This channel is amazing, the perspectives are great and it is great to see the old maps too. Thanks for uploading!

Total respect your way for video documenting WW1 Battlefields. My personal interest is in the CEF 26th New Brunswick Battalion (2nd Division, 5th Brigade) of which my grandfather was an Original member. I have been fortunate to have located some significant historic documentation ( Battalion history, individual records, War Diaries etc) having not actually visited the battlefields (I am in Canada) , I have found that the battlefield maps included in these records are of such a small scale and complexity, as to be almost unintelligible. Thank you so much for your very well produced and explained documentaries. They add so much to my understanding of those important events. Thanks so much John M. Alan, Whitby, Ontario, Canada.

excellent Steven. The drone gives everyone a different perspective, of what went on here. Thanks for sharing

Wow. This was excellent. I live in a fairly hilly place, and it was eye-opening to realize an area so seemingly flat could be a ridge. Also, if I recall correctly from a book I read many years ago, the evening before the battle General Plummer raised a toast after supper with his staff: "Gentlemen, tomorrow we might not change history, but we will surely change geography."

Great video as always Steven! Please, please, please keep doing them if you can!! Not only are they very informative but they give an excellent view into the topography of the battlefields!

Love these videos. It is sad that so much of this history is disappearing within the modern community.

Thanks - this was very, very informative! With the water table being so high, I can't imagine the conditions they must have endured, when they were tunnelling 20 metres or more underground...

Your videos are amazing, thank you for making them!

Cheers Steve 👍 When you mentioned the football match I got a shiver down my back for some reason.......

Hello Steven, thank you for another WW1 video of substance and the excellently informative use of drone footage. Although I have looked over many a map, it has not been up until I saw your drone footage that it has really sunk in just how small an area in which these major battles were fought. I have always been appalled at the huge numbers of deaths and injuries that occurred on all sides, but now having the ability to visualise the landscape concerned really makes these numbers un fathomable and pathetically unjust to those who fought here and their families.

Thank you so much for posting these amazing videos. Bringing back the History of WWl is incredible. You work is so good I enjoy all of these wonderful videos. I hope to see many more and hope you do more much more of this wonderful work. I can't thank you enough.

Informative and interesting video with fantastic aerial shots from the the drone. Well done.

I think this is the best information channel that exists on the First World War, and I find that you have a very accurate and precise way of speaking English so that even an Italian who, like me, has only studied English at school, can perfectly understand yours explanations.

Fantastic as always Steven. Your going to be going over one of the areas the Caterpillar that my grandfather mentioned in his journal. Looking forward to seeing your next offering. Terry&thepirates

I came across this by chance, but have to thank you. My wifes grandfather died at the birdcage, in December 1914, and we have visited the site. He was 1st Bn, Somerset Light Infantry, and a regular soldier. One of my best friends, who servered with me, became a battlefield tour guide in Ypres, and he took us to his grave, and the battlefield. A very moving experience. Once again, thank you.

Just fantastic. Really well done. I followed along with apple maps placing markers and descriptions at each point for a future visit. Thank you.

Absolutely loving your films.have been to a lot of these locations and will go back again when travel is again possible.

Thanks Steve, looking forward to the next one.

Drone footage with explanations of locations is really informative. Thank you.

I love your videos! I have always been a "Map guy", so seeing the drone footage and the maps together is awesome. I wish you could draw the trench lines on the video footage somehow. That is the only thing that could make this better! Love the history most of all. Great job!

Very interesting, thank you! I really like the extra bits of history thrown in for context. That mine going off all those years later must have been quite the shock!

Just finished watching the brilliant Aussie movie Beneath Hill 60 about how Oliver Woodward and his small Australian regiment helped defeat the Germans with their underground mines. As others have said it's hard to believe that this quiet, unassuming town and lovely countryside was once literally akin to hell on earth. Thank you for the very interesting video Steven. Also, it's quite fittingly and coincidentally ANZAC day here in New Zealand

I can only imagine the detritus of battle that it turned up every time these fields are tilled. The local farmers likely have quite the collection of ordinance.

Excellent review again steven thanks for putting in the hard work!

Absolutely brilliant, great aerial pictures of the British front line, northeast and east of Ploegsteert Wood. The 4th Division sappers established the trenches and wiring in no-mans land in October 1914. Really good to see the area from the air. Thank you for another excellent presentation.

6:40 "oh man, that was helluva lightning strike!" also hard to imagine the football match was actually at the busy part of the western front

watching now love all your videos

Fantastic to see this area .Thank you.

Again, Stephen really exceptional video and commentary. As a side point, I read that in the mine that exploded in 1951, a cow was killed and was therefore classed as a war casualty.

Amazing - always wanted to know more about this place after visiting it once in deep snow - seeing the footballs piled against the Chums Cross and walking into the wood where trenches and an old pill bok still can be seen - it a deadly quiet place where warm breath lingers among the heavily ladened branches - its hard to imagine men lived fought and died here in the bitter cold

I never miss an episode!

Once again, you've given an amazing appreciation of the Western Front and what happened. My grandfather was at Gommecourt and survived. It would be nice if you have a chance to film that area. Thanks Steven.

Very impressive. I thank you for so informative a video. It gives a different and clear perspective to see the distances from a video from above the ground.

Unbelieveable when you look at the landscape now. Everything seems calm and peaceful. If you don't know anything about the war you should probably think it's a normal Belgian farmerlandscape, you should never say that 100 years ago the landscape was completely destroyed, a moonlandscape. Quite impressive how the people have built their houses again and their drainage systems.

Wow ...that was an amazing and thought provoking video .. one of the best for information... the drone is epic.. well done

Excellent presentation. You have to wonder, How, and what effort, was done to return the fields from the devastation that occurred.

I find your videos very interesting. I hope there is plenty more to come.

I have visited the Caterpillar. And lochnagar at the Somme. Will check this out next time i am over. Cheers for posting. Any info as to which area, the Somme area or Ypres area will be the best place to attend for the 100th yr Commemorations in November?

There's a couple of things I really struggle to come to terms with. The distances and expanses of space is one. The other being the mindnumbing idea of trench warfare with thousands of lives lost for a hundred yards of mud. All warfare must be horrendous and terrifying but to know you're climbing out of a trench into a hail of machine gun fire really is too much to ask of any man.

you make excellent videos Sir...Cheers to ya

Hi Steve! very informative and a great aspect of past history. just a question, in the ash crater is that a white memorial stone i can just see ,of some sort ?

very intressting video!! perfect thumps up !!!

They made a movie about this happening, it is called Hill 60.

Extremely compelling viewing and I'm captivated by your knowledge on this subject. Is it reasonable to assume that the mines placed under Le Pelerin (The Birdcage) that were not detonated in the Great War are still there? i.e. TONS of Amatol....

Yet another fantastic video

Thank you ,from vancouver b.c.

if you see the earth coloured smudge at 4-0-clock position at ultimo crater,there was a professional archeological dig maybe 6 -10 years ago, that just by chance I happened upon,,,,got talking to the guys doing the dig, and according to their assessment, that was the location of a Australian lewis gun position they had uncovered,,, probably dug just after the explosion of the mine in the ridge of spoil thrown up, the former German front line being behind them the position gave a excellent field of fire,,,,,, in about the 2-0-clock position, they also uncovered the remains of a German dugout, all properly filled in post dig. hope you find the info interesting

Excellent footage! Greetings from the Netherlands.

Very well made sir.

Very interesting, love all your videos

Are there still explosives buried under the birdcage, like those which went off after the lighting strike?

Great video.

Superb, as usual.

Excuse me but because of the British "axe scent" I cannot understand what is said at 6:57. Can someone help please?

For a second, I thought the date was wrong, but it wasn’t because just by chance, exactly the same amount of mines were detonated in 1916 on July 1st and German casualties of the day were exactly the same as the deaths of the messines mines(10-12k) so I got confused.

Well explained! It’s not Ploegstreet but Ploegsteert btw … ‘steert’ is dialect for ‘tail’

Have you ever heard of hellfarm ? At messines my great grandad john edward holt 50841 got his military medal there saving a officer serviving with the 10th cheshires 105 years ago today nice presentation !

It's amazing how they were able to plant the mines.

Has anyone been inside of these craters now that they've filled with water or is there hazardous chemicals preventing it?

What is seldom mentionned is that the earth and the water here are still polluted with poisonous heavy metals and chemicals like lead, arsenic, zinc and copper, just from regular shells. apart from the "red zone" around Verdun, all these fields were returned to agricultural use just a few months after the end of the war

Silly question but can you fish them ?

how did they not build a soccer pitch on the spot of the Christmas truce soccer match? there should be a yearly tournament held there.

Are these ponds 20-25 meters deep ?

What about the explosives left?

how could they dig when the waterline is so close to the surface?

So any of the mine entrance survive?

Thankyou very much

So good i have to say

Still surprised they filled in all the damage

I wonder if you can fish that crater? 🎣

Summed up in a number

what a story about electric pole built on top of pile of explosives, in which the lightning struck and caused detonation

good movie

Very interesting

Its Flemish region so its called - Mesen pronounced mayzen, Messines is French.

iimmagine fishing and eating the fish out of those ponds.

👌🏻🍻

There are no words what you did for us. From Belgium close to Ypres /Last post🎺🎶