*NEARLY 100 years have passed since the German guns pounded Ypres but time – and Nature – is a great healer.

Hellfire Corner, once a British supply line mercilessly shelled by enemy artillery, is now a modern intersection with a roundabout.

You just wouldn’t know anything had happened here. And Hooge, scene of much bitter fighting, now hosts what is probably one of the ugliest amusement arcades on the continent. But just across the Menin Road lie the twin copses of Shrewsbury Forest and Bodmin Copse, arguably exactly the same as they appeared on October 31, 1914, when my relative was firing his Lee Enfield rifle as fast as he could into the tidal waves of feldgrau intent on capturing Ypres.

*THE pyramid-shaped slag heaps lying around Loos in the valley of Artois are no longer grey but garlanded with the green of Nature’s abundance.

But in September 1915 the British infantry had to struggle around these permanently smouldering obstacles before encountering the withering fire from the German lines.

The battle cost 60,000 British dead and wounded – among the fatalities was the poet Rudyard Kipling’s son John and the late Queen Mother’s brother, Fergus Bowes-Lyon.

Blaming himself for encouraging enlistment, Kipling senior continued to walk the old battlefield searching for his son… until his own death in 1937.

*WORCESTER’S very own Vesta Tilley played a major role in persuading men to join up and was once described as the best recruiting sergeant in the British Army.

Tilley was the queen of the music halls, who along with Tipperary composer Jack Judge provided the soundtrack to the First World War.

Judge lived variously in Tipton and Oldbury, in the Black Country, and then in Worcestershire.

WorcesterLive director Chris Jaeger wrote a fine musical tribute to Tilley – perhaps there will one day be a similar homage paid to Jack Judge.

*I BUY a poppy cross and lay it at the grave of Private JR Whateley of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

He’s buried in Cabaret Rouge British Cemetery, so-called because it stands near the site of a former estaminet that sold drink and food to the Tommies.

Private Whateley was killed on July 19, 1916, undoubtedly during the Somme battles. I inscribe the cross with the legend “From one Warwickshire lad to another.” It’s only a small gesture in the scheme of things, yet still one worth making.