IT IS hard to comprehend the level of slaughter caused by the First World War.

In just one day on the Somme 20,000 British soldiers were killed.

I took a weekend trip out to the battlefields of Flanders, in Belgium, and it proved an interesting and sobering experience.

After a comfortable over-night ferry trip from Hull to Zebrugge with P&O Ferries, I went out to explore.

Ninety years ago the Ypres salient became infamous, with four huge battles and continual shelling from all sides claiming the lives of half a million men.

Nearly a century on from the conflict, only two Britons who lived through it are still with us.

As the veterans dwindle, who will keep the memories alive?

A new exhibition, "The Last Witness" at the In Flanders Fields Museum, based in Ypres' imposing and impressive Cloth Hall aims to do just that.

One of the first things which strikes you are the photos of the devastation caused by four years of conflict.

By 1918 Ypres lay flattened, the countryside was an unrecognisable quagmire and a generation of men had been lost.

Despite all that, the front line barely moved.

The town is now completely rebuilt, almost as it stood before the war. Shell holes still pockmark the landscape, bodies are dug up every month and a bomb disposal team collects old shells which have been found and left on the side of the road.

The "Last Witness", the land, doesn't forget. The best feature of the museum, and one which adds a welcome personal touch, is the chance to follow the journey of one soldier through the war, via a swipe card system. My soldier, Henry Maertins, a Belgian officer, survived and was honoured. Others perished on their first day.

But the museum is not the only reminder of the war.

The sheer scale of the sacrifice of a generation is made clear with the many immaculate cemeteries dotting the picturesque Flanders countryside.

Tyne Cott alone contains 12,000 identical white Portland stone headstones lined up in neat rows.

Rank and nationality are unimportant, everyone treated as equals and with equal respect. Even the graves of German soldiers are the same.

But even more striking are the 20,000 names carved into stone, with no grave. Their bodies have never been found.

And there are another 50,000 names carved into the Menin Gate, near central Ypres.

They still play the Last Post there every night at 8pm as they have since 1929, with a brief break during the years of German occupation. I don't think anyone could fail to be moved by that.

On a lighter note, in the town of Poperinge, behind the front line, is Talbot House. This is where soldiers went for some fun in their brief periods away from the front line, to see shows and get drunk.

A poignant feature of the place is the message board, a kind of pre-internet soldiers reunited, where those searching for someone could leave messages and hope for news.

Has anyone seen so and so? Yes, he's injured and back in "Blighty", or more likely, simply "dead".