here how close the Germans were, right where the cycle path was on the other side of the river. It's very close we have Dick's Mute City and Ezra Tower, so here we have a great view of the trenches. The first one on the right is the zigzag trench, it is a combat zigzag trench, of course, if a shell were to fall. in the trenches or exploded right above, the damage was limited and of course it would be a straight trench. So if there was only one machine gun at one end, they can shoot everyone and then left to have the supply. trench, this is straight, of course, because you had this narrow-slot, single-track railroad track.

There you can get a better idea of ​​what these real tricks looked like in those days and again you can see that this is this two-story trench, the Horseman reading, but this was only half of it there was another part right in front of me, right next to it. another side of the railroad track, but that one is mostly gone and was not rebuilt. The supplies were brought in this way, we will cross the trench in a zigzag manner. This was an active trench, of course, you can see quite high up. The main dangers were of course snipers across the river, but of course there were also shells and artillery, so there was also the constant risk, especially in Nightline, of raids. soldiers were sent on night patrol in no man's land or were sent to attack the opposing trenches of the Germans, which of course was a very dangerous task to obtain CD.

The connection between the supply trench and the combat trench can also be seen as the sandbags are more intact there, so what they did was mix sand and concrete in their bags and that is why they became so hard and also easier to preserve, so I'm here, we're also looking at the first bunkers here and they're all the same size, it's about two meters by 2 meters by two meters or so. In this photograph you can see that they only had a small step up there, so when they had to shoot they just had to go up there to make the trenches. they were higher up and interestingly enough this photo of the trench periscope, so I told the zigzag, but the zigzag here you can probably see better what the use of that is because it has these holes here, which means that if the German soldiers were By storming or attacking the trench they could hide.

Behind it, place a gun there and stop the intruders and stop the muggers. Now we have these little stones here, of course, but in those days this was mud. The soldiers were constantly with their feet in the water. They got food in the trenches. There were mice there. If there were rats around, they got food, but when the food got here it tasted unpleasant. They tried to minimize potential casualties here, so there were never many soldiers in the trenches, so they generally stuck to the Riders' reading. It is a much safer place and there were only a few soldiers in the trench, so this is the end of the trench, so we will enter the so-called mouse trap, but for that we first have to go through this bunker here.

It may get dark here and we have to watch our head through the main bunker. You can see these holes here. This is, of course, if the mousetrap was classified, they threw grenades or shot at the Germans who had stormed the end or the beginning for them. the trench of death, so there was also a big steel door here, of course, one has disappeared, but it was supposed to be closed if the trenches were being raided, so this is The Mousetrap, it's the end of the Belgian trenches with two observation posts. the right side is the observation post towards the other side of the Ezra River and on the left side we have the observation post that is checking the movements of the Germans who are there, as you will see here, you can see the German bunker. there in the distance, that's how close they were, they could basically greet each other, so the two Belgian soldiers that were here were supposed to make sure and check if the Germans weren't going to come, if the Germans weren't going to invade the country. mousetrap and their trenches, if that happened, then the soldiers had to retreat and they had to retreat to that bunker and then, of course, with access to the trench to the trenches themselves and shoot wads or throw grenades at the soldiers who We were able to enter the Mousetrap through those holes, it happened once and the soldiers retreated but they forgot or didn't close the steel door and you can imagine it is very easy for the Germans to storm and attack the trench, luckily they did.

The reserve troops arrived very quickly and were able to push them back, so the speed was unsuccessful. I'm sorry again. It would be impossible to stay here at that time, of course, because there were German trenches just across the river. Now it is a bike path. A little bit of grass between the two positions, you can see the German bunker there again, but if you look at the photos they have here, there would be more German bunkers, there would have been three there at the same time, only a hat or so left. there more or less where I am now we can see the German bunker, there behind the Belgian lines and there the mouse trap, so you can imagine that it is not very easy for the Germans or the Belgians to rate each other's trenches and there was Ha There have been some successful attacks by the Germans on the Belgian firing ranges, so the Belgians decided to make their camps more fortified and safer and they wanted to create a sort of natural buffer between the two, so what do they do?

It's basically a bit. The same thing they did in 1914, they put an explosive more or less in the place where I am now and they blew a hole in the river lake making sure of course that there is a natural barrier between them of running water, so it is not there was always a lot of water because it was muddy most of the time, so the rates still happened, but they were much less likely to happen. The Germans were, of course, the best at building bunkers. Today we still recognize the Germans as very good engineers. The British generally hid and took refuge in shelters.

The Germans preferred bunkers, as you can see, it's no longer a complete bunker, it's no longer a perfect bunker, but that way we can see how they built their bunkers. There's a lot of concrete now, but you can see. who also used iron steel materials that they found here basically you can see that they found that they use the railroad tracks as fortification reinforcement for their concrete bunkers and then from here of course the window right now the hole is much bigger than expected. which was in those days but you can see here the Belgian trenches there The Mousetrap and at this moment of course the museum there the tower at this moment there is no one around me and it is so peaceful and quiet here that I don't think you can have a landscape that It's more peaceful, a rider that is more peaceful than the one I'm seeing and experiencing now.

It is very difficult to imagine what it was like more than 100 years ago and this was alsothe end of a visit to the Death or Daughter Trench, this was the first video about the Great War or the First World War in Belgium. If you want to see more upcoming videos, please press the Subscribe button.