Introduction

Abstract

The borderland that stretches south of the Ypres salient is a grim and miserable place. Here Mick Mannock fought his war. In Flanders fields conflict and industry have come and gone, leaving a harsh legacy. The airfields of 1917–18 have long since been swallowed up in suburban sprawl – scanning the Michelin map for solitary swathes of green simply confirms a landscape transformed by autoroutes and service stations, industrial and retail estates, art deco villas and breezeblock bungalows. Precious little remains of those vast support areas that mushroomed behind the front line once the winter of 1914 signalled stalemate and entrenchment. The complete absence of the original physical environment tests even the keenest imagination.¹ At least Vimy Ridge, Verdun or the killing fields between Albert and Bapaume preserve some of the original landscape, albeit recontoured, sanitized or simply left for nature to reclaim.