In Flanders Fields

During our recent trip to Belgium, we stopped by Ieper (Ypres), which is where some of the heaviest fighting in WW1 took place. We stayed at a B&B that was built on trenches, near the Hough Crater and Hill 62.

Our first stop was the Menin Gate, a memorial to fallen British and Commonwealth soldiers whose graves are unknown. 365 days of the year at exactly 8pm since 1928, a ceremony at the gate honors fallen soldiers. Buglers play Last Post, poppy wreaths are presented in remembrance, and a few words are spoken. The crowd is completely silent during the ceremony until the end, when the crowd disperses to read the names on the walls and the messages on the poppy wreaths. Almost 100 years after the beginning of the war, soldiers are still being actively honored and it's very touching to see.

The next day, we visited Hill 62, which has some of the best preserved trenches. Most farmers filled in the trenches after the war (there would have been hardly any land to farm otherwise), but one enterprising guy preserved a small section and created a museum for visitors. The museum starts with very neat stereoscopic viewing boxes where you can see '3D' images from the war.

stereoscopic = 2 images side-by-side to give a 3D effect

The rest of the museum felt a bit like picking through an eccentric uncle's collection -- a bit random, but interesting, nonetheless.

The best part, however, was outside in the woods. Snaking between the trees, trenches lined with wood or corrugated metal gave us an idea of where the fighting took place. The muddy bottom of the trenches and the huge number of mosquitoes gave us an idea of the living conditions.

the trenches would have continued on for miles, through what are now corn fields

Only a few original trees remained, pocked with bullet holes and lined with barbed wire. What is today a shady forest was, at one time not long ago, a wasteland, called 'no man's land'. It was very difficult to imagine the green fields gone and replaced with bare earth and skeletons of trees.

source

Next, we drove into the town of Ieper to visit the In Flanders Fields Museum, which does a fabulous job of demonstrating what the war was like for most soldiers. In a word, horrifying. In particular, the museum had fantastic interactive maps where you could overlay aerial images from the war on images from today. By the end of the war, this area of Belgium looked like the surface of the moon, pocked with craters from bombs and incessant shelling.

Wijtschate, south of  Ieper (present day aerial view)
source: McMaster Univ WW1 Trench Maps & Air Photos,  Grid 28, Ref #28.N.12d.18b.

smaller impact craters still mark the forest at Hill 62
and much larger craters exist nearby

Ieper itself was almost leveled. The cloth hall and churches were reduced to a few standing walls, but they were gradually rebuilt in the 1920s and 30s. Standing in the main square today, if felt like the buildings had been around for centuries, though the pictures in the museum showed us otherwise.

source: McMaster Univ WW1 Trench Maps & Air Photos,  Grid 28, Ref #28.I.8a.c.

main square, 1919

main square, 2013

Last, we visited the Tyne Cot Cemetery for soldiers who fought at Passchendaele, about 5km from Ypres. Between June and November of 1917, approximately 250,000 British, Australian, Belgian, and New Zealand troops and over 200,000 German troops died in this area, fighting for just a few square kilometers of land. Today, bodies of soldiers are still being discovered. When we visited, there were three new graves for soldiers found at a construction site.

Passchendaele in 1917

Tyne Cot Cemetery today, surrounded by corn fields and grazing cows

Visiting these areas and learning more about The Great War was sobering, interesting, and a wonderful experience. We left with a better appreciation for the sacrifice and bravery of soldiers in the war, and it further emphasized how horrific and devastating war is. Visiting Ieper and the D-Day beaches in person has been one of (the many) things I have really enjoyed about living in Germany this year.

P.S. My mom and sister are visiting for a couple weeks, so we'll be traveling in Germany and Italy until late-August, but I've got some posts scheduled in the meantime. Bis bald!