At a casually clearing station behind the lines, British Tommy's knew that you'd be bandaged,

you'd be dosed up with morphine and hopefully mended.

So when it came to naming three locations where these CCSs would be brought together

for the momentous year of 1917 at Epe, They called them bandage them, dozing em and mending em.

We've returned to Flanders for this episode, but not in the front line.

We're behind the lines, behind the front at Epe, close to the town of Popperinger.

Popperinger or Pops to the troops was a place where from 1915 the British Army used the town

as its main base for its operations in those battles and holding the line around the Belgian city of

Ipe prior to 1915 Popperinger had been part of the French rear echelon where they'd had

their base and that is visible even today with cemeteries and sites connected with the French

story of their battles in Flanders.

But it's a later period largely that we're going to look at in this podcast,

particularly associated with the year 1917 and the third Battle of Ipe.

Because Popperinger by then was not just a town, the civilians were still living in it,

but it was a base, a proper base,

and a camp for the British Army.

And not within the town itself.

In the early years of the war, the British Army had experimented with billeting troops with civilians in Popperinger.

And although there had been many happy occasions in which that had worked there had been some where rough tough tommies had broken things and stamped their dirty

muddy boots all over people's private property so the army increasingly began to build

camps around Popperinger.

First, tented camps.

...