The First World war lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11.11am on 11 November 1918. It claimed an estimated 10 million lives. It caused the disintegration of four empires (Austro-Hungarian, Russian, German and Ottoman), and, of course, it dramatically changed the political and social fabric of Europe. The conflicts between the Allied Powers (Britain and her colonies, France, Russia, Italy and the US) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire) involved nearly nine million British troops, eight-and-a-half million soldiers from France and the same from Austria-Hungary, 11 million Germans, and 12 million Russians. Shortly after the war ended it was dubbed “great” because of its impact. It was also described - with misplaced conviction - as “the war to end all wars”, principally because no one could envisage the scale of such devastation ever being allowed to occur again through warfare.

Almost as soon as the fighting was over, many of the battlefields started attracting visitors. Wives, parents, sisters and brothers went to find graves, seek information about missing relatives or simply to pay their respects. The highest concentration of visitors was to the Western Front, which stretched from the North Sea to the Alps; other fronts - such as the Mesopotamian and Palestinian - were way beyond the resources of those who had lost loved ones. Many visitors went to Flanders in western Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of soldiers died.

HOW DO I REACH THE WESTERN FRONT NOW?

WHAT IS THE MAIN PLACE OF PILGRIMAGE?

CAN I JOIN AN ORGANISED TOUR FROM BRITAIN?

HOW ABOUT THE SOMME?

WHERE ELSE IN FRANCE?

AND THE ITALIAN FRONT?

HOW ABOUT GALLIPOLI?

WHERE CAN I LEARN MORE IN BRITAIN?

WHERE DID THE MAJOR CONFLICTS TAKE PLACE?

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