When we work with Military Vehicles every day, it takes a certain kind of enthusiast to work here at Armourgeddon. As you can imagine, we have a lot of knowledge of the workings of a tank and have some idea as to what it would have been like to be based in one of these beasts. What we have no real understanding of is exactly what it would have been like to be on active duty during those war years.

For many years we have talked about visiting some of the battle sites of WWII and seeing what was left behind after the years of death and destruction which were played out over the theatres of war in the fields of Northern France. This year, we decided to make that trip and a group of 11 from Armourgeddon visited Northern France for a 3-night trip to the Valley of the Somme.

One of the members of the group, Toby, had lost a Great Uncle in a battle around The Somme. Toby’s Dad had managed to locate the grave of his Uncle, but none of the family had ever made the trip to visit. Therefore, one of the first things we did was to find the cemetery and the grave to allow Toby to place a wreath in memory of his fallen family member.

We are quite a tough bunch, and banter amongst us is never in short supply. That said, this trip was a string of very moving events and as we passed from one area of battle, to the next, from one cemetery stretching almost as far as the eye could see on to the next, there were moments of sobriety of spirit that moved each of us greatly.

Visiting Verdun was perhaps the most poignant of these. Verdun was the site of a major battle of the First World War. One of the costliest battles in history, Verdun exemplified the policy of a ‘war of attrition’ pursued by both sides, which led to an enormous loss of life. There are many French and German cemeteries throughout the battlefield. The largest is the French National Cemetery and Douaumont ossuary, near Fort Douaumont. Thirteen thousand crosses adorn the field in front of the ossuary, which holds roughly 130,000 unidentified remains brought in from the battlefield. Every year yields more remains, which are often placed inside the ossuary's vaults. It was reported to us during our visit that around 30 tonnes of live ammo are still being dug up every month in The Somme Region.

Among many revered memorials on the battlefield is the "Bayonet Trench", which marks the location where some dozen bayonets lined up in a row were discovered projecting out of the ground after the war; below each rifle was the body of a French soldier. It has been assumed that these belonged to a group of soldiers who had rested their rifles against the parapet of the trench they were occupying when they were killed during a bombardment, and the men were buried where they lay in the trench and the rifles left untouched.

In the region of Verdun, over 60 million shells were fired and over 1 million soldiers were killed. It is here that the German army was challenged to ‘bleed the French army white.’ A chilling directive, which from the number of graves we saw, was not far from achieved.

We held our own service at 11am on Remembrance Day at Dartmoor Cemetery, a location from where many of the troops of the Leicestershire Regiment set off to battle in Horseshoe Woods.

Not expecting to be moved in quite the way we were, this experience has united us with memories and images that will stay with each of us for a lifetime. In moments of quiet reflection, the sheer depth of loss experienced by the entire generation alive in these war years did not escape the thoughts of any of us and from now on hearing the Last Post played at Remembrance Day services will have a profound effect on each of us.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

From Laurence Binyon's poem For the Fallen, written in September 1914