He recalls how his men had marched up to the line on a warm, spring day and how most had taken advantage of the lull before the battle to rest in the sunshine.

“But many there stood still/ To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge/ Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world,” wrote Owen, perhaps aware that his feet, too, had reached the end. This was the last poem he would write, and, his life’s work complete, he turned to the matter of redemption.

His chance came at Swiss Cottage, a German trench a mile south of Lehaucourt, where the pillboxes of the Hindenburg Line still litter the land like concrete tumuli. A merciless, iced east wind knifes me as I stumble over the mud to the ridge where Owen captured a German machine-gun and held his position for 24 hours before being relieved. “For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty,” reads the citation for his Military Cross. With exactly four weeks left to live, Owen had at last revoked the shame of Savy Wood.

The end came on November 4, 1918. He had spent the night in the cellar of a forester’s house, deep in woods north of Ors, a farming village 20 miles east of Cambrai. The mayor of Ors, Jacky Duminy, a passionate fan of Owen, has just secured the funds to commission the Turner Prize nominee Simon Patterson to turn the property into a shrine to the poet. It will open in 2009, but in the meantime, the house remains exactly as it was in 1918. As Duminy hands me the keys, my journey through this land of ghosts takes its eeriest turn yet.

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The shutters and doors are all closed and the only light in the vaulted brick cellar comes through a vent high in the far wall. I sit cramped in this funnelled hole and read the last letter Owen wrote to his mother, scribbled by candlelight on this very spot. “It’s a great life,” he declared. “There is no danger down here, or if any, it will be well over before you read these lines.”

Hours later he marched a mile south to take part in the assault on the Sambre-Oise Canal. The battle along the poplar-lined towpath at Ors was so vicious that two VCs were won that morning, and 169 lives lost, including Lt WES Owen MC. His body was interred the same day in the communal cemetery at Ors, and lies third from the left on the back row.

His mother learnt of his death on November 11, 1918, as the victory bells rang out - a poetic irony of which Owen would have approved. The mayor has asked me to return the keys by four, but I have one more stop to make. I’ve brought an anthology of Owen’s verse with me that I’ve owned since I was a schoolboy, but now, at journey’s end, the book wants to stay in Ors. I’ve left it in the cellar where its author spent his last hours, so if you visit, be sure to read a verse or two, in memoriam.

Travel brief

Chris Haslam travelled as a guest of Eurostar (0870 518 6186, www.eurostar.com ), which has return fares from London St Pancras to Lille from £55, and Somme Battlefield Tours (01202 880211, www.battlefield-tours.com ), which offers self-drive tours of the front from £599, including accommodation and meticulously researched notes. Or try Battlefield Breaks (0845 408 0768) or Bartletts Battlefield Journeys (01507 523128, www.battlefields.co.uk )

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