9/24/21: Horror and Beauty at Flanders Fields

 

As Steven and I continued our private tour of the World War I battlefields by Ypres with Quasimodo Tours, our excellent driver cum guide, Philippe, pointed out the fields of Brussels sprouts stretching as far as the eye could see. How they would have made my mother smile as she was a big fan of the veggie.

Even though poppies normally only grow until August in this area, I felt quite blessed seeing these orange poppies growing wild along the road even though they bore little resemblance to the scarlet poppies people wear on their lapels on Remembrance Day in Canada. 

As we drove through the Flanders countryside, we came across quite a few roadside chapels which were a reminder of Belgium's Catholic roots.

Though the name was Hill 60 Preserved Battlefield there wasn't any hill at all but rather a pile of earth that had been excavated from building a railway in 1853 at Messines about four kilometers from Ypres. It was called 'Hill 60' as it lay 60 meters above sea level. Because it was higher ground in an otherwise flat landscape, it had great strategic importance in the battles in Flanders Fields. 

There was fierce fighting at Hill 60 and the hill changed hands between the Germans and the Allies several times. Tunneling and mining operations were carried out here by French, British, Australian, and German soldiers.  If tunnels caved in or were blown in by the enemy the soldiers who died underground were usually left where they died because of the difficulty of retrieving them. 

To illustrate how eerily close the Allied troops and the German troops were, Philippe had Steven walk ahead to where the latter's line was while we stood on the Allied line. It was but a distance of a few feet, a war of centimeters only. Philippe mentioned that men on both sides had to whisper in their trenches as otherwise, the enemy could hear what was being said from the other trench.

Unlike at other memorials, the trees at Hill 60 weren't planted on purpose but were naturally occurring.

Philippe asked if we would like to get a better understanding of the battles that took place at Hill 60 by walking through the battlefield. You can see our answer here as we followed him to one of the craters.

We stood in the bottom of the crater that was created after five underground explosions in April and May of 1915. The launch of a British attack on April 17th, 1915 began with the explosion of three mines which literally blew the top off the hill. Further British explosions in May caused more than 10,000 German soldiers to be 'vaporized' within twenty seconds, according to Philippe.

Another view of the crater:

Almost hidden from view because of the undergrowth was this German bunker. He recounted that one of the biggest explosions against the Germans was so powerful it was heard 230 kilometers away in London. That turned out to be a massive military loss as well as a huge loss of life for the Germans. 

We shortly came to another bunker which Philippe explained was the only one still standing in Flanders Fields. He asked if we thought it was a German or British bunker. Steven responded by saying it had to be a British bunker because it was faced defending Ypres behind it. Another clue, although we didn't know it then, was its round shape which was typical of British bunkers and enabled them to better deflect missiles. 

Philippe mentioned there were still about 300 bunkers, mostly German, in the area because the Germans often had the advantage of being on higher ground. I didn't think of the contradiction then in what I understood Philippe said in terms of the previous bunker being the 'only one' and yet there were still 300 other bunkers in Flanders Fields. 

Hundreds of soldiers lost their lives on this small area of ground at that time and owing to subsequent fighting across the ground later in the war it was not possible to recover or identify many of them at the end of the war. Because of this, the remains of many soldiers from both the Allied and German forces still lie here. Walking through the site that was a former battlefield and knowing we were also walking on hallowed ground was a very different feeling than walking through a war cemetery where each grave was lovingly tended.  After the war, a British family purchased the site and left it untouched in its wartime state as a donation. That was why it was among the best-preserved war landscapes in this Westhoek region of Flanders.

Hill 60's memorial to the Australian First Tunneling Company: 

The Queen Victoria Rifle Brigade Memorial had to be relocated to Hill 60 after it had begun to sink from the craters in Hooge, one of the sites we'd visited earlier that day.

American involvement in the war: April 6, 1917, was a turning point in the war when the Americans made a Declaration of War against Germany. Before that, the US government had tried to stay neutral because of its large German population even though they had been supplying food to the Belgian civilian population during the war. But the German sinking of the Lusitania, a British passenger ship in which almost 1,200 people died, including 128 Americans, helped turn public opinion against the Germans. 

Other factors were the Germans' initial use of gas attacks and the Zimmerman Telegram in which the British government intercepted a coded telegram sent by the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arthur Zimmerman, to the German ambassador in Mexico City that proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico if the US entered the war in support of the Allies. Though some suspected it was a forgery to manipulate getting the US to enter the war, it and the German resumption of all submarine warfare galvanized public opinion and were the tipping points for US entry into the war.

The US was the last major country to enter the war. If they hadn't done so then, the Germans may well have won the war because they had just withdrawn their forces from the Eastern Front and could consolidate them here on the Western Front. 

The Kemmel American Monument, six miles south of Ypres, was a small monument on a low platform that consisted of a rectangular white stone block. In the front was a carved soldier's helmet on a wreath.  It commemorated the services and sacrifices of two American divisions who, in the late summer of 1918, fought nearby in units attached to the British Army. Nine hundred American troops lost their lives in Flanders Fields. As this was the only American memorial, Steven and I appreciated Philippe stopping there on our behalf.

These were recently harvested hop vines for beer, a Belgian staple! Philippe said that since the vines are very labor-intensive, Belgium no longer grows many of its own hops and instead imports the pellets from the US. Hop vines can only be grown in a small area of Flanders called the 'beer girdle' because of the temperature. Ninety-eight percent of the pellets used in Belgium beer come from the Idaho Panhandle or Washington state. Remember that the next time you order a Stella Artois!

Inscribed on the memorial at the entrance to Essex Farm Cemetery and Advanced Dressing Station were the words, "The land on which this cemetery stands is the free gift of the Belgian people for the perpetual resting place of those of the Allied armies who fell in the war of 1914-1918 and are honored here."

If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you will see the marker that honored Canadian doctor John McCrae who penned his haunting poem In Flanders Fields here in 1915. The cemetery is one of the original cemeteries and made up largely of burials from the dressing station on the site. 

So many visitors come to Essex Farm to visit the final resting place for the 11,00 Allied troops that the grass would no longer grow so astroturf had to be planted along one path. It was a little jarring as otherwise, the landscaping was, without a doubt, the most beautiful I had witnessed in any cemetery the world over. 

I learned that the headstones in Commonwealth War Graves Cemeteries like here at Essex Farm and at Tyne Cot that I wrote about in my previous post are uniform in shape and size to ensure all casualties are commemorated equally, regardless of rank, class, gender, and nationality. "The simple design allows as much information as possible to be inscribed on them including the soldier’s name, rank, age, regiment, and date of death, along with a religious symbol and personal inscription if requested (and paid for)  by their loved ones."

I read that a unique aspect of  Commonwealth cemeteries is the planted border running in front of the graves. As we had first noticed at the Tyne Cot cemetery earlier in the day, a variety of colorful plants, especially roses, in a repeating pattern recreated the atmosphere of an English garden. The plantings are adapted to suit different climates around the world. The flowers here at Essex Farm were simply gorgeous and would have been worthy of any flower show.

This was the tombstone of one of the youngest soldiers to die in the war, Valentine Strudwick, a 15-year-old from Surrey, England. It was so heartwarming seeing the teddy bears local school children had left at his grave as Strudwick was hardly more than a child himself when he lied about his age when he signed up at just 14. He was able to enter the war because recruiters used 'standard sizes or measurements' and Strudwick's size didn't make them wonder about his actual age. 

Strudwick was "trained" for just six weeks before being gassed in France and going home to England to recover and then returning to the front at Flanders Field where he died here as the youngest serving soldier. Of the six million British men who volunteered to serve in the war, twenty-five percent were underage, a statistic that startled me until Philippe informed us that the war sounded like an adventure to the young lads until they got into the trenches, that was. 

The gravestone in the middle background with the Star of David was the only Jewish service member's grave that we noticed in any of the cemeteries.

Some of the graves were linked together as one, as in the center here, when bombs were unleashed and hit the men all at one and individual identification was impossible. In the First World War, men wore no dog tags so one way to identify bodies was looking for their personal possessions. 

This was the entrance to the dressing field station, just minutes from the graves, that was used from late 1917 for the Third Battle of Ypres. 

Imagine being cared for in such a depressing bunker-like area although it must have been a safe refuge away from the battlefield. As iodine was so scarce to treat the injured, garlic water had to be used. Doesn't your heart bleed knowing that was all that was available to heal the soldiers who were in so much pain?

Somewhere near here on May 2nd and 3rd of 1915, Canadian major and later Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae wrote his famous poem. At that time, his aid post would have been a 2.5 x 2.5-meter shelter dug into the adjacent canal bank with a roof made of wooden boards, the floor covered with straw, and the front protected by sandbags.

For 17 days, Guelph, Ontario native and military surgeon McCrae tended to the wounded of the 1st Canadian Artillery Brigade which was firing from positions near the canal bank as well as troops of other units wounded in the heavy fighting in the village of St. Julien after the gas attacks of April 22nd, 1915.

McCrae was practicing medicine in Montreal when he volunteered in 1914 to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force which was being sent to fight in Europe. I read that his stirring poem "provided a strong stimulus to the Allied war effort." 

The day before he wrote his haunting poem, Alexis Helmer, a young Canadian artillery officer and one of McCrae's closest friends, was killed in the fighting and buried in a makeshift grave with a simple wooden cross. Wild poppies were already beginning to bloom between the crosses marking the many graves. Unable to help his friend or any of the others who had died, McCrae gave them a voice through his poem. It was the second last poem he was to write.

Before he died, McCrae had the satisfaction of knowing that his poem had been a success. Soon after its publication, it became the most popular poem on the First World War. It was translated into many languages and used on billboards advertising the sale of the first Victory Loan Bonds in Canada in 1917. Designed to raise $150,000,000, the campaign raised $400,000,000.

As a schoolgirl growing up in Canada, I remember having to memorize McCrae's most well-known work although he had written poetry since he was a schoolboy. Rereading his words here where he wrote them brought me back full circle.

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.

In part because of the poem's popularity, the poppy was adopted as the Flower of Remembrance for the war dead of Britain, France, the United States, Canada, and other Commonwealth countries. When we see our poppies sprout next spring, I shall remember how his words have made the poppy a lasting symbol of self-sacrifice in war as well as symbols of loss and remembrance. 

Just a few yards from the cemetery and dressing station was the canal I mentioned above. 

The photos showed the fortified canal bank in 1915.

The photo showed the obelisk for Yorkshire's West Riding Divison on the day of its inauguration on June 22nd, 1924.

A final few photos of Essex Farm before we left to visit Ypres for an hour or so by ourselves. 

About 40 miles southwest of Bruges, the city we were gladly calling home for five days, was the city most English speakers call Ypres but which locals call Ieper. At the end of WW II, the city was in such ruins that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill advised keeping Ypres in ruins as a monument to the horror of war. But the locals wanted their city rebuilt.

The city was reconstructed so that the city center would resemble the medieval-style city it had been pre-war. The Belgians forced the German government to pay for reparations under the Treaty of Versailles that was signed in June of 1919 because they wanted the Germans to be punished and crushed economically and politically.

Menin Gate has been the eastern entrance into and out of the fortress town of Ypres since medieval times. During WW I, Ypres was defended for four years by Commonwealth soldiers and tens of thousands of soldiers passed this way en route to the front, some never to return. After the war, it also became the site for the largest British war memorial in Belgium. It was designed as a classical victory arch with defiant lions looking out over the old battlefields. 

The photo showed Menin Gate when it was inaugurated in July of 1927. 

Philippe said the Canadian ambassador had laid the middle wreath at the memorial the preceding week. I never did find out whether it was the ambassador to Belgium, NATO, or the European Union as each country has ambassadors to each of these in Brussels!

The gates' walls included the names of 54,896 officers and men from Commonwealth countries who died who have no known grave. Each individual was honored by name on one of 60 stone panels with the names arranged by regiment, rank, and surname. It was the first monument anywhere in the world that honored the missing. The names listed here were just a fraction of those listed on the memorial. It was soul-stirring viewing name upon name, row after row that never seemed to end.

When two names were the same, the regiment's number was added to differentiate one from another service member.

In addition to lying about their age to enter the war, some men changed their name as N. McDonald did above and R. Towns did below. My maternal great uncle also changed his name when he served and died in France.

As we strolled through town, we stopped in at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission office. There we learned it honors and cares for the 1.7 million men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died in both world wars to ensure they will never be forgotten. Funded by six member governments, the commission’s work began with building and then maintaining cemeteries and memorials at 23,000 locations around the world. 

It took six months to make the Lego Menin Gate Memorial with approximately one Lego brick for each name that was engraved on the memorial – over 51,000 in all. What a tremendous talent and innovative way to show respect to those who served and would never be seen again.

If there had been some way I could possibly have figured out how to get one of these poppies home in one piece after traveling for another seven weeks, I would have bought one in a heartbeat.

The main street opened up to the charming Grote Markt or Market Square. I would never have known its buildings were all under 100 years old as they had all been beautifully recreated in the original medieval style.

The lions on either side of the gate were replicas of the original Menin Gate lions that stood in this same spot on either side of the road leading through the rampart walls at the onset of WW I. In 1936, the city of Ypres gifted the original war-damaged lions, each holding a coat of arms, to the Australian people. They symbolized the closeness of the relationship between Ypres and Australia that developed during the war.

Thousands of soldiers marched between the lions on their way to the battlefields at Ypres in 1917. More than 13,000 Australians died on Belgium’s soil fighting for the country’s freedom from Germany. Many of them have no known grave but their names were inscribed on the walls of the Menin Gate and on memorials in the cities and towns from where they came in Australia.

Once the Australian government restored the war-damaged lions, they have graced the entrance to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra since 1991. Steven and I were lucky enough to visit Australia's capital and also be present for their moving Last Post ceremony. These lions were unveiled in 2018 are perfect replicas of the original with Belgian stone and carved by Belgian stonemasons. 

To pay respects to those who served and paid the ultimate price, a special ceremony is held at Menin Gate nightly at 8 where the Last Post is played by the buglers of the local fire brigade. The tradition dates back to July 2nd, 1928 as a mark of appreciation from the citizens of Ypres. During the German occupation of Belgium during the Second World War, the occupying Germans forbade the ceremony from taking place so it was held instead held at Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, England. 

I hope that the truism of a picture is worth a thousand words holds merit here as I have no words to describe the haunting Last Post melody played during the ceremony.

Next post: A visit to the Renaissance and City Halls in Bruges.

Posted on October 7th, 2021, from Luzern, Switzerland where we've come for a quick night's stay from the Bernese Oberland area. I think we've forgotten we're getting (or have gotten!) old as we walked another 11 plus miles today while exploring Interlaken this morning and Luzern this afternoon. Our feet and legs are feeling sore after walking and/or hiking 36 plus miles the last three days!