TYNE COT CEMETERY

INSPECTING THE GERMAN BLOCKHOUSE WHICH WILL FORM THE BASE OF THE CENTRAL MEMORIAL

YPRES TOWN CEMETERY

THE GRAVE OF H.H. PRINCE MAURICE OF BATTENBERG

YPRES TOWN CEMETERY

MENIN GATE, YPRES

EXAMINING THE PLANS FOR THE MEMORIAL TO THOSE WHO HAVE NO KNOWN GRAVE

VLAMERTINGHE MILITARY CEMETERY

VLAMERTINGHE MILITARY CEMETERY

THE BURGOMASTER’S DAUGHTER PRESENTING A WREATH

“I have been on a solemn pilgrimage in honour
of a peoplewho died for all free men”

II: “It was low and hollow ground where once the cities stood”

The King’s route after leaving Tyne Cot Cemetery brought him to the salient where the British Army held Ypres as the gate guarding the Channel ports. The enemy rush to Paris had failed, and he was seeking a way to victory by a rush to seize the French side of the English Channel as a prelude to the invasion of England. In the first Battle of Ypres the enemy sought with enormous superiority of numbers to overwhelm the British force which barred the Calais Road. To hold Ypres was vital, and yet Ypres was, humanly speaking, indefensible, within a saucer-shaped salient dominated on three sides by the German artillery.

The attack was pushed on with fierce energy from October 21st, 1914, onwards, and was met with heroic stubbornness by a woefully thin khaki line. At one stage there was no question of reliefs. Every man practically in the British Force, including cooks and batmen, was in the front line, and these men held to the trenches day after day, night after