Having been back for just over a day, I've been thinking about my trip to Ypres with Matthew and would just like to put down on record my recollections.
First of all 'the place'.
The area known as Flanders is a fairly flat, quiet agricultural place, with busy towns and sleepy villages, not unlike the Suffolk I know so well. As I looked around the countryside, it was hard to picture the devastation and death that was present 100 years ago. Virtually everything was destroyed and replaced with mud, water-filled craters, brick rubble, broken trees, duckboards, tangled metal, burning vehicles, and, worse of all, bedraggled people and the bodies of men and animals.
Despite all of this, the people of Flanders returned and rebuilt everything and it's hard now to overlay the historic pictures in your mind's eye on the present landscape, where it not for the many thousands of photos we have seen. I have to keep reminding myself that virtually everything we saw is less than a hundred years old, the buildings, the roads, the trees, etc, etc.
My other recollection about the place relates to the names of particular areas in Flanders. I have known about these places for many years. Names like Ypres (Wipers), Ploegsteert Wood (Plugstreet Wood), Polygon Wood, Messines Ridge, Passchendaele, Tyne Cot, Kemmel, and so on and, of course, you can't think of these places without a least a basic understanding of what went on there 100 years ago.
It's rather odd to see them now in 2014. They are just ordinary places; small towns and villages going about their daily business, quiet woodlands and copses, rivers and ditches, farms, roads and lanes, low hills overlooking flat meadows, etc. But they are where history was made and, quite rightly, they are now held in high regard because of that. The places are respected and cared for as pieces of land where men fought and died. Adults from all over world and their children visit to see where history was made. Many, like Matt and me, visit to say a few private words to a long lost relative who knew the place under very difference circumstances.
My second impression is about the people of Flanders. They seem to take all this in their stride, after all they are used to it, just going about their normal lives while visitors drive or walk around their neighbourhood looking at the places they call home. Many of them are even making a good living out of 'history tourism' and why not? It's not every day, a world war is fought on your doorstep!
While thinking about people, I was, and still am, moved by the thought of all the people who went to Belgium and other places on the Western Front to fight for freedom (it sounds a bit crass, but its true).
With little knowledge or understanding of what they were letting themselves in for; with excitement in the air, high spirits, determination, camaraderie and a sort of wide-eyed enthusiasm for the adventure that lay ahead, young men poured across the channel and some of them died within days of arrival in the trenches, some even died on the day they arrived. Others went on to fight an horrific war that none of them could have imagined beforehand. It must have been a very cold wake-up call for all of them. It's no surprise that survivors found it difficult or impossible to talk about it.
I have the utmost respect for them all and I suppose that is the reason I find the haunting sound of the Last Post or a minutes silence so moving.
My last comment is even more personal. My trip was with my eldest son Matthew. It doesn't happen often. I wish it did. I enjoyed every minute, I hope we do it again soon and I hope my other son, Ben, can join us too.
Now, I must put the kettle on and have a brew.
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