TOM MORGAN

Croonaert Wood

Leaving Ypres via the Lille Gate - the Rijselpoort - you soon reach Shrapnel Corner. This was one of the busiest places as far as troop movements were concerned, because the Lille Gate was a little more sheltered than the Menin Gate, and therefore allowed less direct observation. Shrapnel Corner, like its more notorious neighbour Hellfire Corner a mile or so away, was a crossroad with a railway crossing nearby.  As such it was clearly marked on all the pre-war maps and the Germans, on the higher ground to the West, could shell the spot accurately by day or night. Shrapnel Corner was the main marching route to the trenches in this part of the Salient, the "top" end of the Messines Ridge. Straight ahead, the road runs to Messines and Wijtschaete. The left-hand road at the crossroad took troops to and from the Hill 60 sector with, behind the front lines there, the large areas of dugouts around the edge of Zillebeke Lake and the Railway Cutting. The evidence of large numbers of soldiers living - and dying - in the area is still there today - witness the large number of Commonwealth War Graves Commission signs pointing the way towards the trenches, at the road junction.  there are several cemeteries along this road.  The road to the right leads to Vormezeele, with its three cemeteries sited rather incongruously today, among the village houses on the main street.

The battlefield sites around Ypres are often quite easy to understand, quite graphic even today, but the front-line positions just outside Voormezeele are more difficult to locate and picture, requiring the visitor to use some imagination.  I usually stop my car outside a farmhouse a couple of kilometres outside the village. The British front lines of 1917, at the beginning of the Battle of Messines, crossed the road just here, running across the peaceful and fertile fields to either side. Ahead, a few hundred metres away, is a little wood. The German front-line trenches were here. The road between the two positions rises ever so slightly, no more than a few metres in height. The difference is barely noticeable, yet this insignificant rise in the ground was the Messines Ridge, or at least, part of it.  The significance is apparent when you reach the wood and look back towards the farm marking the position of the British trenches. The slight increase in height gives an enormous advantage in observation.

This little wood was once the site of a Trench Museum but has suffered from being uncared-for for some years..They say that the owner of the wood, when he died, left his family to disagree about the future of the museum, during which the wood reasserted itself and slowly covered the traces of the trenches, craters, dugouts and shafts within. It's a quiet place today, but it was not so in June 1917, when the Battle of Messines began. The Croonaert Wood area has its own claim to fame as one of those cnetres of interest to devotess of the "What If....." school of history.

Across the road from Croonaert Wood is a small British Cemetery - Croonaert Chapel Cemetery.  (There was a little roadside chapel nearby which was destroyed in the war and never rebuilt.) From the German trenches near the cemetery position, a German soldier earned a bravery award by crawling out into No-Man's Land under fire and bringing in a wounded officer. The name of the Soldier was Adolf Hitler. The "What If...." question is, "What if Hitler had been killed in his rescue attempt? Would the Second World war have occurred?"

There are stories that after the fall of France, on his way back from Paris, Hitler revisited the area. The museum, when it was active and open, had pictures of him visiting the preserved trenches, seeing again the old German front line which he had known so well as a young man.

Today, the former Museum entrance-building is more or less still standing, half-collapsed amid the undergrowth. The wood is private property still, of course, and this privacy is carefully protected by neighbours, who are almost certain to make an appearance when they see anyone entering the wood. From the road alongside,. There is good news for Croonaert Wood, however, for the problems of ownership have been resolved and the wood has recently been bought by a gentleman from Kortrijk (Courtrai).  He plans to use the wood for hunting, I believe, so there is no likelihood of the wood being re-opened to visitors on a commercial scale.

But the information I have received says that there have been some conditions attached to the purchase. The new owner must respect the historical significance of the wood, and must manage it properly and preserve the trenches and other signs of its past. There must also be provision for visitors to be allowed access to the wood, although I must emphasise that there is absolutely no obligation on the new owner to grant access to anyone as and when they ask.   There is certainly no right of access and the private status of the wood must be respected. It is possible to walk along the road which runs next to the wood and look inside, though. Already, there has been some thinning-out of trees and the wood now looks much more cared-for.  There are three main visual points. One is the view which the Germans had across the whole British sector here, thanks to that slight advantage in  height. Secondly, there are concrete pill-boxes along the edge of the wood. These are real ones, but they were not originally placed here. They came from other parts of the salient, brought here by the museum-owner years ago when farmers managed to remove them from their land. They are only small pill-boxes, notice. The larger ones, resisting all efforts to move them, are still to be found in their original positions throughout the salient.

Finally, in a clearing visible from the road, there is a carpet of empty shrapnel shell-cases. These used for form an impressive iron wall in the the museum's active period, but the wall was pushed over long ago, and the shell-cases scattered around. This little collection gets smaller as time goes by, due to the ravages of respectful visitors who, wanting to take a souvenir home and lacking the time or inclination to find  or buy their own, are more than happy to steal one of these.

Copyright © Tom Morgan, November, 2002.

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