If you're interested, during my basic training we restored some WW1 training trenches at RAF Halton. There are some further down the tree line that are left as they were found, but we excavated the original training lines and rebuilt the entire thing. It's now open for visits I believe.
We did a battlefield tour in Flanders a few years ago and it was incredible. A lot of these fields with the trench hills were originally thick forest, and all that was left after the war was a barren wasteland. A lot of the farmers there have iron plates installed on the bottoms of their tractors because they still turn up live shells on the regular.
Keep in mind how deep these were, towards the end of the war the trenches went back miles, giant killing fields built to give the best ability to slow down an advance while giving you an angle of fire. Brutal.
Rogue86Photog on October 19th, 2019 at 06:30 UTC »
If you're interested, during my basic training we restored some WW1 training trenches at RAF Halton. There are some further down the tree line that are left as they were found, but we excavated the original training lines and rebuilt the entire thing. It's now open for visits I believe.
https://www.forces.net/radio/take-tour-ww1-trenches-raf-halton
Leftofpinky on October 19th, 2019 at 08:28 UTC »
We did a battlefield tour in Flanders a few years ago and it was incredible. A lot of these fields with the trench hills were originally thick forest, and all that was left after the war was a barren wasteland. A lot of the farmers there have iron plates installed on the bottoms of their tractors because they still turn up live shells on the regular.
TheMoogy on October 19th, 2019 at 09:32 UTC »
Keep in mind how deep these were, towards the end of the war the trenches went back miles, giant killing fields built to give the best ability to slow down an advance while giving you an angle of fire. Brutal.