So, here we are in Ypres, close to many of the famous WW1 battlefields such as the Somme and Passchendaele. Ypres itself was flattened during the war, but has been completely re-built, even the Cathedral. The Cloth Hall now houses a new museum, which to be honest i found slightly antiseptic compared to many of the others we visited. The Numbers involved in the war even today stagger me. What's more astonishig are the individual stories contained in books written by authors such as Lyn Mcdonald. Much of this area is under sea level, and for centuries culverts had been maintained by local farmers to drain the fields. As the war drew on, these were destroyed by enemy shelling and the whole area turned into a quagmire of epic proportions, not helped by the dreadful winter
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