In a large area of woodland south of the city of Eap, the British Army spent four years of the Great War.

Periods of long static warfare gave way to big battles.

Here stood Plug Street Wood. After quite a few weeks away from Flanders from Belgium, we've returned to the battlefields near

Eap and we're south of Eap this week, near to the village of Plugstert or Plug Street, as

the British Tommy called it, and we're going to have a walk

into the nearby area of woodland that dominates this part of the battlefield, Plugstirt or Plugstreet

Wood. Now, technically speaking in terms of modern boundaries, we're not actually in Flanders.

For most British soldiers who were here during the war, to them this would be Flanders.

It was near to Epe.

It was in Belgium.

And as far as they were concerned, everywhere was Flanders.

But we're actually in Wallonia, which is the French-speaking part of Belgium.

We've just crossed the border.

The border is up in the town of Messines, just up the road, just up the hill, really, from where we are this week. So we're not in the Flemish, strictly speaking, we're not in the Flemish area of Belgium. Now, I mention this because very often when I describe this area or post photographs of it onto social media like Twitter,

I get told off by my very good friends in Wallonia tourism for referring to it as Flanders when it's actually Wallonia.

But it's part of this complex history of Belgium in many ways that this country drawn together with two groups of people,

the Dutch speakers, the Flemish and the French speakers, the Wallonians,

and it was a country drawn together as a consequence of the outcome, really, of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815,

a country that we tied ourselves to by guaranteeing its neutrality with the Treaty

of London of 1839 and which, in a generation later, we would find ourselves being dragged

into a global conflict to defend Scallant Little Belgium. So it plays a very, very heavy

and important role in the history of Britain

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