16 May 2022
My son and I are Australians based in different parts of Europe. We went on the 3-day tour starting from Ieper in Belgium on April 29 and ending in Amiens on May 1.
I had a great uncle who was killed at the 3rd battle of Ieper (Passchendaele) and also his brother (my grandfather) who saw action at a number of major battles in the Somme including Villers-Bretonneux and Hamel and managed to survive the war.
The tour surpassed my expectations and our host and guide Søren Hawkes. Soren has been conducting these tours for some time and has historical family links himself to WW1. He has tremendous passion his passion and knowledge and is great company. The tour covered virtually the whole gamut of the western front and in our case was particularly oriented to sites of interest to Australians as well as the more general Commonwealth sites as there is considerable geographical
overlap in many areas.
Many thanks to Soren and I highly recommend him as a guide.
A very significant experience for an Australian to see the sacrifice of his grand father's generation. The scale of the carnage difficult to comprehend and made more relevant by actually seeing and walking some of the terrain