In the ground northeast of Eap, a small Belgian village opens the way to a tranquil stream that runs across this flat Flanders landscape.

Here, more than a century ago, was hell on earth. Here we discover the story of the missing,

the story of medics who struggled to recover their wounded

and of officers who nearly disappeared into the mud.

We're on foot in Flanders this week

and we've returned once more to the Eap salient.

The salience is a term we often use to describe that ground around the Belgian city of Eap.

What does it mean? Well a salient is a curve in the line and when you look at the maps of the battles around Epe during those four years of war,

they very often followed the contours of the ground.

And following the second Battle of Epe, when poison gas was used for the first time,

the line settled down for a two-year period of static trench warfare.

And that's when the true salient, that in the line a bulge it probably would have

been called a battle of the bulge in a second world war came round the city of eat with eep at his

epicenter and followed those contours in this curve around the different villages and the ridges

from the pilkhelm ridge in the north down across the frazen villages and the ridges from the Pilk Elm Ridge in the north,

down across the Fraserburg and the Belawada Ridge, over observatory ridge,

and then curved around to the high ground close to Hill 62,

and eventually Hill 60 and the beginning of the Messines Ridge.

There were 12 sectors, defined sectors of this EAPS salient,

during that two-year period of static warfare

from the summer of 1915 after the end of second EAP

to the summer of 1917 in the approach to the third Battle of EAP, third EAP.

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