Last updated at 5:29 PM on 8th November 2011 With not a soul in sight, the peace and tranquility of these rural landscapes comes through loud and clear in a gallery of beautiful images. Yet, nearly 100 years ago, these same serene scenes played host to some of the bloodiest and most violent battles of World War One in which 10 million soldiers died. British photographer Michael St Maur Sheil has spent the last few years taking hauntingly poignant pictures of some of the most notorious battlefields of the Great War as they are today. Scars of battle: Haunting picture of a landscape near Verdun, France still shows the pockmarks and craters made in the Great War almost 100 years ago Historical reality: French soldiers at Verdun in 1916. Photographer Michael St Maur Shiel has taken images of the landscapes today which show signs of old battles Despite the passing of almost a century the French and Belgian countryside still bears the scars of the conflict. Each year on November 11, Remembrance Day recalls the official end of World War I on that date in 1918. The expansive fields of the Somme are littered with thousands of pockmarks and craters caused by shelling and bombing during one of the most destructive battles in military history. A huge bowl sunken into Messines ridge near Ypres is the legacy from the huge explosions of buried British mines that were heard 160 miles away in London in 1917. For miles around the verdant landscape remains split in two halves by the labyrinth of trenches carved into the ground that once formed the Western Front. And, after all this time, local farmers continue to reap the 'iron harvest' on their land - the term given for unearthing pieces of ammunition and shells. Mr Sheil, 65, said: 'The Western Front was 450 miles long and only half-a-mile wide and was a place where all life was extinguished. Eerie relic: British photographer Michael St Maur Shiel's picture of a World War I observation post near Hebuterne, south of Dunkirk Fog of war: Mike St Maur Shiel's picture of a misty winter morning on the Somme - looking towards Lutyens Thiepval memorial in Picardie, France 'Parts of the landscape were totally devoid of earth and it literally went down to the bear rock in places due to the amount of explosives used. 'In the event of a mustard gas attack, every living thing would have been killed in the area around it. 'But over the course of nearly a century, the grass, trees and ploughed fields have grown back and returned to the beautiful place it must have been before 1914. 'Despite its idyllic appearance it is very, very hard to get away from the fact that these were once battlefields. 'A main feature of the landscape is the unnatural shapes and curves from the trenches, shellholes and bunkers.'Some of the grass-covered craters are up to 80 metres in diameter and 20 metres deep. 'If you walk along the trenches you can easily find bits of ammunition and shell cases in the ground. 'You stand at some of these sites and the hairs on the back of your neck do prickle. Setting sons: The beach at Helles, Gallipoli from a photographic collection documenting battlefields of the Great War Historic match: The scene at Cape Helles, Gallipoili on April 25, 1915 where 20,761 British, Australian and Indian soldiers were killed 'If you were killed in battle you were buried where you fell with a rifle stuck in the ground and helmet left on top of it to mark your grave. 'I was fortunate enough to be given access by the French military to the only such grave that has been left like that after all these years. 'There is a wooden cross that was placed there after the war but the soldier's helmet and other belongings are still there today and haven't been moved since his death in 1917.' Mr Sheil, from Oxford, has taken more than 12,000 photos of the Western Front over the last six years for the project to mark the 100th anniversary of the start of the war in 1914. Haunting: The Fort de Douaument - a defense near Verdun, France which saw one million casualties in the Great War - from Mike St Maur Shiel's collection Mists of time: Flooded fields on the Yser plain in Belgian where battle one raged. Michael St Maur Shiel's pictures reveal modern landscapes shaped by war Other locations are of the beaches of Gallipoli and aerial photographs of a pockmarked Beaumont Hamel on the Somme and the US trenches at Blanc Mont in Champagne. Mr Sheil said: 'You can just turn up and these sites and get out of your car and do it. 'One picture took me four days to capture because I was waiting for the rising sun to come through the mist. 'I spent five weeks at some battlefields - The Ypres Salient is 12 miles long.' It is hoped Mr Sheil's images will be displayed at various street gallery exhibitions in both France and Britain in 2014. Shell shock: Lochnagar Crater at the Somme as it is today. The picture is part of a collection of World War One landscapes which still bear the signs of war damage Underground sanctuary: The chapel at Confrecourt in the French lines near Soissons, from a collection by British photographer Michael St Maur ShielAll quiet on the Western Front as haunting images of the Great War's battlefields are revealed before Remembrance Day
Some of the locations he has captured today include a snow-covered Tyne Cot cemetery near Ypres where 12,000 British servicemen are buried, a rainbow over the British trenches at Messines Ridge and frozen shell holes at Ouvrage de Thiaument, the scene of the Battle of Vedrun where 250,000 French and German soldiers were killed.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2058917/Remembrance-Day-2011-Haunting-pictures-Great-Wars-battlefields.html#ixzz1d8t990Ws
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
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