Passendale and "Last Post" at the Menin Gate

The Brooding Soldier -- an 11-metre tall sculpture at the St. Julien Memorial

Passendale (Flemish spelling for Passchendaele)
It was gloomy and pouring rain for our battlefield tour yesterday, and we thought it actually enhanced the experience. (Sorry for the dark photos -- I'm without editing software here.) Our tour guide Carl arrived completely prepared. He knew where to find the place where Fred's grandfather was wounded, and everything he told us was specific to the Canadians. He even had a few pieces of information that Fred didn't know, so that makes him one super guide!

Carl's tour started with the St. Julien Memorial. During the war, the location where the memorial now stands was known as Vancouver Corner. Visible for miles around, the memorial stands 11 metres tall. It is surrounded by gardens of tall cedars trimmed into the shape of artillery shells and low cut cedars trimmed to look like shell explosions. Some of the soil of the gardens was brought from various locations across Canada to represent the broad spectrum of Canadian men who fought there in 1915.

He kept pointing out the high points in the landscape and reminding us where the opposing armies were positioned and what the sight lines were. Very useful -- actually seeing the landscape from many different angles. The advantage goes to whoever has the higher ground, even if it's only a few metres' difference. So obvious when you see it. He explained how the first gas attack worked, and we stood where the Canadians were that day as he pointed out the high point where the Germans opened the gas cylinders. Gravity and wind did the rest. There's a great description here: Ypres 1915 - Canada and the First World War - History - Veterans Affairs Canada

Tyne Cot Cemetery
We stopped at Tyne Cot -- the largest cemetery for Commonwealth forces in the world. We saw the grave of Private James Peter Robertson (1883–1917), a Canadian awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery in rushing a machine gun emplacement and rescuing two men from under heavy fire.

The Cross of Sacrifice (below) was constructed on top of an old German pillbox in the middle of the cemetery. There are four German graves for men that were treated here after the battle, when the pillbox was used as a dressing station for wounded men.

 

Around the cemetery is a long wall -- the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing. The names of some 35,000 soldiers are inscribed on this wall. The wiki says that the walls of the Menin Gate couldn't accommodate all the names, so they chose a cut-off date, and these are the names of the missing after Aug. 15, 1917.

Carl also had some wonderful stories about individual soldiers. One was about a grieving mother from Saskatchewan who wanted to bring her son's body home rather than leave it in a faraway grave. So she came to Tyne Cot, scoped the place out, then at night dug up her son's grave and bagged up his bones. The authorities caught her before she got on the boat for home. Her son was reburied in a different cemetery -- leaving an empty space at Tyne Cot which still remains.

And he told a lovely story about having gone to a cemetery on Nov. 11 one year. There was another man there, moving from headstone to headstone, speaking softly. After he was done, Carl talked to him. He was a local fellow who decided one day to choose a different cemetery each year on Remembrance Day and speak the name on each headstone aloud. Isn't that touching?

At one point as we were driving alongside a farm, Carl noticed an unexploded shell sitting at the side of the road. Even today these things are still resurfacing in the fields. The Belgian army does a regular collection run around the back roads, and farmers know to put the shells by the side of the road for collection. We stopped and looked at a selection of recovered shells, guns and grenades in somebody's garage. (And on the same corner there was an automated vending machine where you can buy baskets of fresh strawberries; it was way too cool to resist buying a basket.)

The Last Post
Since 1928 the Last Post has been played under the Menin Gate Memorial in Ieper at 8 o'clock sharp. This evening the ceremony took place for the 29,982th time. We arrived nearly an hour early and still weren't the first people there. We were all cheek by jowl by the time the ceremony started, but the crowd respectfully obeyed the request to remain silent throughout. Not even applause is permitted. We all stood in silence for the 15-minute event, then dispersed quietly. (Something I forgot to mention in my Waterloo post was that they had us observe a minute of silence. Imagine 50,000 people sitting in complete silence -- really quite something.)