Ypres thoughts

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.

Ypres

I have just got back from my trip to Ypres with my son Matthew. The main aim was to visit the grave of my mother's Uncle Alfred who died on 28 November 1914, exactly 100 years ago. Of course, neither of us knew him, but it was just a matter of showing respect for what he and hundreds of thousands of others did at the time. 

The loss of his life at the age of 28, and that of his brother a few months later, obviously hit his family and friends hard  but it's even harder to comprehend when you realise this feeling of loss was felt by so many other families all over the world. It's really hard to imagine.

After a choppy crossing from Dover to Dunkirk, I traveled through a short piece of northern France into Belgium, getting to Ypres by mid afternoon. As I didn't need to check into the hotel so soon, I spent a few minutes at the nearby Hill 62 - more about that later.

Matthew arrived at 5.30pm and we discussed our plans, which included visiting the Menin Gate Last Post Ceremony, searching out various battlefields, museums, monuments and cemeteries, and most importantly, visiting the grave of Mum's uncle.

The Menin Gate was built just after the war to represent the thousands of Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Ypres Salient and whose bodies were never found. There are some 54,000 names inscribed and, as you wander around in silence looking at their names, you start to get a feeling for the monumental loss of life. 

The sides of the monument are also covered in their names; the lists go on and on and on...

When I first saw the gate some 30 years ago, I couldn't understand how so many people could just go missing until I read a bit about the way the war was fought. Following a brief period of 'mobile' warfare with the main armies jostling for position along a 400 mile line roughly from the Belgium coast to Switzerland, the war became a stalemate and they dug into the ground for protection - the start of trench warfare and it continued for the next four years. 

Then, apart from countless costly advances and retreats all along the front on both sides, many men lost their lives through heavy artillery shelling, constant sniper fire, poison gas and flame thrower attacks, overnight raids, mining operations, and even illness and disease. Many of these men found themselves either stranded, wounded or killed in their trenches or in 'no-man's land' between the trenches and the constant bombing, day after day, destroyed what little there was left of them. It's really sad to see so many men's names on so many monuments. Matthew and I agreed everyone should have a grave.

At about 7.30pm every day, the Police close the road that runs under the gate and many people gather to watch and listen. Ever since the Second World War, the men of the Last Post Association, sound the Last Post on their bugles at exactly 8.00pm as a tribute to those that died and, I can say without fear of contradiction, it is a very moving experience. This year, at the start of each ceremony, someone reads a brief description of a soldier's experience in the Salient - a different one each evening. It adds a great deal to the experience.

The next morning, we went to the nearby Hill 62 which was held by the Canadians for all of the war. It stands 62 meters above sea level (hence its name) and overlooks Ypres to the west and the front line to the east. Because of its important strategic position and its relative height above the surrounding ground, it was fought over fiercely by both sides. The Canadians eventually won the heights and have a simple but moving monument on the top. The view is stunning. You can see why it was so important to hold on to it. The town in the distance is Ypres.

A little way down the road is a small private museum called Hill 62 museum or sometimes the Sanctuary Wood Museum after the nearby wood that was used to provide a little sanctuary for soldiers fighting at the front.

While this museum is out-dated now and could do with some modern TLC, it has a lot of original exhibits found in the nearby fields but two elements stand out; the large reconstructed trench system in the wood behind the buildings...

 

...and the stereoscopic viewers showing unpublished photos of life in the trenches.

These viewers, have taken a bit of a beating over the years but they illustrate some of the real horrors of trench warfare including the clinging mud, the tangled metal and the human and animal cost. These were the photos that the military and civil authorities considered too gruesome to show the public at the time and I'm sure they were right. They are hard to look at even now.

The museum is a bit pricey for what you get (8euros) but is still worth seeing.

After Hill 62, we went down to the village of Kemmel to see Alfred's grave at the secluded La Laiterie Cemetery containing 751 graves in all. For a short while it had been in German hands. We know he was killed in action but we don't know much more than that. It may have been nearby as soldiers who either died in battle or shortly afterwards appear to have been buried close to where they fell. Others, who may have survived a while before they died, appear to have been buried further away, maybe as they were being moved to a clearing station or beyond.

Alfred was 28 when he died and was a private (7657) serving in the 1st Bn of the Lincolnshire Regt. He was the son of John and Mary Bloomfield of Saxstead, near Framlingham, Suffolk.

His grave is the third row from the left-hand corner (Plot I, Row B, Grave 32). We didn't have much to say to him (it didn't seem necessary really) but we left him a poppy on a wooden cross with a few words just so he knows we've not forgotten him...

We then went on to Mount Kemmel, the highest hill in the Salient, that was held by the allies for much of the war. It was taken by the Germans for a while and then retaken by the allies just before the end of the war. Apart from its height, it contains a number of bunkers (the Lettenburg Bunkers) driven deep into the hillside for protection. Understandably many of the commanding officers used these to house their forward control points and supplies. The entrances to four of them can still be seen in the hillside.

We spent the rest of the day in the southern part of the Salient; the most notable places being the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Mesen (Messines), a non-military, non-religious monument to promote peace...

...the 'Plugstreet Wood' cemeteries (Ploegsteert) ...

...and one of the large 'Hill 60' craters formed by the undermining operations. Apparently 19 of the these went off at the same time at the end of the war and they helped to secure an allied breakthrough.. This one was big, but there are bigger ones!

Mining tunnels for self-preservation and blowing up the opposition's trenches was a constant and very dangerous activity on all sides and evidence of this can be found almost everywhere along the front.

On our last day we visited the Butte Cemetery at Polygon Wood. It was very large and contained many 'unknown soldier' graves. I found one particular wreath on an unknown Australian's grave devoted 'to all the brave soldiers who gave such a lot' - very moving.

Just opposite the entrance is a small cemetery with 50 or so graves laid out randomly.but mainly in short rows of between 4 and 10. Apparently this was next to a dressing station where soldiers first went to have their wounds dressed. Those that were dead on arrival or died shortly afterwards, were laid in short trenches, covered over and their graves marked with whatever was at hand, eg a broken chair leg or plank of wood. After the war, it was decided not to exhume them and relocate the bodies to a 'concentration cemetery', as was done elsewhere, but to leave them where they were. It makes this cemetery even  sadder than the others as it reflects the harsh realities of life and death close to the front.  

We then visited the Passchendale Museum, which was probably the best we had seen, set in a Chateau in fantastic grounds. It's not in Passchendale as you might expect but in the village of Zonnebeke about 3 miles south. It had lots of traditional but high quality museum exhibits tracing the progress of the battle plus some fascinating dugouts and reconstructed trenches.

This was well worth a visit, not expensive (7.5euros I think), and if you want to get a good all round impression of the war, this should be the museum to aim for.

We ended our trip at the Tyne Cot Cemetery, which contains 35,000 Commonwealth war graves, the most in the Salient. This is another 'must see' place. Apart from the cemetery, which is huge, it now has a shiny new Visitor Centre and a large car/coach park and toilets to cope with the high visitor numbers.

One of the most moving exhibits was a constantly moving slide show of individual soldiers photos with a softly spoken lady reading out their names and their ages when they died. I stood and watched this for a while, after all it was quite hypnotic, but I realised this sad list would probably go on for months. 

Matthew and I parted company, him heading home to the east, me heading west back to Ypres and a quiet but cold night in the Landy next to one of the town's many canals.

Before I turned in, I visited the In Flanders Fields exhibition in the Cloth Hall. It was a new exhibition and I guess cost a fortune as it had just about every electronic, computerised, new-fangled gadgety thingy-me-bob you could wish for to show you who fought the war, where and how. It was a bit over the top (please excuse the pun). It was still early so I went back to the Menin Gate to hear the Last Post once again.

So that was it. Well, apart from the next morning as I left to head back to Dunkirk. I wanted to say a final farewell to Alfred as I guessed he might not get many more visitors for the next 100 years.

It was quite early and still a bit misty as I parked next to the cemetery. There was no one about. I took my ukulele out of its case and managed to sing a quiet but tearful rendition of 'Keep the Home Fires Burning' next to his grave. Respectful, peaceful, touching.

Matt and I have discussed the idea of visiting the grave of Alfred's brother, Francis, on his 100th anniversary. He died in action during May 1915 and is buried in the military cemetery south of Rouen. Of the five Bloomfield brothers who went to war, Alfred and Francis didn't make it home. My grandfather did. It makes you think what could have happened if things had turned out differently!

Incidentally, we think my paternal grandfather may have been fighting in the Salient at the same time as Alfred and Francis, long before there were any family links. It was a big, bad war but it was still a very small world.