TASHY TRAVELS
These are some stories from my travels in 2019.
I hope you enjoy the text and the pictures.
BELGIUM 2 July 17 2019, my 70th birthday
Tuesday seamlessly changed in to Wednesday as it has done so many times before. I missed it as I was asleep, tired from the previous day's adventures. However when I woke up that morning, it was my 70th birthday and I began to celebrate the event 69 years on from my first birthday and heading into my 71st year. Answers on a postcard please.
Not surprisingly, James and Rachel were the first to wish me a happy birthday but, slightly more surprisingly, my next wishes came from nearly 18,000 kilometres away and the city of Hamilton in New Zealand. Rachel's mum and sister appeared on the small screen having already sent, or had carried to me, a birthday card. This was followed by calls from my two children and their families in England. By then I was finding hard to pretend I was not now 70.
I have to admit that I never, seriously thought I would make it to 70. My anxieties and panic attacks back in my early twenties, and beyond, were all built around a fear of death. It was not, as many professed, a fear of dying. Dying is inevitable, it will happen. My fear was quite simply a fear of death because, when dead, I could not enjoy every aspect of living which I have always done. Even in the bad times, I wanted, and want, to be alive. I want to battle, to enjoy, to experience, to achieve.
This subject was brought home to me even more with our first visit of my 70th birthday. One of Rachel's ancestors, I think it was a great, great uncle but I may be wrong, had, like so many New Zealanders and Australians, enlisted in their army and come over to Europe to help with the fighting in World War One. Sadly, he had been killed and Rachel wanted to visit the cemetery where he had been buried.
As we drove to the cemetery, called the Trois Arbres Cemetery and actually just over the border in France, we passed a few other small cemeteries all very similar. When you consider that there were 11 million military personnel killed in the war and also 7 million civilians and so much of the fighting took place in this area of France and Belgium, it isn't that surprising there are so many cemeteries. Originally the site of this cemetery was the 2nd Australian casualty clearing station and some burials came from deaths at that hospital. On April 10th 1918 the nearby village of Steenwerck was captured by German forces and the cemetery fell into German hands the following day.
After the Armistice, in November 1918, over 700 graves were brought into the cemetery from the battlefields of Steenwerck, Nieppe, Bailleul and Neuve-Eglise. There are now 1,704 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 435 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to ten casualties known or believed to be buried among them.
The pictures below show the centrepiece of the cemetery plus just three of the headstone. All three are unknown, the first at least having a regiment. There were so many graves of unknown soldiers. Soldiers who fought bravely but their loved ones never knew where they were buried.
Rachel was able to find the headstone of her relation and I left her and James to have a quiet moment with their thoughts. To be killed on a battle field, thousands of miles from home and with little likelihood of your resting place ever being visited by those you left behind was a very poignant thought. I was glad that Rachel was able to, eventually, put right this wrong.
With one final look at the rows and rows of headstones, we left Trois Arbres behind and moved on, back into Belgium, and another reminder of this stupid war that killed so many and solved so little. It was initially known as The Great War and called the War to end Wars. It was neither. Great in terms of how many countries became involved, great in the number of lives lost but nothing that kills 18 million members of the human race should ever be called great. As for the war to end all wars, well we already know that 20 years later it all started again.
And one last word from Harry Patch who died in 2009 at the age of 111 and was the last surviving British soldier from WWI. I couldn't agree with him more.
In order to visit our next site we needed to buy tickets in a place called Kemmel. It was a beautiful village, cobble stone roads, flowers everywhere and incredibly clean. It was coming up to lunch time so we decided to try to find somewhere to have a bite to eat. We didn't want too much as, later that day, I was being treated to a birthday meal. We looked in a few places but eventually settled on a small shop selling what looked like home-made snacks. I don't actually remember what we had but, it is possible, that once Rachel or James have read this I will be able to fill you all in.
We sat outside the shop to eat and then had a little sit down on what I would describe as the village green. I suppose in time you can get used to it but the sound of tyres on cobble stones was pretty loud, at least to my ears. At this stage I should maybe tell of our near disaster when driving in the morning. Belgian roads, main roads, all have filters on and off. French roads are the same and my earliest memory of driving in France was of the famous “Passage a droit” signs, meaning the car joining the road has right of way.
Anyway, early this morning, there were two filters off in close succession and I think we nearly took one and James suddenly shouted “no not that one”. I immediately turned to the left and moved on to the road that was there. I then, immediately again, noticed that on our main road there was now no carriageway on the left of us. Having them there is always useful when driving on the right. My brain shot into gear, and I realised we had actually gone through the central reservation and were now driving on the opposite carriageway. Luckily there were no other cars about. There were some of those red and white polystyrene barriers separating the carriageways so, having pulled as far over to the right as possible and as it was obviously his mistake, James was sent out to move a couple so we could slot back through and continue our journey. Luckily, no other car appeared during this dramatic operation.
The tickets we had bought, at €4 each, were for the unique reconstructed German trench systems at Bayernwald. The site was about 10 minutes from Kemmel and very remote. It was unmanned and you park at the side of small country lane, surrounded by fields. You walk a couple of hundred yards down a track road and arrive at the gate to the site. You put your ticket in a slot by the gate on the right hand side, watch for the green light, then push the gate forwards and you're in.
The first thing you see is an information site, open but with a roof, which has a 3D map, some old and new aerial photos and a set of information boards around the side. The site has four bunkers and two mineshafts as well as the trenches. The first excavations were undertaken in 1971 by a schoolteacher called Andre Becquart but after he died the site was abandoned until 1998. Since being restored, it was opened in 2004 but again needed repairs a few years ago. Happily it is now in a pretty good condition. Next to the information site was a large stone that had the words, in several languages, “It is time not to look back in anger but to look forward with hope”.
Alongside the former Ms Hope, we then ventured further in and could see the trench system stretching before us. The earliest trenches were, apparently, made of wood and sandbags but by 1916 they looked more like the ones we saw. These had a frame and were connected by wickerwork. During the time we were there, several school parties were also present undertaking various tasks and being given information and having the chance to ask questions.
We then stepped into the trench system and it was here that I felt a certain amount of atmosphere was missing. Don't get me wrong, the Bayernwald trenches are certainly worth a visit. The site is well laid out and the information boards, maps and photos are brilliantly presented. There is much you can find out about the whole area and the thinking behind trench warfare. By walking through the actual trenches you can get a feel for the amount of work that it took to build the trenches in the first place.
You also come across four of the ten bunkers that were originally on the site. Once again, you can learn from the boards that the bunkers near the front line were made of prefabricated concrete blocks, those further to the rear were just concrete. A walk inside the bunker, too dark to photograph, gave a good idea of the terrible conditions these soldiers lived under and the cramped space which was, essentially their protected homes.
Various wall pictures around the site showed images from the time when these trenches and the bunkers were in constant use. The soldiers looked amazingly relaxed considering they never knew if the day they were photographed might not be their very last day alive or whether they would be terribly maimed and carried away to some nearby field hospital.
The trench system also contains two mineshafts, the biggest of which is 17 metres deep. Sadly I didn't take notes at this point but my understanding is that both the Germans and the British dug these mine shafts and then tunnelled horizontally toward the enemy lines. Something sticks in my memory that the British used Welsh coal miners to dig these tunnels which needed to be boarded up to stop the soft earth collapsing. The objective was that once you thought you had reached the enemy lines, you would place explosives at the end of your tunnel, light the fuses and run away very fast. I think I'm right in saying that explosives were quite unreliable in those days so I'm guessing there were many occasions when the fuse lighters blew up with their explosives.
I said earlier that despite all the information and the work put in, I felt something was missing. The pictures we have all seen of trench warfare are almost universally pictures of mud and filth. I accept that visiting in mid July under a beautiful Belgian sun could not give this realism. But the other thing missing was sound. Massive guns were constantly blazing out across the landscape, both from behind your own lines and from the enemy lines, sometimes miles away. I took some video footage when I was in one of the trenches and have added, what I feel, is some realistic sound.
When we left Bayernwald, we looked out across the fields toward the city of Ypres and it was then that I truly realised the enormity of this war, on this area of continental Europe. Right in the very distance of this photo you can see some of the spires of churches in the city. The guns stationed here, at Bayernwald, could reach that far with their deadly fire-power. Not only were there three battles of Ypres but the town was almost totally ruined. It was also, I think, the scene of the first use of poisonous gas as a weapon of war.
We left Bayernwald and headed to another battle site before arriving at our final destination of the day. This site was known as Hill 60. It was originally just a heap of earth formed from digging out a cutting for the Ypres to Comines railway. It was known as Hill 60 after the contour line that marked its boundary. It was captured by the Germans in November 1914. The first battle began in April 1915. Initially the allied forces took control but, following gas attacks, the Germans retook the hill at the beginning of May.
Attacks continued over the next years and the landscape around showed many signs of the deep holes made by shells and constant bombardment. We initially thought that the object in the second photo might be a shell left over from the battles but we sent James down to examine it and he didn't think it was. There was also a memorial which, sadly, had been destroyed by the Germans in World War Two.
We then headed into Ypres itself, ultimately for the most poignant of ceremonies relating to World War One. We were able to park in the very centre of the town and headed over to the various museums and attractions all contained within one massive building. By the way, Ypres is the French spelling of the town while Ieper is the Dutch spelling used by most Belgians. The good old English tommies from World War One called it wipers.
That building was the old Cloth Hall. In the Middle Ages Flemish cloth was a prosperous industry for Ypres. The original Cloth Hall was finished in 1304 but was completely devastated during World War One. Between 1933 and 1967 it was beautifully reconstructed. It is 125 metres wide and has a bell tower which is 70 metres tall. Everything is built around a central square and we looked from the outside at what appeared to be a rather drab, grey set of windows.
But, from the inside, we saw what I have to say was possibly the most intricate, detailed and colourful stain glass window I have ever seen. Every pane showed a different scene. Obviously, I assume, it was all done in the last century but that took nothing away from its impact.
The building contains two large museums. One is the Flanders Field Museum and the other is the Ypres Museum. For no reason that I can recall we chose the Ypres Museum, paid our money, put on our wristbands and entered the museum. No photographs were allowed inside the museum so I will have to tell you that it was well laid out and told the history of Ypres through the ages. It was, therefore, well-named.
Once we had finished our tour, it was time to leave for my birthday meal. Some of you may know that I can be a little bit impatient with modern technology. This would appear to be a trait shared by my daughter-in-law. To leave you had to pass your wristband over a button and the gate would open. Having passed her band over twice, maybe not the correct part of her band, Rachel got impatient as nothing was happening. She therefore hit what was presumably the emergency button, all gates opened, possibly in Ypres, and we left quickly and, hopefully, discreetly.
James and Rachel had booked my birthday meal at the Hotel Ariane and a beautiful venue it was. We were shown to an outside table in the gardens which was a lovely setting. The service was superb and the food, or at least my food, just as good. I decided on the Pan Fried Dover Sole with a foaming butter sauce, mushrooms, an endive salad (in case anyone is worried, I didn't chose the salad, it came with the dish) and Belgian Fries. For dessert I had a Dame Blanche, reminisced about having these in France with such passion that I think Rachel and James chose the same. The actual food pictures are mine but I managed to find a library picture of the restaurant and the blue arrow marks almost exactly where we sat.
As I said earlier, Ypres had seen some of the heaviest fighting in World War One. By October 1918 nearly 200,000 Commonwealth servicemen had been killed. The town was in ruins. The mayor at the time felt it should not be rebuilt, declaring that it was holy ground. However, the town was rebuilt but the Menim Gate was chosen as a place to have a memorial to the lives that had been lost and who had no grave. The gate contains the names of more than 54,000 soldiers who died in Belgium.
Inside the gate, when we were there, there was a row of wreaths made up of the traditional red poppies. You may wonder why poppies are a symbol of remembrance. There are several answers. The scarlet corn poppy grows naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again ripped open as World War One raged through Europe's heart. The poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the otherwise barren battlefields. A Canadian surgeon, John McCrae, wrote a poem called “In Flanders Fields” and the poppy came to represent the tremendous loss of life that had happened there. This is his poem:-
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. The poppy was adopted by The Royal British Legion as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, in aid of those serving in the British Armed Forces, after its formation in 1921.
The people of Ypres have another way of remembering the sacrifices made between 1914 and 1918. Every evening since 1928, buglers of the Last Post Association sound the Last Post in the roadway under the Memorial's arches. The ceremony has become part of the daily life of Ypres and traffic is stopped from passing through the memorial each day at this time. Only during the German occupation of the Second World War was the ceremony interrupted. At that time it was held at Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, England.
We made our way down to the gate ready for the ceremony which begins at 8.00pm precisely. Many other people had gathered and we were somewhat at the back but, by holding my camera way above my head I did manage to get some photos of the ceremony. If my calculations are correct we witnessed the 31,470th time the ceremony had been performed there. It was a very moving moment and, in a strange way, a perfect end to my 70th birthday.
We'll finish by letting you listen to the recording I made live of the Last Post played at the Menim Gate on my birthday, July 17th, 2019. You can also hear the choir sing the first verse of Abide With Me.
This subject was brought home to me even more with our first visit of my 70th birthday. One of Rachel's ancestors, I think it was a great, great uncle but I may be wrong, had, like so many New Zealanders and Australians, enlisted in their army and come over to Europe to help with the fighting in World War One. Sadly, he had been killed and Rachel wanted to visit the cemetery where he had been buried.
As we drove to the cemetery, called the Trois Arbres Cemetery and actually just over the border in France, we passed a few other small cemeteries all very similar. When you consider that there were 11 million military personnel killed in the war and also 7 million civilians and so much of the fighting took place in this area of France and Belgium, it isn't that surprising there are so many cemeteries. Originally the site of this cemetery was the 2nd Australian casualty clearing station and some burials came from deaths at that hospital. On April 10th 1918 the nearby village of Steenwerck was captured by German forces and the cemetery fell into German hands the following day.
After the Armistice, in November 1918, over 700 graves were brought into the cemetery from the battlefields of Steenwerck, Nieppe, Bailleul and Neuve-Eglise. There are now 1,704 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 435 of the burials are unidentified but there are special memorials to ten casualties known or believed to be buried among them.
The pictures below show the centrepiece of the cemetery plus just three of the headstone. All three are unknown, the first at least having a regiment. There were so many graves of unknown soldiers. Soldiers who fought bravely but their loved ones never knew where they were buried.
Rachel was able to find the headstone of her relation and I left her and James to have a quiet moment with their thoughts. To be killed on a battle field, thousands of miles from home and with little likelihood of your resting place ever being visited by those you left behind was a very poignant thought. I was glad that Rachel was able to, eventually, put right this wrong.
With one final look at the rows and rows of headstones, we left Trois Arbres behind and moved on, back into Belgium, and another reminder of this stupid war that killed so many and solved so little. It was initially known as The Great War and called the War to end Wars. It was neither. Great in terms of how many countries became involved, great in the number of lives lost but nothing that kills 18 million members of the human race should ever be called great. As for the war to end all wars, well we already know that 20 years later it all started again.
And one last word from Harry Patch who died in 2009 at the age of 111 and was the last surviving British soldier from WWI. I couldn't agree with him more.
In order to visit our next site we needed to buy tickets in a place called Kemmel. It was a beautiful village, cobble stone roads, flowers everywhere and incredibly clean. It was coming up to lunch time so we decided to try to find somewhere to have a bite to eat. We didn't want too much as, later that day, I was being treated to a birthday meal. We looked in a few places but eventually settled on a small shop selling what looked like home-made snacks. I don't actually remember what we had but, it is possible, that once Rachel or James have read this I will be able to fill you all in.
We sat outside the shop to eat and then had a little sit down on what I would describe as the village green. I suppose in time you can get used to it but the sound of tyres on cobble stones was pretty loud, at least to my ears. At this stage I should maybe tell of our near disaster when driving in the morning. Belgian roads, main roads, all have filters on and off. French roads are the same and my earliest memory of driving in France was of the famous “Passage a droit” signs, meaning the car joining the road has right of way.
Anyway, early this morning, there were two filters off in close succession and I think we nearly took one and James suddenly shouted “no not that one”. I immediately turned to the left and moved on to the road that was there. I then, immediately again, noticed that on our main road there was now no carriageway on the left of us. Having them there is always useful when driving on the right. My brain shot into gear, and I realised we had actually gone through the central reservation and were now driving on the opposite carriageway. Luckily there were no other cars about. There were some of those red and white polystyrene barriers separating the carriageways so, having pulled as far over to the right as possible and as it was obviously his mistake, James was sent out to move a couple so we could slot back through and continue our journey. Luckily, no other car appeared during this dramatic operation.
The tickets we had bought, at €4 each, were for the unique reconstructed German trench systems at Bayernwald. The site was about 10 minutes from Kemmel and very remote. It was unmanned and you park at the side of small country lane, surrounded by fields. You walk a couple of hundred yards down a track road and arrive at the gate to the site. You put your ticket in a slot by the gate on the right hand side, watch for the green light, then push the gate forwards and you're in.
The first thing you see is an information site, open but with a roof, which has a 3D map, some old and new aerial photos and a set of information boards around the side. The site has four bunkers and two mineshafts as well as the trenches. The first excavations were undertaken in 1971 by a schoolteacher called Andre Becquart but after he died the site was abandoned until 1998. Since being restored, it was opened in 2004 but again needed repairs a few years ago. Happily it is now in a pretty good condition. Next to the information site was a large stone that had the words, in several languages, “It is time not to look back in anger but to look forward with hope”.
Alongside the former Ms Hope, we then ventured further in and could see the trench system stretching before us. The earliest trenches were, apparently, made of wood and sandbags but by 1916 they looked more like the ones we saw. These had a frame and were connected by wickerwork. During the time we were there, several school parties were also present undertaking various tasks and being given information and having the chance to ask questions.
We then stepped into the trench system and it was here that I felt a certain amount of atmosphere was missing. Don't get me wrong, the Bayernwald trenches are certainly worth a visit. The site is well laid out and the information boards, maps and photos are brilliantly presented. There is much you can find out about the whole area and the thinking behind trench warfare. By walking through the actual trenches you can get a feel for the amount of work that it took to build the trenches in the first place.
You also come across four of the ten bunkers that were originally on the site. Once again, you can learn from the boards that the bunkers near the front line were made of prefabricated concrete blocks, those further to the rear were just concrete. A walk inside the bunker, too dark to photograph, gave a good idea of the terrible conditions these soldiers lived under and the cramped space which was, essentially their protected homes.
Various wall pictures around the site showed images from the time when these trenches and the bunkers were in constant use. The soldiers looked amazingly relaxed considering they never knew if the day they were photographed might not be their very last day alive or whether they would be terribly maimed and carried away to some nearby field hospital.
The trench system also contains two mineshafts, the biggest of which is 17 metres deep. Sadly I didn't take notes at this point but my understanding is that both the Germans and the British dug these mine shafts and then tunnelled horizontally toward the enemy lines. Something sticks in my memory that the British used Welsh coal miners to dig these tunnels which needed to be boarded up to stop the soft earth collapsing. The objective was that once you thought you had reached the enemy lines, you would place explosives at the end of your tunnel, light the fuses and run away very fast. I think I'm right in saying that explosives were quite unreliable in those days so I'm guessing there were many occasions when the fuse lighters blew up with their explosives.
I said earlier that despite all the information and the work put in, I felt something was missing. The pictures we have all seen of trench warfare are almost universally pictures of mud and filth. I accept that visiting in mid July under a beautiful Belgian sun could not give this realism. But the other thing missing was sound. Massive guns were constantly blazing out across the landscape, both from behind your own lines and from the enemy lines, sometimes miles away. I took some video footage when I was in one of the trenches and have added, what I feel, is some realistic sound.
When we left Bayernwald, we looked out across the fields toward the city of Ypres and it was then that I truly realised the enormity of this war, on this area of continental Europe. Right in the very distance of this photo you can see some of the spires of churches in the city. The guns stationed here, at Bayernwald, could reach that far with their deadly fire-power. Not only were there three battles of Ypres but the town was almost totally ruined. It was also, I think, the scene of the first use of poisonous gas as a weapon of war.
We left Bayernwald and headed to another battle site before arriving at our final destination of the day. This site was known as Hill 60. It was originally just a heap of earth formed from digging out a cutting for the Ypres to Comines railway. It was known as Hill 60 after the contour line that marked its boundary. It was captured by the Germans in November 1914. The first battle began in April 1915. Initially the allied forces took control but, following gas attacks, the Germans retook the hill at the beginning of May.
Attacks continued over the next years and the landscape around showed many signs of the deep holes made by shells and constant bombardment. We initially thought that the object in the second photo might be a shell left over from the battles but we sent James down to examine it and he didn't think it was. There was also a memorial which, sadly, had been destroyed by the Germans in World War Two.
We then headed into Ypres itself, ultimately for the most poignant of ceremonies relating to World War One. We were able to park in the very centre of the town and headed over to the various museums and attractions all contained within one massive building. By the way, Ypres is the French spelling of the town while Ieper is the Dutch spelling used by most Belgians. The good old English tommies from World War One called it wipers.
That building was the old Cloth Hall. In the Middle Ages Flemish cloth was a prosperous industry for Ypres. The original Cloth Hall was finished in 1304 but was completely devastated during World War One. Between 1933 and 1967 it was beautifully reconstructed. It is 125 metres wide and has a bell tower which is 70 metres tall. Everything is built around a central square and we looked from the outside at what appeared to be a rather drab, grey set of windows.
But, from the inside, we saw what I have to say was possibly the most intricate, detailed and colourful stain glass window I have ever seen. Every pane showed a different scene. Obviously, I assume, it was all done in the last century but that took nothing away from its impact.
The building contains two large museums. One is the Flanders Field Museum and the other is the Ypres Museum. For no reason that I can recall we chose the Ypres Museum, paid our money, put on our wristbands and entered the museum. No photographs were allowed inside the museum so I will have to tell you that it was well laid out and told the history of Ypres through the ages. It was, therefore, well-named.
Once we had finished our tour, it was time to leave for my birthday meal. Some of you may know that I can be a little bit impatient with modern technology. This would appear to be a trait shared by my daughter-in-law. To leave you had to pass your wristband over a button and the gate would open. Having passed her band over twice, maybe not the correct part of her band, Rachel got impatient as nothing was happening. She therefore hit what was presumably the emergency button, all gates opened, possibly in Ypres, and we left quickly and, hopefully, discreetly.
James and Rachel had booked my birthday meal at the Hotel Ariane and a beautiful venue it was. We were shown to an outside table in the gardens which was a lovely setting. The service was superb and the food, or at least my food, just as good. I decided on the Pan Fried Dover Sole with a foaming butter sauce, mushrooms, an endive salad (in case anyone is worried, I didn't chose the salad, it came with the dish) and Belgian Fries. For dessert I had a Dame Blanche, reminisced about having these in France with such passion that I think Rachel and James chose the same. The actual food pictures are mine but I managed to find a library picture of the restaurant and the blue arrow marks almost exactly where we sat.
As I said earlier, Ypres had seen some of the heaviest fighting in World War One. By October 1918 nearly 200,000 Commonwealth servicemen had been killed. The town was in ruins. The mayor at the time felt it should not be rebuilt, declaring that it was holy ground. However, the town was rebuilt but the Menim Gate was chosen as a place to have a memorial to the lives that had been lost and who had no grave. The gate contains the names of more than 54,000 soldiers who died in Belgium.
Inside the gate, when we were there, there was a row of wreaths made up of the traditional red poppies. You may wonder why poppies are a symbol of remembrance. There are several answers. The scarlet corn poppy grows naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again ripped open as World War One raged through Europe's heart. The poppy was one of the only plants to grow on the otherwise barren battlefields. A Canadian surgeon, John McCrae, wrote a poem called “In Flanders Fields” and the poppy came to represent the tremendous loss of life that had happened there. This is his poem:-
In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween 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. The poppy was adopted by The Royal British Legion as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, in aid of those serving in the British Armed Forces, after its formation in 1921.
The people of Ypres have another way of remembering the sacrifices made between 1914 and 1918. Every evening since 1928, buglers of the Last Post Association sound the Last Post in the roadway under the Memorial's arches. The ceremony has become part of the daily life of Ypres and traffic is stopped from passing through the memorial each day at this time. Only during the German occupation of the Second World War was the ceremony interrupted. At that time it was held at Brookwood Military Cemetery in Surrey, England.
We made our way down to the gate ready for the ceremony which begins at 8.00pm precisely. Many other people had gathered and we were somewhat at the back but, by holding my camera way above my head I did manage to get some photos of the ceremony. If my calculations are correct we witnessed the 31,470th time the ceremony had been performed there. It was a very moving moment and, in a strange way, a perfect end to my 70th birthday.
We'll finish by letting you listen to the recording I made live of the Last Post played at the Menim Gate on my birthday, July 17th, 2019. You can also hear the choir sing the first verse of Abide With Me.
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