Flanders and the Somme with GTI Travel

The GTI Travel team of Derek Keogh (Managing Director), Andrew Stanley and Jake Farrelly hosted five travel agents -John O’Brien (Just Split Travel), Carmel Kehoe (Best4Travel), Donagh McCarty (Blackpool Travel), Tim Carey (The Travel Boutique) and Jordan Doyle (Cassidy Travel) together with Declan Mescall (Features Editor Travelbiz) and four other travel writers on a three day FAM Trip of the World War 1 Battlefields of Flanders & The Somme. The Fam trip was accompanied and supported by Lisa Thomas (Visit Flanders Travel Trade Partnerships Manager UK & Ireland).

The guided tour visited many of the important sites associated with the Irish volunteers who fought alongside Commonwealth forces. It is estimated 200,000 to 210,000 Irish men served and the number of Irish soldiers who died during the war range from around 35,000 to nearly 50,000. Reasons for volunteering varied widely, including economic necessity, a sense of patriotism, peer pressure, a belief in fighting for the “freedom of small nations” like Belgium, and a hope it would lead to greater gains for Home Rule for Ireland after the war. For many it was an adventure that was expected to take only a few weeks before the war would end-unfortunately they were badly mistaken as the war lasted over four years from 1914-1918.

Among the sites we visited on our first day were the In-Flanders Field Museum in Ypres, Poelcapelle Cemetery, Talbot House Soldiers Club in Poperinge, Belgium, the Langemark German Cemetery and the Hooge Crater Museum which contains life-size replicas, extensive arms collection and a plethora of uniforms and photographs.

To end off the first day of our FAM Trip, hosted by the Irish group travel specialists GTI Travel, we attended the Last Post and Wreath Laying Ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial, in the town of Ypres (now called Leper), West Flanders. The massive memorial commemorates 54,395 of the over 90,000 commonwealth soldiers who are Missing and have no known grave. There are three other such memorials in the area. The site of the Menin Gate Memorial was chosen because of the hundreds of thousands of men who passed through the location on their way to the Battlefields.

Following its opening in 1927 the citizens of Ypres wanted to express their gratitude to those who had given their lives for Belgium’s freedom. Every evening at 20.00 hrs buglers from the local Last Post Association close the road under the arched memorial to sound the Last Post and lay wreaths. This daily ceremony has taken place uninterrupted every evening since 2nd July 1928, except during the occupation of Ypres by the Germans in World War 11. Carmel Kehoe (Best4Travel) and media representative Frank McNally laid a wreath on behalf of our GTI Travel group.

Day 2 of our GTI Travel FAM trip of the battlefields of Flanders and the Somme was particularly memorable as the itinerary was specially designed by our kind hosts to accommodate three of us on a once off visit to places of personal significance by visiting the graves and memorials of our relatives killed during the war. My cousin, Lance Corporal Mark S Mescal, 1st Battalion Irish Guards was blown up by a bomb on 1st December 1917 aged 23 years. His remains were never recovered to be buried so he is commemorated with his name inscribed on the Cambrai Memorial, Louverval, France. He was from Kilrush, Co Clare. It was very moving for me to visit the place of his death as it was my first time to do so.

At other nearby cemeteries Carmel Kehoe (Best4Travel) and Tim Carey (The Travel Boutique) also visited the graves of their relatives. We are very grateful to GTI Travel for arranging these very special visits.

During the remainder of the day, accompanied by a professional tour guide, our group visited numerous other battlefield sites and memorials including Newfoundland Park which still displays the remnants of the actual war trenches used by the soldiers from both sides. Also on our itinerary was The Island of Ireland Peace Park and Round Tower together with the site where Father Gleeson preformed the Last General Absolution of the Munster Fusiliers.

The final day of our Flanders and The Somme Battlefields FAM Trip hosted by the Irish owned and operated group tour specialist GTI Travel, supported by Visit Flanders had a packed itinerary with visits to a number of the world renowned museums and sites including Passchendaele Museum which has faithfully restored British and German trenches, Tyne Cot Cemetery, Pool of Peace and Willie Redmond’s Grave together with a number of massive bomb craters.

It’s worth remembering that war doesn’t only affect soldiers – civilians are also involuntarily drawn into conflict. During the First World War One a half million Belgians fled their homes, a quarter of the population at the time. More than a hundred years later the landscape is the last remaining evidence of the conflict.

During our tour we saw some of the human experiences of war. In museums we saw hundreds of authentic images objects and displays giving a captivating overview of wartime life. These narratives confront us with the consequences of war and highlight how relevant its themes remain today.

Travelbiz is very grateful to our hosts GTI Travel and Visit Flanders for inviting us on this incredible trip. It is one of many tours operated by GTI Travel to Battlefields such as these but also to other locations such as the Fall of the Berlin Wall, WW2 D-Day Landing Beaches, Secrets of The Third Reich, Warsaw Uprising & Krakow and Band of Brothers battle sites as well as Istanbul & Gallipoli Battlefields.