Battlefield tourism is big business, and nowhere more so than in Ypres, site of intense battles in the first World War. Ruadhán Mac Cormaicpays a visit
YOU STAND UNDER the imposing Thiepval memorial on an isolated hill not far from where the old village once stood and what strikes you, above all, is the quality of the silence.
In the summer and autumn of 1916 this ridge in the Ancre Valley dominated the apocalyptic battlefield of the Somme, one of the most appalling chapters in the history of the first World War.
It would have given a view of the dead strung out like wreckage washed up on the hills of the valley and, around them, the scattered detritus of industrial battle: rifles, spent ammunition, shell cases, barbed wire, contorted metal. At the height of battle the scene was filled with the incessant roar of guns and bursting shells - not a noise, one soldier later wrote, but a sort of grotesque symphony.
But today, with the battle and the war it epitomised having faded from living memory, the valley has an almost exaggerated stillness about it. Atop the hill stands the Memorial to the Missing, each of its internal walls inscribed with the names of 73,000 men who were never found. At its centre is a simple sarcophagus from which you see two small cemeteries of French and British soldiers whose names are "known to God", as the British inscription reads.
In the past seven months the last recognised first World War veterans from France, Germany and Austria-Hungary have all passed away. But, as the last of the human connections to the great cataclysm of 1914-8 are being lost, popular interest in its memory has surged, not least in Ireland.
Witness the proliferation of novels set on the battlefields of the Western Front (mostly recently Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way), the reissuing of classic war memoirs in modern livery or the glut of high-grossing films that have mined the experience of the trenches for a newly receptive audience.
At one level the abiding interest is hard to explain. This was a conflict whose causes and direction largely elude most people, fought in a time that now seems very far away, and the memory of which will forever be affected by that which was to follow.
How can images of cavalry making their way to the muddy fields of the Somme remain relevant after a century that brought us the death camps and the thermonuclear cloud?
But the first World War has retained a sense of immediacy due partly to the physical vestiges that are still with us. Hiroshima and Dresden have been rebuilt, the Napoleonic wars are impossibly distant, but we can visit the sites of the first World War and see for ourselves the endless lines of gravestones and the memorials covering fields as calm as they were at the outbreak of war in August 1914.
Tours began almost as soon as the guns fell silent on November 11th, 1918, but the revival of interest in the war has made battlefield tourism big business. Nowhere is it more conspicuous than in Ypres (Ieper in Dutch), a town in Belgian Flanders that was the centre of intense battles between the German and Allied forces and is now a hub for those who visit the sites and museums of Belgium and northern France.
Every evening at 8pm one of the roads into town is closed and a large crowd gathers at Menin Gate, a memorial to 54,896 missing soldiers who died in battles in the area. A hush falls, mobile phones are held aloft and buglers from the local fire brigade sound the last post, a ceremony that has been carried on every day since 1928, interrupted only by the German occupation in the second World War.
The growth in regional tourism here means the price to pay for good facilities and easy transport is having to come across countless English-style pubs and restaurants with names such as Poppy Pizzeria. But the place is redeemed by the excellent In Flanders Fields museum, in a restored cloth hall on the market square. Here, inventive and interactive displays draw visitors on a thematic and scrupulously international journey through the experience of war.
The current temporary exhibition is an impressively detailed account of the dozens of ethnic groups, nationalities and cultures that fought alongside and against each other.
It's possible to take a car, a map and a guidebook and sketch your own itinerary for the region, but for those without the time, the transport or the war wonkery that sees a vivid battle scene where others see a few holes in the ground, travelling with a guide is a good idea.
All along what was the Western Front are reminders of the extent of Irish involvement, not least the thousands of familiar surnames to be found among the gravestones.
When I was there I met three Irishmen who had come to see a relative's resting place; two of them were the first members of their family to do so.
The Ulster Tower, in Thiepval, commemorates the men of the 36th (Ulster) Division, and fascinating tours are available of the adjacent Thiepval Wood, where excavated front-line trenches and shell craters - still surrounded by live ordnance - give some of the best insights into the filth and intimacy in which men fought.
Across the Belgian border, in Messines, is the Island of Ireland Peace Park, where a 55m (100ft) round tower built with stone from Tipperary and Westmeath stands in memory of all those Irishmen who fell or were wounded in the war, its location chosen because of its proximity to the site of the June 1917 battle for Messines Ridge, where Irish Catholics and Protestants fought alongside each other. (The nationalist MP Willie Redmond died of wounds suffered in the attack, and is buried in a solitary grave nearby.)
Unveiled 10 years ago, the park is there to commemorate these men but also to repudiate war and aggression in the modern day, as the "peace pledge" inscribed on a bronze tablet inside the entrance declares.
My three-day trip across the battlefields benefited from a well-informed and flexible guide, but - perhaps inevitably on a short, English-speaking tour - the French or Germans didn't get much of a look-in, giving the narrative an oddly partial feel.
That gap could be filled by adding to the itinerary the excellent Historial de la Grande Guerre, an international museum in Péronne, in northern France, which shows the experience of all major participants in the war and its larger impact on the 20th century.
By also looking at the effects of the war on the civilians who were occupied by an enemy force, or forced to flee their homes, it reminds us that the first World War was about more than the millions of men who lined up in the trenches and just why it is remembered as "total war".
So total, in fact, that after 90 years its physical scars are still with us. In Flanders the absence of trees in what used to be thickly wooded landscape is as telling as the shell craters, the trench lines and the concrete pillboxes.
The remains of men who fought in the war are still unearthed from time to time, and tons of unexploded ammunition are dug up each year when farmers plough the land. She may have fallen silent, but the land still hasn't finished giving up her secrets.
One million-plus casualties in the Battle of the Somme.
3,500 Irishmen are estimated to have died on the Somme.
140,000 or so Irishmen enlisted in the British army during the first World War.
20 million people, both military and civilian, died in the war. A further 21 million were wounded.
32 million artillery shells are estimated to have been fired in the Battle of Verdun.
1.7 million French people, military and civilian, died in the first World War. More than four million more were wounded.
56,000 Russians died in gas attacks.
7.1 million Germans were wounded.
300,000 French houses were destroyed.
4,278 trains were required to mobilise the French army in August 1914.
11 known surviving veterans of the first World War. They are aged between 107 and 112.
Aer Lingus (www.aerlingus. com) flies to Brussels from Dublin. Ryanair (www. ryanair.com) flies to Brussels from Dublin and Shannon.
Where to stay
Hotel Novotel Ieper Centrum Flanders Fields. Sint Jacobsstraat 15, Ypres, Belgium, 00-32-57-429600, www.novotel.com. A reliable three-star hotel just off the old town square and a two-minute walk from Menin Gate.
Where to eat
Hotel Regina. Grote Markt 45, Ypres, Belgium, 00-32-57-218888, www.hotelregina.be. Excellent, if pricey, Flemish dishes in a neogothic-style hotel.
Ter Posterie. Rijelsestraat 57, Ypres, Belgium, 00-32-57-200580 www.terposterie.be. Wholesome Flemish staples and about 200 varieties of Belgian beer.
't Klein Stadhuis. Grote Markt 32, Ypres, Belgium, 00-32-57-215542, www.kleinstadhuis.be. Cosy bistro with a lively bar in a good setting in the centre of town.
See the battlefields
GTI organises all-inclusive trips from Ireland to first and second World War battlefields for individuals, schools, clubs and groups. 01-8434734, www.gti-ireland.com.
In Flanders Fields. Lakenhallen, Grote Markt 34, Ypres, Belgium, 00-32-57- 239220, www.inflandersfields. be. Museum with inventive and interactive displays.
Historial de la Grande Guerre. Château de Péronne, Péronne, France, 00-33-3- 22831418, www.historial.org. Museum showing the experience of all major participants in the war, as well as the impact of the conflict.