First, a couple of comments about Ypres. According to Chris, our UK guide, there are 27 official pronunciations of the city name of Ypres. He prefers "Eeps". I prefer "Yeps". Call it what you will, this city was under constant bombardment for four years. The British controlled the city and the Germans controlled the surrounding ridges. Hence, the Germans had dry ground and the British had the mud. The Europeans also did not have the same burial philosophy as the US. The Europeans buried their dead almost "where they fell" or near the battle fields or hospitals. The US, on the other hand, adopted a collective cemetery approach, where all the dead were brought to a central location. The European approach, in hind site, is more convenient for the historian in that where you find a cemetery, you would be near a battle field.
Ypres also witnessed several new battlefield innovations. It saw the first use of gas warfare (chlorine gas), flame throwers and subterranean mines.
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| Essex Farms Cemetery |
Where there were several headstones placed very close together, this meant that they found soldiers ID tags together but could not distinguish the remains of the individuals.
This was also the battle field/cemetery at which John McCrae wrote his famous poem "Flanders Fields".
The area contained some concrete bunkers built in 1917.
On the other side of this canal was "no man's land"
The trenches were lined with fossilized sandbags. The original burlap shells are gone, just the hardened sand remains.
Next we moved on to a German cemetery. The Belgium's allowed only four German cemeteries on their land. The Langemark, is the largest with over 44,000 interments. The rules the Belgium's gave to permit the German cemeteries were that each year, German school children would come to maintain the graveyard, so that they would not forget. There also could be no crosses for individual soldiers.
In the middle of Langmark, is a mass grave for about 35,000 soldiers. The names are inscribed on tablets surrounding the grave.
The other 10,000 or so inhabitants are interred in slit trenches surrounding the mass grave. Each flat stone bears the name of up to 14 individuals who are somewhere nearby.
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| Mass grave |
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| German pill boxes on the site |
We were given a hoggie for lunch on the bus.
Then we got to Tyne Cot (short for Tyne Cottage). This is the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. It contains 12,000 graves, of which 8,300 are of unknown soldiers.
The need for warm bodies by the British led them to move sailors into the front lines. This in the recruitment papers of one such naval volunteer who perished. He could not swim!
This was the German high ground which the Commonwealth spent the entire war trying to secure. You can see the three steeples of Ypres on the horizon, about three miles away.
Almost half of the soldiers buried here are known only to God.
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| One of the sailors who fought in the infantry |
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| The monument is built on top of the central German pill box |
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| A Black Watch soldier |
Our last stop of the day was at the Passchendaele museum. It was indeed moving? The location of the museum is where a chateau was once located. This was destroyed during the fighting.
They have trenches surrounding the museum. Some are "communication" trenches (connecting one trench to another) and others are combat trenches with firing steps.
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| Communication Trench |
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| Combat Trench |
Then there was the American reconstruction house. Post war, the Americans sent over thousands of "kit" houses as emergency shelters and to aid in the post war reconstruction. The museum has one of the few remaining houses.
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| A British 8 inch gun |
Tomorrow, we check out of our Ypres hotel and finish the tour of the Ypres Salient. We move on to Arras.
