Ypres

Just an hour or so later after leaving Brugge we’re in Flanders Fields in Ypres, a small enchanting town of some 40,000 with a significant WW1 history.  We pass many turn offs to cemetries & Jeff tells of the Belgian army still removing unexploded munitions & farmers still discovering occasional remains.  A local large rally car event offers distraction with crazy little zoom boxes noisily jiggling down the cobbled streets exciting comment from Wil.  Our campsite is full of welcoming war-buff Brits….and a pain in the a*** Dutchie camper who tries to turn us away before we get to the reception, saying the place is fully reserved so he can ‘steal‘ the best site when the office opens.  

Once settled in & after a late lunch and writing homework, the good father packs camera bag & bike locks and the mumma takes backpack with water, hats, sunscreen, tissues, raincoats, puncture kit, warm tops and in-case snacks. The hidden treasure is a scrumptious looking coffee & nut soft nougat bought here in Belgium.  French influence?  NO ITALIAN - woo-hoo!  More to come!  

Our treadlies take us to the unmissable & majestic Menenpoort or Menin Gate.  

The Menin Gate

It’s a memorial built after WW1, inscribed with the names of some 55,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers who have no graves.  It straddles the old, massive rampart city walls and the river - very picturesque and it was through here that the Allied forces traveled to the front. 

Wil does a few tricks on the bike taking a tumble and injuring his R wrist & his pride in front of the gathering school groups.  Mumma’s bag doesn’t have a bandage.  We’re in time for the 8pm nightly service where decorated old chaps with their bugles stand beneath this huge arch and play The Last Post.  It is so moving.  They have done this EVERY night since the gate was completed in1928 (except during WW2 when the Germans occupied Ypres).  Within microseconds my face is pink, my nose purple and my eyes are hot with tears.  

Just mad imagining the young, naive boys who must have been utterly terrified and ultimately aware once here, of their likely miserable and painful wounding or death.

Within 10 minutes, we’re home and tucked up in bed.

24/6

Sunday morning, wind and rain. Jen - should I or shouldn’t I exercise??  Go anyways you wuss! The only thing that bothers me is running against the wind and trying to dry out things, especially my only pair of shoes afterward. Toughen up and get Dutchie!  All this whilst I dress and then ready, I go.

Jeff and the kids read in bed and after the mumma returns, have a big breakfast, slam some school, discuss the perils of gossip, especially when it’s electronic and then decked out in rain coats we wander off into the town, walk over the ped bridge to the ramparts (some nearly 1000yrs old!  This place is steeped in conflict),

then into the centre where we have just missed the rally finale but the square is chocked with it’s paraphernalia, somewhat obscuring the majestic town hall and cathedral which were flattened in WW1. 

We explore the tourist info centre (almost everything is about war), then stop for a coffee and a hot choc in a cozy cafe, the kids choosing their own table for a 1 on 1 chat, the adults find theirs and grapple with the reality of war - the reality of kill or be killed (if not the enemy in front then your side will kill you - 360 British troops were shot against a post up the road in the square for deserting), the reality of what good people become/do in the hideous setting of war.  It should be banned!  But then you would probably have to ban all conflict right back down to the domestic level to achieve that.  How bad would it have been if we just let the Germans do what they wanted in 1914?  Turned the other cheek?  We might all be driving Mercedes and speaking German and WW2/Hitler would probably never have happened.  Who knows.  

Ahh the luxury of blissing out on the daily menu of peace, cultural diversity, natural beauty, good sleeps and lots of time to read/chat/think/be.

Back at Eddie and straight on the bikes for a rampart ride. 

Did the horse shoe tour of the skirt of the old town ramparts, through a very privileged little cemetery that seems to have been for the engineer types of WW1 Allies, and quite a lot of Maori soldiers. 

Lille Gate Cemetry

Back to the camp ground for a Belgian Beer + BBQ poitjke cookup in the sunny/clear evening, then into Ed for family movie - “Get Smart” (recent version, way too funny!) and a zizz interrupted by what I thought was a dream of the sound of guns/artillery going on for up to ½ an hour, but on waking the next morning learned from the rest of the family that they had the same dream! 

  

25/6

fine sunny day!  Kids asleep, parents a coffee, Jen for a rampart run, Jeff for a ride interrupted by a few beautiful war cemeteries - I can’t go past them, have to wander in - something spiritual, and then came across Hill 60 of the movie “Beneath Hill 60”.  No exercise here, stopping too often.


Returning from the bike ride noticed the sounds of Monday morning in Ypres - birds chirping, kids yelling and cheering in the school athletics carnival across the road from the campground, a lawnmower in the distance ....... a far cry from the sounds of 1914-18, and the smells, even the nowadays piggery pong would have nothing on the stench of that war - all those unidentifiable bodies, the sons/fathers/brothers/mates lying in the fields waiting for the shooting and shelling to abate so they can be lain to rest in some decency - many never were.

Familiar routine of breakfast, 2nd coffee, school and then onto the bikes to take the family for a trundle around some of the sites I visited earlier in the day.  Rode past a lovely lake and through a small village where we picked up some dark bread.

Up the hill and poured over Hill 60 which was a strategic point due to its elevation. 

The Germans captured it early and heavily fortified it, the Allies lost big time trying to capture it and they got Aussies miners to literally undermine their trenches with tunnels, set mines and blew the hill up, followed immediately by a massive artillery barrage and 750 Germans were dead in a heartbeat.  The Germans actually invented tunnel warfare - imagine the concept - digging towards an unseen enemy who is tunneling towards you, meeting up and blowing each other up.  Seems absurd from afar.  So many men died in/around the hill that it has been left almost untouched as a monument, apart from a few grazing sheep and obviously the tunnels have been blocked for safety.

Stopped in a wooded park for a lunch and a chat and then the kids enjoyed the playground, then on the bikes and just treadled about with the spires of Ypres town visible to lead us home when enough was had.  The fields are supporting the muscliest cattle we’ve seen, producing a bumper wheat crop, that crop Jen mentioned earlier that is so pleasing to the eye, lots of potatoes, and piggeries just stink!  

Rounded towards the spires as Kel begins to jack up, stopped at the most beautiful cemetery yet,  (there's one around every corner here)

then with some drizzle setting in whizzed back to the campsite where there is a cacophony coming from down the hill - rock concert!  And it’s that heavy growling garbage.  Bring on Xavier Rudd and the head phones.

26/6

Back from my 30 minute ramparts run (Menin Gate in her full glory this morning, reflecting perfectly in the still moat waters against a blue sky back drop), Ed thrown open to the sunlight, kids gathered from their slumber with kisses, shower bag ready, breakfast prepared, mocca pot loaded with much anticipated aromatic coffee...and Jeff’s still not back from his bike ride.

Back from my shower just as he pulls up flustered having lost his built in radar this morning.  Turns out he chased the wrong township spires and then another set....until a welcomed sign to Ieper 90 minutes later!

Responding to a strange need to see,and have the children see, Tyne Cot, the commonwealth’s largest war cemetery, we plan our trajectory to Ghent via Passendaele. The kids write poems ;Kel’s entitled Poppies & Wil, his version of 

John McCrae’s In Flander’s Fields.

Struggling, I think I’ve had enough of war graves and memorials and yet I’m lured into the strange cauldron that is sombre reflection, horror, shame, unquenchable sadness and realisation.

Tyne Cot Cemetery

Furthermore, the sites are often breath-taking, high on hills with a panorama of crop covered fields stretching to horizons beaded with tiny medieval church spires. 

The buildings,crosses and remembrance walls are often architecturally splendid- grand,simple designs in white marbles. As we round the corner a marvellous circular white stone design sits profoundly amongst a purple flowered crop and cradles a sea of 12,000 ordered white head stones (only 3,000 of which honour identified soldiers)…….not to mention the 35,000 names on the walls of those with no known grave. 

Wil react’s initially to the 4 German head stones & searches the religious acknowledgments,favouring the star of David;Kel impresses upon me that there are no wars in BK Land, and Jeff struggles deeply with the tragedy of enormous loss& futility. I imagine all the young men standing up from their graves,laughing & well and realise the size of the lost vital potential.

Back in the car, the kids read and we talk . What would it feel like standing there alongside pensive Germans? It would make more sense to me to do away with the still softly present ‘us and them’.Jeff reminds me that we now live in a much more tolerant ‘one world’ having had chance to travel & know each other as more alike than different. We discuss the laws around conscription and imagine current day scenarios highlighting the challenge of decisions to go to war.