Ieper, Belgium
November 17,
2015
Latitude 52º 49'
N
Ieper, or
Ypres, six days after the 98th observance of the
Armistice that ended World War 1. The timing was perfect for a visit
to this area that saw far too much activity between 1915 and 1918.
We arrived
Monday after a six hour drive from Hillegon, The Netherlands. By
4:30, after driving in a steady rain, we arrived at our destination,
55A Kriekstraat, Ieper, Belgium. It would be Lomme and me for three
days before Ina and Steven would join us later.
It was a moving
and somber day as we visited a string of allied cemeteries in the
area known simply as Ypres Salient or, as it is better known,
Flanders Field.
There was a
solid uniformity about the stones—simple white marble tablets each
bearing the name of the soldier, his death date, his age and, often,
a representation of his regiment's insignia. In death, all these
soldiers were equal. The day was intermittently sunny and wonderfully
quiet. Few people were out and about on this mid November day which
allowed us to wander amongst the perfectly manicured cemeteries.
We stopped as
several memorials, but held off until the end to visit Tyne Cot,
where over 10,000 men were buried. These were, of course, men, but as
we traveled among the stones, their ages were disconcerting... 19,
21, 23... These were just children—older children, but children
none the less. And they were children far from home.
Private
J.
Black
8th Bn.
Canadian Inf.
10th November
1917 Age 19
Corporal
A.
K. Pearce
Bn.
Australian Inf.
21st September
1917 Age 22
Private
J.
Condon
Royal
Irish Regiment
24th May
1915 Age 14
Private
J. A. Bull
Royal
Warwickshire Regt.
27th August
1917 Age 19
But most stones
listed no name. The vast majority of bodies buried in these
cemeteries were never identified. Imagine sending a
son/brother/grandson/friend/husband/nephew off and never knowing what
happened to them? For the unnamed bodies that were found, there was
no one at home to contact to offer a sentiment to be added at the
bottom of the tombstone.
A New Zealand Soldier
of
the Great War
Known
Unto God
And reading the
stones made me think of the subtitle to Kurt Vonnegut's
book Slaughterhouse Five: the Children's Crusade.
The “men” buried here were boys, at least from the point of view
of my 66 years. Boys far from home—the UK, Canada, New Zealand and
Australia—dominated these plots. Because this was 100 years ago,
and because it didn't affect me in any way, directly or indirectly,
there was an emotional disconnect. Unlike the Vietnam Memorial in
Washington where the names of my peers are listed, this was from a
different time and place.
Still, it was
difficult not to be affected.
It were the
inscriptions that moved me the most. Simple one and two line
sentences that families far away were permitted to put on the stone:
Rest
Well Brave Heart
A
devoted son and brother
Thy
will be done
We
shall meet
to
part no more
Mother
He
died
amidst
the short and shell
our
son, brave and true
In
loving memory
of
my only son
by
his sorrowing mother
Sleep
on beloved
until
the day breaks
and
shadows flee away
My dear friend
Lomme and I spent a wonderful day sharing this moving experience. It
was a lovely day and the bucolic Belgian countryside spread out
before us. Small villages with brick homes and terra-cotta colored
slate roofs, were punctuated by a single Catholic church. Cows and
sheep filled fields and crops were still being harvested—sugar
beets, cabbages, carrots, brussels sprout and dried brown rows of
corn. Every now and then we'd pass a muddy field and tried to imagine
the hundreds of thousands of men who had to endure mud, rain, snow,
cold, life in trenches and the constant threat of death.
A
hundred years ago, however, this was a landscape of utter desolation
where thousands upon thousands of allied and German soldiers died.
Everything had been destroyed. Everything we were looking at
was "new." Even now, bodies surface each spring. On
this soft mid-November day, it was hard to imagine the horror the men
who lived through this experienced each day.
At day's end we
attended “the Last Post” at the Menin Gate in Ieper. It was hard
not to have an emotional reaction to this ceremony. Even I, fortunate
to have lived my entire life in peace, was moved by the
simplicity of the bugles and the simplicity of every day people
laying poppy wreaths in this great memorial to the 54,9976
Commonwealth soldiers engraved on the walls who had no know grave in
this area.
This could have
been me had I been born in another place time, and the expression
“There go I but by the grace of God,” crossed my mind more than
once. Those young men were no different than I. They had dreams, and
hopes for the future. They were loved and loved in return.
When the last
bugle had blown, and after we toured the memorial and pondered the
thousands of names, we slipped back to our comfortable home we'd
rented for the week. We would sleep warm and secure.
A hundred years
ago it was a very different story.
But the story
didn't end there. A week later, as we were returning to The
Netherlands, we stopped in Middleburg for lunch. By chance we landed
in a restaurant operated by a hotel management
school. The dining room was filled with young people. I couldn't
avoid looking at them and thinking that these boys were no different
from the names on the tombstones in Flanders. I could not imagine a
world so demonic that 11,000,000 military would die. It was a
sobering lunch.
I
gave silent thanks—for them and for me—that we lived in a time of
relative peace. American Thankgiving was coming later in the week. I
had a lot to be thankful for.
In Flanders
Field
John Mc Crae
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
In Flanders
Field.
Take up our
quarrel with foe:
To you from
failing hands we throw
The torch; be
your to hold it high.
If ye break
faith with us who die
We shall not
sleep, though poppies grow
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