Touring World War I Battlefields

Ypres, Verdun, and the Somme

Today students in my summer course on World War I are paying virtual visits to the sites of two months-long battles that raged in northern France for much of 1916: Verdun (February-December) and the Somme (July-November). This after last week visiting the Belgian city of Ieper (Ypres), where three major battles were fought (1914, 1915, 1917).

If you’re a paid subscriber, you can join them by clicking through to see the digital maps with embedded videos and photos that I created for students to explore. Or better yet, go to Belgium/France yourself and take a bicycle tour with my favorite local guide, Carl Ooghe, who taught me most of what I know about WWI commemoration.