AN historic battlefield which saw appalling scenes of tragedy comes under the spotlight tomorrow.
And the BBC2 documentary The Forgotten Battlefield will have a particular poignancy for many Huddersfield families.
For it was there, in the mud and trenches of Ypres, that hundreds of local soldiers were killed or injured during the Great War. Soldiers from the 49th West Riding Division (Territorial Force) were among many British units deployed on those killing fields.
And it was the West Yorkshire volunteers from Huddersfield, the Colne Valley, Barnsley and Skipton who were to spend months locked in a bitter conflict with the German forces.
Tomorrow night's documentary focuses on a part of the Ypres battlefield. It follows the painstaking work of a group of amateur archaeologists working on the site of the World War I Western Front.
The site was discovered by accident when workmen using mechanical diggers began to clear the area for development and came across the remains of a bloody and forgotten battlefield.
It was one of the most battle-scarred parts of Flanders and it was where the four battalions of the Dukes lost 352 men, with a further 1,200 wounded.
A nearby military cemetery at Essex Farm houses the graves of many of those Huddersfield soldiers. Martin Maynard, of Clayton West, travelled to the cemetery last year with his father to trace the grave of his grandfather Harold, who died in the conflict.
He said: "It was a very moving experience. While I was there I saw the film crews preparing the documentary and it will be of great interest to many Huddersfield families."
BBC spokesman Hannah Gove said the team behind The Forgotten Battlefield had found trenches, dugouts, discarded artefacts, ammunition and human remains.
* The Forgotten Battlefield, BBC2, 9pm.
