Welcome to Dispatches, a shorter podcast from the Old Frontline and me, military historian Paul Reed.

Trains, the railways, the war by timetable was an essential part of the history of the Great War

and those tracks and the roots of those trains

weave their way through the landscape of the Western Front in Flanders.

What can we learn by taking the train to Ippre.

Each year, cars and coaches from Britain travel into Flanders at the border near Popperinger.

Beyond the border posts that delineates France from Belgium, the first Great War cemetery you encounter,

as you come into that part of Flanders,

comes quickly into view.

And that's the Beeler Aerodrome Cemetery.

Close to the site of a raw Flying Corps aerodrome where RFC aircraft flew from there over

the battlefield around Eap and the Messines Ridge. It was also a place where men of the 27th New York

and the 30th Tennessee divisions buried their dead in 1918. There was a small American battlefield burial site

there that was removed after the war and those men repatriated or buried in the in Flanders

Field Cemetery at Warragam, something we spoke about in our episode in Doe Boys in Flanders.

But you realise when you see that cemetery, you're back on

the battlefield, you're entering that landscape of the Great War on the Western Front. But all those

people who catch the splash of white stone and a glimpse of the cross of sacrifice from their

speeding vehicle perhaps don't see cross to their right

a long embankment covered with bushes and small trees. It looks unimportant and neglected, and in the blink of an eye,

it's gone. But yet, it is one of the most important features on this part of the

Great War landscape, as that embankment was the root of the old railway line that ran for

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