Battlefield Tours - First World War

Category: Battlefield Tours --- See Latest World War I news here.

UK: Win a trip to the first world war battlefields with IWM/TPYF
Their Past Your Future (TPYF) and the Imperial War Museum are looking for 24 young people (UK) to travel to the World War I battlegrounds in France and Belgium from November 7-12, 2008 as part of "Away To Remember" competition. November 2008 will be the 90th anniversary of the Armistice, the day WWI ended in November 1918. To win a place on this experience the Imperial War Museum are having a competition - the deadline is September 9 2008. They want young people (aged 14-16) to answer 2 questions: What impact did the First World War have on your community? What do you think about remembrance today and in the future? [ 24hourmuseum.org.uk :: 2008-07-20 :: Battlefield Tours ]

Trip retraces the steps of a historic conflict during a visit to Verdun
92 years after the guns fell silent the ground still speaks about the suffering. Brown-green vegetation carpets the misshapen hills and hollows of the Verdun battlefield. Scattered about are white markers, signposts of villages leveled by war never to be rebuilt. The area has become a destination point for tourists who want to experience military history and for those who just wish to never forget. Its museums, forts, statues and cemeteries mark the epic First World War battle. Nearby is the Verdun Memorial Museum, where visitors look at vintage planes, uniforms, weapons, trench art and the early gas masks. [ canadaeast :: 2008-06-16 :: Battle of Verdun 1916 ]

Tour the First World War battlefields of the Western Front
Begin your WWI battlefields tour in Ieper (Ypres). It is a prosperous town - where none of the buildings are over 80 years old. The surviving citizens rebuilt town from the ruins, including the Cloth Hall, which now houses the In Flanders Fields museum - filled with photos, film and interactive media bringing the historical timetable and personal experience of war to life. Next stop is Essex Farm, where Canadian Colonel John McCrae patched up casualties and wrote his famous poem In Flanders Fields. Moss-greened concrete bunkers lay next to the cemetery and memorial pillar. [ travelbite :: 2008-03-21 :: Battlefield Tours ]

Tribute to Pals killed on Somme - Coach trip to the battlefields on The Western Front
WWI historian Steve Williams, co-founder of the Chorley Pals Memorial Appeal, is preparing a coach trip to the Somme battlefield. The 5-day trip is aspiring to raise £55,000 for a bronze statue to the men from Chorley who fought as Y Company of the Accrington Pals' battalion. The tour will visit the main sites on the Somme battlefield, like the Accrington Pals' trenches facing the village of Serre, the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing, and a wreath will be laid at the Chorley Pals plaque. This will be the 4th coach trip that Steve has organised to the battlefields on The Western Front, and it will leave on July 10. [ chorleycitizen :: 2008-02-22 :: Battlefield Tours ]

On a First World War battlefield tour - The Western Front today
The actor starts to recite and our group hears the deadly patter of gunfire. Some of us may even flinch, imagining the impact. Something thrilling is going on in this copse in France. A poem is being reconnected to the moment of its birth. In aerial photos the trenches of the Western Front look like wounds. From one of these ditches, a support-trench near Fricourt, Siegfried Sassoon observed the opening of the Battle of the Somme. "Have just eaten my last orange. I am staring at a sunlit picture of hell," he writes in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. As the World War I recedes into history, it exerts fresh interest, fuelled by the online genealogy hype. [ telegraph :: 2008-01-12 :: Battlefields ]

Govt tells Anzac pilgrims to behave at Gallipoli service
In recent years, huge numbers of Australian and New Zealand backpackers have travelled to Gallipoli to commemorate Anzac Day and that has led to complaints. There were also photographs of young Australians at the Lone Pine cemetery lying on the graves of slain Australian soldiers, sitting on headstones and using the headstones as pillows. --- An "interpretive programme" will be run through the night of April 24, providing an account of the Gallipoli Campaign. "As part of this a new documentary, Kiwis on Gallipoli will be played which combines moving film footage, still images and the words of the New Zealanders who served on the Peninsula." [ nzherald :: 2007-03-28 :: Anzac Day - Gallipoli ]

How To Get To Oz by Bus - and see the WW1 battlefields
Brits wanting to head Down Under can now take a bus... all the way to Australia. The environmentally-friendly 12-week trip will set travellers back a cool £3,750. Highlights include visits to the World War 1 battlefields of Gallipoli in Turkey, Iran's desert city Bam and the Mount Everest base camp. "I wanted to set up a service that not only delivers travellers to their destination, but also lets them experience the amazing world they would otherwise be flying over," said Mark Creasey. [ lse :: 2007-03-05 :: Battlefield Tours ]

The Complete Guide To: Great War Travel
The First World War lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11.11am on 11 November 1918. It claimed about 10 million lives and caused the disintegration of 4 empires: Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German and Ottoman. Almost as soon as the fighting was over, many of the battlefields started getting visitors. Most popular was the Western Front: Many visitors went to Flanders, where hundreds of thousands of soldiers died. The main place of pilgrimage is the Flemish town of Ieper, known as Ypres in French, and Wipers by British troops who fought there. It receives more than 200,000 visitors every year. [ independent :: 2006-11-12 :: Battlefields ]

Somme trenches on show for the first time since the battle
Trenches on the Somme are to be seen by the public for the first time since the battle 90 years ago. Thiepval Wood was the base from which 36 Ulster Division went into action on July 1 1916, the first day of the catastrophic First World War battle. It went up for sale after its French owner died and was bought by the Northern Ireland Somme Association. Archaeologists and volunteers have restored a small part of the network of trenches using original methods and they will be opened for escorted tours. [ mirror :: 2006-07-01 :: Trenches and Fortifications warfare ]

First World War in the News is an edited review of hand-picked World War I 1914-1918 articles.