Ypres (part one)

A few years ago the boys and I went on a fantastic trip to Ypres and the surrounding area. I’ve been thinking recently that I should look at organising a similar experience for L, now that she is getting old enough to get plenty out of it. Then we saw an email offering two places at short notice on exactly the kind of trip I’d been thinking of planning 🙂

Accordingly, we started our Wednesday at 3:30am, in order to leave the house by 4 and travel down to Northolt, where we could meet the coach. Thanks to Google maps not being entirely helpful we had a brief scenic tour of various parts of North London but thankfully still just made it in time – phew! (Note to self: “At the roundabout, take the fifth exit onto Western Ave.” actually means “At the roundabout, take the third exit (or fourth, depending on how you count – but there was no way I could make it be fifth!) onto the A40.” It was a bit of a traumatic introduction to being navigator for L, but she did really well right up until that confusing direction – and at least we didn’t need to chase the bus to Folkestone!

Safely on board, we discovered that the people sitting across the aisle from us were friends of the Porticos. L got on well with Ph, which helped the day to go smoothly. 🙂 We were quite relieved to get to the services at Folkestone for a quick loo stop 😉 The Channel Tunnel trains were a good distraction, watching lorries and coaches get on and off and especially seeing the cars go onto upper deck levels. Finally it was our turn to board – always a little hair-raising as the coach seems almost too wide for the space available! The crossing was straightforward and we eventually got to Ypres at about noon, with a little time for sight-seeing before our booked time slot to enter the In Flanders Field museum. We went to the Menin Gate, keeping an eye out for the chocolate shop we found last time – didn’t find it this time, but bought chocolates from a different one instead. 😉 Climbing up to the gardens at the top, we found a memorial to the Indian soldiers who died in the war and a Braille/tactile version of the gate itself, which we thought was a lovely way of making it accessible to the visually impaired. I relinquished the camera to L, who had a lovely time making the most of her role as photographer – most photos taken on the day are hers 🙂
Dawn produced crayons and we had paper, so made some rubbings of the Braille, then we walked round the Gate itself, looking at all the names – so many names – and trying to get our heads round the sheer numbers involved, and the fact that all the soldiers listed there were never found and buried under their own names. According to our guide, there are 55,000 missing soldiers named here, along with another 35,000 at Tyne Cot and more elsewhere. The scale is just heart-breaking, and the names on every flat surface bring a lump to your throat.

At one o’clock we all met up again at the museum, where Julie had wristbands for us. These were programmable with age, place of origin and gender, so that at various points round the displays you could log in and be given information about somebody relevant to you in some way. We only had an hour there and could have done with two or three, really. It was very well organised, very visual (video displays at various points, lots of photos, lots of info boards) but spoilt a little (both L and I felt) by depressing, heavy music which played almost incessantly, dampened everything almost subconsciously – you only realised how all-pervasive it was when it stopped, sadly very briefly, and you could breathe freely for a while – and made the whole place feel very dead. We both came out with headaches 🙂 We weren’t even halfway round when we suddenly realised the time and had to rush through the rest of the displays to get to the end and meet up again with the rest of our group. We were joined by our guide for the next four hours, Noel, a sixty-something (my guess – may be completely out!) Belgian with a wealth of interesting stories and an odd approach to humour: punctuating his stories with, “Belgian joke – haha!”

Noel reminded us that we were in Belgium, about 50 miles from France (and having travelled through a short stretch of No-Man’s Land between the two borders as well) and that Ypres is only the French name for the town. The Belgians call it Ieper and it was also affectionately known as Wipers by the men stationed there during the war, as demonstrated by the underground paper they published known as the Wipers Times. During the course of the first world war Ypres was increasingly damaged, until by 1917 you could see from one side of the town to the other, with no buildings left standing to obscure the view. It had been utterly destroyed, except for the Abbey gate, which had somehow escaped destruction during the Revolution (when the abbey itself was left in ruins) and again during the war. By about 1922 – 1923 most private houses had been rebuilt and other buildings followed, with the decision being made to rebuild the town as nearly as possible to how it had been before. This gives a slightly odd feel to the place: the buildings look old but impossibly well-kept!
One new building, although again built in an older style, is the Anglican church on the corner of the market square, which was built in response to requests from visiting family members and friends who wished to have a Protestant place of worship as well as the local Catholic churches. There are, apparently, only two Anglican churches in all of Belgium, the other being in Brussels. Just around the corner from the church is an English-speaking school which, according to our guide, was built for the use of the children of the gardeners employed by the War Graves Commission to look after the various cemeteries in the area. These children spoke Dutch, French and their mother tongue was English, which made them very useful some years later when Germany again invaded and they played a part in the fight against Hitler. Many were forced to flee at Dunkik in 1940, but were then able to play a very useful part from England in translating and acting as go-betweens, while others fled to France or stayed in Belgium and were recruited into the Resistance. Many went on to be useful in the Second World War too. Noel showed us a newspaper clipping with an article entitled: The children who fought Hitler. In fact, he seemed to have a wealth of such clippings tucked away in various pockets as well as a great store of odd stories and comments which make this a very difficult post to put into any kind of logical order 😆

The War Graves Commission headquarters is in Maidenhead, but they also have centres in Arras, for France, and Ypres, for the rest of Europe. The policy has always been that British soldiers should be buried on or as near as possible to the spot where they fall, hence the great number of cemeteries and graves scattered around the world and cared for by the WGC. Unfortunately, more recent conflicts have been under circumstances which mean that this is no longer a practical or sensible course of action, so British servicemen who die in Afghanistan, for example, are repatriated rather than buried there.
As we drove past the Salvation Roundabout Noel mentioned that Ypres has a longstanding folkloric link with cats, which is the reason for a topiary cat being on the roundabout. Apparently during the Middle Ages 5 living cats would be dropped from the belfry 50 days before each Easter day – why, he didn’t say, and nobody else seems to be sure either, although the Lonely Planet guide tells us, “the Kattenfestival has its roots in a 12th-century tradition that had the city jester throwing live cats from the Lakenhalle’s belfry. Cats, it was believed, personified evil spirits and this ritual, which continued until 1817, was a sure way to be rid of them. Today’s version, which sees toy cats hurled from the belfry, was instituted in the 1930s. Held annually until 1991, the festival is now staged every third year. On this day, the town literally purrs. Store windows fill with cats, there are cat-shaped chocolates and marzipan and stalls sell all sorts of feline merchandise. The big moment is the Kattenstoet, a parade of giant cats. Following the parade it’s a case of look away now for it’s about to rain toy cats.”

Our first stop with Noel on board was at Essex Farm, the cemetery famous for John McCrae’s poem In Flander’s Field. McCrae was a doctor with responsibility for triage at the dressing station there. They were on the evacuation route from the front line at Sanctuary Wood/Hill 62; men would receive basic first aid at the regimental aid post and then be sent back, with the help of orderlies and stretcher bearers, behind the lines to the dressing station at Essex Farm. Here triage would determine which were likely to survive further travel and they would be sent on to the clearing station, possibly via an advanced dressing station for further treatment, and thence by ambulance (often horse-drawn) to the base hospital at Poperinge to wait for a hospital train to Calais, Boulogne or Amiens. Those who were judged too injured to be likely to survive such a trek were left at Essex Farm, where they died and were buried. The soil in that area is almost solid clay, with very poor drainage, and the bodies were buried in haste with no coffins. Some other cemeteries were excavated and rebuilt in the 1920s, Tyne Cot being a prime example; these are in better order than Essex Farm, where the headstones are not always straight and the lines are not all even. In some ways, though, I preferred it as it was – there is a rawness about it which contrasts with the sculptured lines of Tyne Cot.
We found the grave of VJ Stradwick of the Rifle Brigade, who died aged 15, and were told of another soldier (Irish – name? Tom?) who at just 14 was the youngest known to have died. Neither he nor the oldest to die, Harry Webber, 68, are buried here, but they show the range of ages of those who died. Noel also told us about the Victoria Cross, which is usually awarded posthumously (although there has been a recent exception). There have been about 5,000 awarded altogether, and the cemeteries around Ypres have about 60 Victoria Cross holders. Some of the headstones had stones on them, which Noel said is a Jewish tradition, made popular recently by the film Schindler’s List, of the stone as a symbol of eternity. When the Israelites were crossing the Sinai Desert those who died could not be buried but were not left uncovered either; their corpses were covered with small stones.
In 1915, after fierce fighting, an appeal was made to Canada to send help. A battalion of 20,000 arrived in April 1915, including John McCrae. Almost immediately the Germans launched the first gas attack, killing or injuring vast numbers of Canadian, British, French and Belgian soldiers. Since this was the first time gas had been used, nobody was expecting it and there were no gas masks. Some survived by protecting their faces with handkerchiefs or pieces of cloth but about 20,000 were killed in that one attack. It is said that McCrae, sitting on the back of an ambulance and mourning the loss of so many fellow soldiers and friends, penned his famous poem, in Flanders Fields as a response to the death of his friend Alexis Helmer on 2nd May. All around was desolation and destruction; the only thing of beauty left in the world was a flower, a wild, delicate flower – which became the symbol of the British Legion.

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.

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.

More about Essex Farm and John McCrae here