Page 10 - QARANC Vol 17 No 1 2019

8 QARANC THE GAZETTE
Joint Hospital Group (South) Preceptorship Programme Battlefield Tour Ypres Salient, Belgium, November 2018
As part of our preceptorship programme, personnel from JHG(S) were able to participate in a battlefield tour to Ypres in Belgium. After a surprisingly short drive and trip through the Eurotunnel, our group arrived in Menin town for lunch and what turned out to be our first lesson: that the Menin Gate is in Ypres not Menin. Still, Menin was pretty. From here our group travelled to Sanctuary Wood where we walked through the trenches where British casualties were brought back to and treated. You can still see the many craters where the area had been heavily shelled. We then went through the Sanctuary Wood Museum, which had a huge arsenal of weaponry and clothing, as well as some sombre images of how Ypres looked before and after the devastation caused by the conflict. From here we visited
JHG(South) on parade at the Menin Gate, Ypres
the Canadian Memorial at Hill 62, to commemorate the Canadian effort in holding this area.
That evening our group travelled to the Flanders Fields Museum, which helped put the conflict into context through the personal diaries of soldiers, a display of medical kit utilised and an interactive map depicting the battle rhythm across the Ypres Salient. This museum had many great exhibits and interactive areas, where the full scale was shown of how life was for soldiers as well as medical personnel.
We began the next day with a self-guided tour through the German and Commonwealth war graves, including Hill 60, which was the site for the Western Front, Tyne Cot which is the largest Commonwealth War Grave Cemetery, and Langemark German Cemetery which also records all the places where