Day three - We invade Belgium!

We had an earlier start today as we were going up to the Ypres area - a name that was notorious during the Great War. Our first port of call was at a place in Flanders called Hooge (pronounced "Hoo-guh"). It has a hotel there with a theme park behind it. In front are a number of old trenches, trees and and a beautiful small lake. During the First World War Hooge was the site of a château which was used as the British Divisional Headquarters for the area. Between 1914 and 1918 control of the area alternated several times between the opposing armies. During the conflict the British exploded an enormous mine which created a crater which in the course of time has become the lovely lake! During this time, the chateau was completely destroyed along with the entire village. Next we travelled on to the largest burial ground for Commonwealth forces in the world, the Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing. The cemetery grounds were given to the United Kingdom in perpetuity by King Albert I of Belgium in recognition of the sacrifices made by the British Empire in the defence and liberation of Belgium during the war. It is located outside Passendale. The name "Tyne Cot" is said to come from the Northumberland Fusiliers seeing a resemblance between the German concrete pill boxes, which still stand in the middle of the cemetery, and typical Tyneside workers' cottages - Tyne Cots. The area was strategically important to both sides fighting there. It was captured by the Third Australian Division and the New Zealand Division on 4th October 1917 and soon after a cemetery for British and Canadian war dead was begun. The cemetery was recaptured by German forces on 13 April 1918 and was finally liberated by Belgian forces on 28 September of that year. After the Armistice, the cemetery was massively enlarged from its original 343 graves. The Cross of Sacrifice that marks many British war cemeteries was built on top of a German pill box in the centre of the cemetery,apparently at the suggestion of King George V who visited the cemetery in 1922 as it neared completion. Unusually the tall pedestal on which the cross stands has steps leading up to a viewing platform which allows a panoramic view of the whole cemetery. The stone wall surrounding the cemetery makes up the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing. On completion of the Menin Gate memorial to the missing in Ypres, it was discovered to be too small to contain all the names as originally planned. An arbitrary cut-off point of 15 August 1917 was chosen and the names of the UK missing after this date were inscribed on the Tyne Cot memorial instead. There are the names of 33,783 soldiers of the UK forces on the memorial wall, plus those of a further 1,176 New Zealanders. There are now 11,952 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in the cemetery itself. 8,365 of the burials are unidentified. One interesting grave is that of Second Lieutenant Arthur Conway Young. The personal message on the headstone reads "Sacrificed to the fallacy that war can end war". Most unusual to see such a comment! Also interesting were the graves of two German soldiers, - presumably they died as prisoners. After our visit we stopped briefly at the Canadian memorial located in the village of Saint Julien. It commemorates the Canadian First Division's participation in the Second Battle of Ypres which included the defence against the first poison gas attacks along the Western Front. It is a very tall column on top of which is "The Brooding Soldier" the bowed head of a helmeted serviceman. It is enormously striking. Then it was on to lunch at "Varlet Farm" where our host was a delightful lady called Charlotte Cardoen who runs a "bed and breakfast" there. We had our first taste ever of the locally produced Passendale cheese during lunch. It resembles a loaf of bread and has a hard, but edible brown rind with spots of white. Inside, the flesh is golden, dotted with small holes and very creamy. It has a firm and damp consistency, slightly sweet bouquet and mild flavour. Truly delightful! After lunch Charlotte (whose English is amazingly fluent) told us something of the history of the farm which had been completely destroyed during the Great War. She revealed that unexploded munitions are regularly turned up when the land is ploughed and showed us a large collection of such items - some live but mostly harmless. After saying our goodbyes to Charlotte we stopped briefly at a German cemetery - Langemark. More than 44,000 soldiers are buried here. The local village was the scene of the first gas attacks by the German army, marking the beginning of the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. It is a sombre area, darkened by many oak trees whose acorns were littering the ground. Four ghostly stone figures can be seen at the far end as one enters the cemetery. There is a mass grave near the entrance. This comrades' grave contains 24,917 servicemen. Between the oak trees, next to this mass grave, are another 10,143 soldiers (including two British soldiers killed in 1918). 3,000 German school students (volunteer soldiers) who were killed during the First Battle of Ypres are buried in a third part of the cemetery. Steve read us a horrifying account of how these idealistic and militarily inexperienced young men were systematically mown down by experienced British soldiers during a German charge. I couldn't help but think of the really likeable German medical students who have come my way for teaching over the years - so intelligent, hard working, enthusiastic and enormously respectful - I'm sure that most of the 3000 would have been similar, had I known them. Next we were taken to "Hill 60" the site of an Australian assault that was subsidiary to the Battle of Neuve Chapelle. Hill 60 was not a natural highpoint, but was created as a result of the digging of the nearby railway cutting. As such, it was a strategically significant area of high ground and was the scene of much intense fighting over the years. In the first operation of its kind by the British, the Corps of Royal Engineers specialist tunnelling companies laid six mines nearby by April 10, 1915, right under the Germans. These were filled with around 10,000 pounds of explosives, with the resulting explosions ripping an enormous crater over a period of some 10 seconds. It flung debris almost 300 feet into the air and scattered it for a further 300 yards in all directions. No one knows how many Germans were killed as a result. The 90 feet deep crater is now in a forest and time has transformed it into a lake with trees and grass growing on the steep slopes running down to the water's edge - a peaceful beauty spot today! We moved on to Ypres, a city which nearly a hundred years ago had been devastated by the conflict but has been beautifully rebuilt. We spent some time looking round the fascinating museum of WW1 artefacts then went to the famous Menin Gate to watch the sounding of the Last Post and Reveille ceremonies - daily events since the Armistice apart from when the Nazis occupied the city. It was enormously well attended - by parties of school children as well as many adults. I have placed a short edited video of the ceremony here. Apologies for the poor quality of the pictures - lighting was less than adequate.



The Menin Gate is very beautifully illuminated by night as shown in the photograph here.

It was all in all a very sobering and thought-provoking day and I'm sure caused much reflection in many of our minds as to the rights and wrongs of armed conflict.