In Flanders Field: Foreign Smells, Monuments, the Pickers and the Trenches.

Monday March 23, 2015

Today marks day one of three, touring the countryside of Ypres Salient.  This area was home to some serious battles during the first world war.  Four years of battle from October 1914 - October 1918 took place within a few miles from the town of Ypres.  

There are over 170 military cemeteries and monuments in the immediate area.  So as a casual visitor interested in the area, you really have no idea what direction to go, or what memorial sites are better or more significant than others. Well, that's if you don't have Benoit on your side!  Yesterday when  we checked in, Benoit spread the map pictured below on the kitchen table, and explained a little about the dividing line between the Germans and the Allies, and created three day trips for us.  He has picked the most significant sites, and the ones that are significant to Canadians.

Day 1

• Essex Farm Cemetery
• Langemark
• The Brooding Soldier
• Tyne Cot Cemetery
• Passendale 1917 Museum
• Hill 62 - Sanctuary Wood

The First stop on our tour was just outside of Ypres, however, it took us a little longer than it should have to get there.  First off, we typed the wrong address into the GPS.  No problem, easy fix.  As we are coming up on it, I am told by my co-pilot to "take the ramp ahead, it will wrap around to the cemetery".  Not a chance, we ended up on a freeway heading away from the cemetery.  No Problem. I did a quick u-turn and we were well on our way. While we were driving, it started to smell pretty funky in the car, immediately I blamed Fin, and rolled down the two front windows.  Problem, the smell was coming from outside!  It was the craziest, nastiest, most pungent manure smell you could ever imagine.  I immediately closed the windows, but now the smell was trapped in the car with us!  Stacey and the kids were yelling and laughing hysterically at the same time.  It was around that time that I drove right past the turn off for the cemetery!  No problem.  I did a u-turn and started heading the right direction, all was good.  The smell was not nearly as severe, and we were 800 metres from the turn off.  But then, I had the most violent, rank sneeze known to man.  Everyone was freaking out, Stacey was wiping me down, and I was 20 metres from flying past the turn off!  After all of that, we took a few mins to compose ourselves to we weren't "that family", showing up at a war memorial laughing away.  Helluva start!

Essex Farm Cemetery is famous because it is in this vicinity where Canadian, Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, wrote his world famous poem, "In Flanders Fields".  He wrote the poem just hours after his best friend, Alexis Helmer was killed during "The Second Battle of Ypress" in 1915.

Monument to the fallen at Essex Farm.

These bunkers are right adjacent to the Essex Farm Cemetery,  It is in one of these bunkers that McCrae would have worked on wounded soldiers.

One of the youngest soldiers to die in the war.... 15 years old!

On the way to our next stop, we came across a super cool monument to the fallen Welsh soldiers.

Our second stop for the day was the understated German cemetery, Langemark.  There are 44,304 German soldiers buried at Langemark, 24,917 of them in one mass grave.  What's interesting about all of the monuments in Belgium, they are on land gifted by the Belgians to the Country who's memorial it is, the cost of the memorial and the maintenance is the responsible of the individual countries.  Stacey and I were talking about this a little, it's pretty amazing, given the destruction that Germany has done to Belgium, that they would gift them land to honour their dead.  Good on you Belgium.

Langemark is on a moated plot of property on the side of the road, just out of town.

Headstone at the foot of the mass burial site, where 24, 917 German Soldiers are buried. 

Beyond the name plate blocks, is the mass burial site.

All of the names.

Sculpture Emil Krieger from Munich created this sombre sculpture for the cemetery.

The rest of the cemetery, the numbers of soldiers at each site varies.  Some have or one two, while others have over 10.

A couple of great graffiti boards just next to the parking lot at Langemark.

As we were walking back to the car, the weather turned bone chilling cold, somehow the drop in temperature really felt right for the setting.

Third stop on our Benoit master tour, was the stunning Canadian Forces Memorial, the Brooding Soldier.    On April 22, 1915, 2000 Canadian Soldiers were killed by the Germans, using gas for the first time in battle.  The sombre soldier has his down looking to his fallen brothers, and his hands resting on the butt of his rifle.  As a show of respect to his homeland, he is facing the direction of Ottawa.

Absolutely beautiful.  The 1921 monument makes a powerful statement.

After The Brooding Soldier, we were really starting to gain momentum. But we were hungry.  Thankfully we had the foresight to pack a picnic lunch (which was a good thing, because there wasn't a restaurant in sight during the first three stops).  Thus, our European staple lunch of baguette, cheese and tomato was savagely consumed sitting on the tail gate of our car in the Tyne-Cot parking lot.

Tyne-Cot is the largest of the Commonwealth cemeteries in the Ypres Salient.  There are nearly 12,000 Commonwealth soldiers buried here, and there are the names of another 35,000 missing soldiers that had died after the completion of the Menin Gate in Ypres.  As you will will recall, there are 55,000 names on the Menin Gate, and there was no room there for the additional names....

The cemetery is essentially located on what was a German stronghold, as they were protecting the captured town of Passchendaele   The town was a key piece of the puzzle, as the allies were attempting to  capture the Passchendale ridge, then move east through Belgium to control all of the Belgian coastal land, to mitigate the Germans use of submarines.  The Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the Third Battle of Ypres, came at a massive cost for both the Allies and the Germans.  It's hard to find consistent casualty numbers, but the museum at Passchendale states that 245,000 Allies, and 215,000 Germans lost their lives over the 3 month and 6 day battle.  The conditions over the battle were horrific, with that part of Belgium seeing the most rain it had seen in 30 years.  Basically it was a massive field of mud.  The British nicknamed the area Passion Dale - The Valley of Suffering.

The gateway to Tyne-Cot Cemetery 

The tombstones go on, and on.....

and on.

One of several nameless tombstones.

One of only 10 Jewish tombstones at Tyne-Cot.  Stacey and Fin found 8 of them.

 Tyne-Cot is very overwhelming, visual reality of the devastation and mass loss of human lives.

From Tyne-Cot we wandered 3km down the road to the Passchendale Museum, where they have some period clothing, weapons, tunnels and trenches.

This armour is crazy heavy.  I can't imagine slapping that on are running around.

A bunker for dressing wounded, attached to the trenches.

Sandbags stacked well above your head in the trenches.

Wood planks on the ground to keep you from getting stuck in the mud.

Fin in the trenches to give you some scale. 

It's hard to even imagine the horror of being in there as the battle is in full swing.  The passage ways have corners in case the trenches are breathed, thus the enemy can't shoot down a long row at open soldiers.  

An art installation at the museum, that likens the dead trees in the battlefield to the arms of soldiers reaching up from the ground or grave.  Very powerful piece.

The Passchendale Pickers!  That's right, that is Stacey digging in the garbage just outside of the Passchendale museum.  She had picked up what she claimed was a pellet from a gun at Tyne-cot.  I convinced her that is was a rock, so she threw in the garbage along with the garbage from the car, on our way into the museum.  Well, while we were in the museum, there was a gun exhibit with a few handfuls of those pellets that look like rocks!  Soooo, she was trying to find her pellet...  She found it, along with an apple core, a part of sandwich and used map.

Our final stop of the day, was the absolutely awesome, Hill 62 Memorial -Sanctuary Wood Trenches.  The original trenches at Sanctuary Wood are nothing short of incredible.   The memorial is for the Battle of Mount Sorrel, fought on June 2-13, 1916.  It was later changed to Hill 62, because the hill is 62 meters about sea level, which doesn't sound like a great height, but it was 25-30 meters above the surrounding area, and provided for clear views of the ground towards Ypres.  Thus, it as a very strategic defensive position.  

Both sides new of the importance of hills 60 and 62, and on June 2, 1916 , the Germans captured both.  Of the 702 soldiers that manned the two posts, only 76 survived.  After strategic planning, on June 13th at 1:30 am, the Canadian troops regained the territory for good.  However, as always, that comes at a cost.

From the website  www.canadianbattlefields.ca "The battle at Hill 62 and Sanctuary Wood lasted a total of 5 monthes and the result of careful planning and strategy earned Canadians their pride and bravery in the Great War. But as always, there was a heavy price to pay for their success. 8430 Canadians died fighting in this battle. But it was through courage and valor and the spirit of Canadian soldiers pulled through to help the Allied Forces gain a major victory, which affected the outcome of the War."

Mud filled trenches on the day we were there.

Mortar craters in the creepy forest of Hill 62.

The landscape that was forever changed by mortar and battle.

The subtle Hill 62 Memorial to the Canadian Soldiers that died in the battle for the hill.  From the top of the hill, you can see the entire valley, and the city of Ypres.  It is a that point, you can see the significance of owning that position in battle.

Well, that was an amazing day, and an amazing day to be a Canadian (as all days are), but today really gave insight into what our brave soldiers brought to WWI.  They quickly gained a reputation as tough, strong, brave and fierce warriors.