During a holiday in Belgium in June, we spent a very moving day visiting some of the dozens of World War One battlefields and cemeteries surrounding the city of Ypres. A very wet start to our holiday, with sustained heavy rain, followed by fog, served to enhance the atmosphere of the area, evoking the sort of conditions in which men fought and sacrificed their lives en masse in a toll of immeasurable slaughter in 1917. At that time, it was essential for the British to retain control of the area to avoid their supply route from the sea at Nieuwport being cut off. Unfortunately, Ypres lies in a depression in the terrain and the Germans to the East occupied the higher ground. Much of the low-lying ground is semi-porous clay and sustained heavy shelling destroyed the drainage system, so that prolonged torrential rain in the summer of 1917 reduced the whole area to a morass of waterlogged shell-craters, into which men, vehicles and artillery sank. Many wounded men pitched forward under the weight of their heavy packs and, as a consequence, died by drowning in the waterlogged ground under their feet, along with their horses and mules.
With mist hanging over the near-flat terrain, we visited the striking memorial at Langemarck, where 2,000 Canadians were killed by the first German chlorine gas attack of the war in April 1915. Inevitably, after initial indignation, the British retaliated later by deploying even deadlier phosgene and mustard gas. On our tour, we encountered numerous battle sites, trenches, and bunkers, including the infamous Hill 60, where over 20 tons of high explosive charges were detonated in tunnels constructed under the German positions, instantly killing 700 soldiers. Today you can walk over the huge grassy crater - now peaceful woodland, where poppies grow in the clearings and where, eerily and evocatively, we heard a lone nightingale singing. We visited the Hooge crater museum, built on the site of another huge underground explosion. It seemed insensitive to sit eating one's lunch in the café alongside, where beneath still lay the remains of many dead soldiers, both Commonwealth and German, who have no known grave. Poignantly, the museum was opposite a cemetery, which was closed for repairs, as the recent heavy rains had caused the clay soil round the gravestones to become waterlogged, just as it was during the Third Battle of Ypres.
From there, we visited Tyne Cot, the largest war cemetery for Commonwealth forces in the world, which emerged through the mist as we approached it and was awesome in its area of coverage. It is situated on the slightly higher ground of the Passchendaele Ridge, looking south-west towards Ypres. The rebuilt spires of St. Martin's cathedral and the Cloth Hall are visible on the horizon. This is the dominating view over the northern part of the Ypres Salient which the Germans had from the Ridge, as the Allied soldiers tried to approach them during the Third Battle of Ypres (Battle of Passchendaele). Some 12,000 victims are buried at Tyne Cot, around 70% of them unidentified, with their graves bearing the simple inscription, "A Soldier of the Great War, Known unto God". One grave, in particular, bears the telling message, "Sacrificed to the fallacy/ That war can end war".
Cemeteries (all meticulously maintained) are to be encountered at regular intervals along the roads in the Ypres area. But the overall impression of sadness is summed up in the approach to that city, when one passes through the vast renowned Menin Gate memorial on the outskirts. Here are recorded the names of no less than 55,000 soldiers who perished in the area, with another 35,000 being recorded at Tyne Cot due to lack of space for the inscriptions on the Gate. The view through the Gate of the meticulous and complete post-war reconstruction of medieval Ypres (with no building now more than 80 years old!) represents a true miracle of rebirth. Ironically, this rebuilding of the city was financed by huge reparations from the Germans, deeply resented at the time, and possibly a contributory factor to the discontent, which led to the rise of Nazism and the Second World War.
Our feelings at the end of the day's travels were of course those of great sadness and of horror at being able to visualise the appalling waste of human life and the immense scale of devastation of the local environment. Not just in terms of those who died during the actual conflict, but the immeasurable loss to subsequent generations. How many great leaders, authors, poets, artists, composers, scientists, theologians, etc might have emerged from the progeny of those who were lost. Apart from the numerous scars which remain, the countryside has regenerated, although, in many places, bodies remain buried under the fields and are dug up every month, whilst the local farmers still regularly plough up literally tons of shells and other artefacts. Understandably, lingering resentment among the Belgians for the old enemy who destroyed their people, property and way of life continues to this day, aggravated by the human and financial cost of disposing of these poignant reminders of the conflict.
Such reminders of what transpired during those dreadful years should serve as an enduring lesson to all of us …….. but the folly of war continues to this day. World War One was dubbed, "the war to end all wars" - yet, a mere 25 years later, the writer recalls spending many nights as a child, taking refuge in an air-raid shelter from German bombs falling during the London Blitz of World War 2. Will we ever learn?
Peter Gibbens