A moving visit to the World War I battlefields of Flanders Fields

We honour the sacrifices of the Australian servicemen who fought and died on the battlefields of Europe during World War I.

Mercedes Maguire

3 min read

April 25, 2024 - 2:17PM

Lifestyle

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The bronze statue rises up above the vast green fields. It’s easy to spot; there’s nothing much around, except the odd farmhouse and a pub doing decent trade in the late afternoon, when we arrive at the Brothers In Arms Memorial Park near the Belgian hamlet of Zonnebeke.

The statue depicts two men, one holding another as he lies dying, and the story behind it tugs strongly at the heart.

In 2006, a road crew laying new gas pipes in the Flanders town unearthed a body identified as a World War I soldier. Then they found another, and another, and another. But the fifth body found was different from the others – it had been wrapped in a shroud-like cover and appeared to have been laid, rather than dumped, in its final resting place.

The statue depicts two Australian soldiers, John “Jack” Hunter who died in the arms of his younger brother, Jim. Picture: Alamy.

All remains were ultimately identified as Australian soldiers who died fighting in the week-long Battle of Polygon Wood that took around 5700 Aussie lives. The wrapped remains were identified as those of John “Jack” Hunter, and when the family back in Nanango, Queensland, were notified, they confirmed Jack died in the arms of his younger brother, Jim, who laid him to rest in a makeshift grave in the fields of Flanders in 1917.

The words of the famous Dire Straits song are engraved into a wall nearby, and for the rest of the day the chorus “You did not desert me; My brothers in arms...” rings in a loop inside my brain.

One of the men present at the discovery of the remains was Johan Vandewalle, the owner of the pub across the road and an amateur archaeologist. He was given the green light, in 2006, to excavate the site and was the first to remove the shroud and look into Jack’s face.

The unnamed graves of Australian diggers.

It’s a story he still gets emotional recounting, over a beer in his pub. A giant mural on the outside wall reads, “In dedication of the Anzacs who fought here during The Battle of Polygon Wood, Sept-Oct 1917”. Inside, it’s like a quirky museum to all things Australian – baseball caps depicting the Cronulla Sharks, The Ghan, VB and other Australian brands line the walls alongside stuffed koalas, Aussie flags and even a framed and signed photograph of Formula One driver, Daniel Ricciardo.

It’s not the only tragic sibling story you will find in the area known as the Ypres Salient. At nearby Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 you can read about Sydney’s Seabrook brothers – Theo, George and William – who fought in the Battle of the Menin Road on September 20, 1917. I imagine their mother’s agony when she received the news her three sons had perished.

The museum is also a touching tribute to the region’s battlefields and includes interactive elements. You can smell the odour of mustard gas and corned beef through holes in boxes, try to lift a soldier’s 30kg backpack, and wander reconstructed British and German trenches and an underground bunker.

Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 is a touching tribute to the region’s battlefields. Picture: iStock.

Tyne Cot is the largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the world and it is cold, wet and windy the day we visit – the rows and rows of stark white headstones vivid against the verdant grass, occasionally punctuated with a little Australian flag flapping in the wind.

It’s emotional reading the personal inscriptions on the headstones: “One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,” the headstone of a fallen private, aged 28, reads. “Our hero at rest, a bonzer boy,” heralds another for a 21-year-old soldier. But even more poignant are the ones which say so little: “An Australian soldier of the Great War – known unto God” marks almost 60 per cent of the headstones of unknown Australian soldiers at Tyne Cot Cemetery. Our guide, Jurgen Sinnesael, says they still find remains of World War I soldiers to this day.

Emotional reading in the graveyard of Australian diggers.

While Tyne Cot Cemetery and the Menin Gate – where the names of more than 6000 Australian Diggers with no known grave are inscribed – are popular pit stops for visiting Australians, Jurgen ends our tour with a lesser known site, Hill 60. A memorial stands to the men of the 1st Australian Tunnelling Company who dug tunnels in an attempt to detonate explosives under German trenches, the explosions said to have been heard as far as London. It was dangerous work, as shelling could collapse their tunnels burying them alive.

Today, Hill 60 is a peaceful, park-like open memorial where locals walk their dogs along winding timber paths around the craters created by the explosives. It starts to rain again and we take cover under a tree canopy. It’s cold and wet as the wind blows the rain sideways at us.

We remind ourselves not to complain.

The writer was a guest of Visit Flanders and Singapore Airlines.