No flying for Greg today, for unrecorded reasons. But others in the squadron had been busy taking reconnaissance photographs either side of the River Scheldt (Escaut), along which the front line ran. Here are the three, taken today, that Greg brought home after the war. The first is west of the Scheldt, showing Ferme Cazeau/Prade (today, Ferme Hurette), Pont-à-Chin, Tournai. The second and third are east of the river, at Kain, north of Tournai, where German trenches are in evidence.
1. Ferme Cazeau/Prade (Ferme Hurette), Pont-à-Chin, Tournai
The first photograph is behind the British front line, to the west of the River Scheldt. The open land in the top right of the photo is part of the former German aerodrome at Ramegnies-Chin (thanks to Dominique Van den Broucke for noting this). Shell holes pock-mark the airfield.
This vertical aerial view was taken from 4,000 ft at 11:00 am half a mile (800 m) or so southwest of Pont-à-Chin, and about 3 miles (5 km) northwest of Tournai.
The pentagonal building towards the bottom of the centre of the image are the farm buildings of what today is la Ferme Hurette but was then marked on contemporary British Army trench maps as la Ferme Cazeau. However, this does not seem to be what it was called locally:
During WW1, the Hurette farm on rue Hurette belonged to the parents of Mr. Joseph Prade. It was the Prade farm. I interviewed Mr. Joseph Prade in the early 80s for my article (Nord Eclair newspaper) about the Ramegnies-Chin aerodrome. At the time, all the bunkers and refuge cellars still existed. Next to the Prade farm was the rue d’Allain. This rue d’Allain was an umade road that the Germans modified to make a paved road. The aerodrome was very large in area and ran along the woods and the railway line. There was a flight school and a building for aerial photography. The airmen were lodged in two castles and a large villa. Nowadays you can still see a bunker at the edge of the wood.
Dominique Van den Broucke
These days la Ferme Hurette offers group accommodation and reception rooms as part of the non-profit organisation Le Haras de Cazeau.
And in the corresponding view today from Google maps, not much has changed – apart from the welcome absence of shell holes.
On the ground, the view from just off the upper left of the aerial view, looking towards and along the railway line, is this:
This ground photograph was first published in the post for 18 October 1918. This was because, coincidentally, the woods along the railway in the top left of the aerial photos are where Greg reported large fires during a reconnaissance patrol on that day:
2. Rue d’Ormont, Kain, Tournai
Meanwhile, moving 1¼ miles (2 km) due east across the River Scheldt, we come to territory that was probably still in German hands. If it wasn’t, it would have been no-man’s land. And if that, it evidently hadn’t suffered nearly as much as land further west that had the dubious distinction of being between the opposing front lines for much longer. Just a few shell holes are seen in the top half of the image, particularly in the centre, and something of a trench system in the bottom right. This photograph was again taken at 4,000 ft at 11:00 am. It shows the Rue d’Ormont, in Kain, about 5 miles (8 km) NNW of the centre of Tournai.
Today, the area has become more built up, and the railway line has disappeared.
Some of the original buildings remain:
The farm building in the red square is today a house, and looks like this:
And the part of the building in the red circle at the road junction that remains today looks like this:
3. Trenches North of Kain, Tournai
Finally, we move northeast from the Rue d’Ormont, to the western slopes of the Mont St. Aubin. Here, about 3 miles (5 km) north of the centre of Tournai, there was an extensive system of trenches. Greg had captioned this vertical aerial photo “Trenches”, as a particular example of an elaborate defensive system. Shadows cast by the low November sun equally defines the trenches and shell holes quite sharply.
As it turned out, this was one of the trickiest photos to locate on Google maps today. The reason was not because the land had been built over; there still isn’t a building on it today. Rather, it was that the pattern of woodland and open farmland has changed so much in the intervening years. Here’s how it now looks:
What these two aerial views – ancient and modern – don’t give is a sense of the gentle upward slope. The track up the middle of each aerial photograph ascends a shallow valley, overlooked by low slopes on both sides. The following view was taken in June 2018 and looks north from a point below the bottom of the aerial photographs.
Even a non-expert can imagine how eminently defensible the upper slopes of the valley would be. But they weren’t held for long.