I recently visited Ieper/ Ypres in Belgium with Martin and my dad and paid my respects to the thousands who gave their lives for their countries in Flanders. We all grew up learning about WW1.. endless facts that don't connect us to the reality and it's not until you have the opportunity to visit some of the war cemeteries and battlefields in Belgium and France that you really begin to appreciate the human impact of the First World War.
Iepers/Ypres, a beautiful city, was my first shock. Only once inside the In Flanders Field Museum in the stunning 13th century Cloth Hall did I learn that the whole city of Iepers was completely obliterated during the war. This area was strategic in the fighting, with the Allies trying to prevent the German advance into France. From 1914 to 1918 three major battles, including the battle of Passchendaele, were fought in this area and was also witness to the horror of the first use of chlorine gas in 1917. Here we were in a bustling market place, full of Sunday visitors and restaurants, with no evidence that this old city was a recreation, the re-building of the Cloth Hall only completed in 1958.
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| Ieper 1917 www.english.illinois.edu |
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| Cloth Hall Ieper 2014 |
But it is not the city or it's tragic history that makes The Great War tangible...it is the visual reminder of the cemeteries that staggers you, or the iconic Menin Gate, with it's 54,896 names of Commonwealth soldiers with no known graves. In Belgium alone there are hundreds of cemeteries with thousands of graves. New Irish Farm cemetery contains 4,800 burials, of which 70% are unidentified, the brooding German cemetery of Langemark with it's mass grave of 24,917 men and over 10,000 marked graves bring the total buried there to 44,304 and Tyne Cot in Passendale is the largest British war cemetery in the world with 11,956 Commonwealth graves. My dad observed that the impact is even greater when you imagine each of those well tended white gravestones as a person, standing in uniform. The average age is 21; young men, from both sides, fighting for their country and following orders to keep forging ahead until they were killed, or wounded enough to be sent home.
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| Tyne Cot |
It is sad to see these places filled with the dead, guaranteeing this tragic time in our history is never forgotten, but there is also something peaceful and sentient as you wander through the graves, the chance to honor the sacrifice made by so many. It is always peaceful there, flowers blooming on this land that was once torn apart by men, trenches filled with darkness, "hell on earth," and remarkable to me that there is always a bird singing somewhere.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
