Author(s): Lee Ingelbreght

Military

-Commemorates the centennial anniversary of the most terrible battles of the First World War -Examines the 'Battlefield of Europe' from a fresh eco-critical perspective -Contains reports from eyewitnesses, and dozens of images of the landscape before, during, and after the war In 1914 the area around Ypres was a verdant landscape thick with vegetation, formed and transformed both by nature and human intervention. Before the First World War began, the landscape had already been the setting for multiple battles and military maneuvers, and was known as 'the Battlefield of Europe'. In Passchendaele 1917 Lee Ingelbreght approaches the Great War and the Battle of Passchendaele from a unique angle. Why was the Westhoek such a popular place to fight wars, and what traces have all those military conflicts left on this landscape?