Week 2 – Wednesday 10 July – Other Countries Memorials

Today we headed off on a slightly different tack, to see some of the memorials that are maintained by other countries around Ypres.  The ones we had seen so far, are all for countries that were fighting with the British for the Allies cause, but of course, there were other countries on the Allies side, and of course, there was also the other side.

The British made the decision that in death, all soldiers would be treated as equals, so if they couldn’t repatriate all their war dead, then they would not repatriate any of them.  New Zealand followed suit in this.  In support of this, and out of gratitude for what the allies did, the Belgians had gifted in perpetuity the land that the war memorials, monuments and cemeteries are located on.  Other countries took different approaches – the French for example allowed for their servicemen to be bought back to France to be buried.

In order to understand what the other countries had done for their war dead, we decided that we would visit the French and German cemeteries.  Firstly, however, we visited Irish Farm Cemetery, which despite it’s name is not full of Irish soldiers, but was farmed by an Irish family before the war.  This grave is one of the largest allied cemeteries, and there are 23 kiwi soldiers buried there.  Unlike yesterday’s cemeteries, this one was very tightly packed, however, being a commonwealth cemetery, it was beautifully laid out and kept in pristine condition.

Next up was the German Cemetery.  This one was totally different.  It had really only come together in about the 1950’s when a number of German cemeteries were consolidated into a small number of much larger ones.  Here, the headstones are laid out flat, and each head stone contains about 16 – 20 names.  There are some large upright stone slabs that have a steel plate with the names of the dead who have never been found.   It was a very austere environment, not overly well maintained and really very down, compared to the bright and pristine cemeteries we’d seen in the previous days.  There was a bus load of English school kids there when we arrived, and I heard one of the teachers saying that it was important that the kids understood what had happened, and more importantly why it had all started, because 100 years on, many of those same conditions that had lead to the World Wars, are now starting to become more prevalent in Europe now.  The Entrance to the cemetery is a 25 metre long black tunnel that had 4 video screens, that had English translations of what was going on.  The commentary was about what the soldiers went through, not why they were there, but atleast it had English translations.  At the end of the last screen, the video ended with the instruction “Now go and visit the Cemetery”, which made both of us laugh, because it seemed very Germanic in its delivery.

Finally in the morning, was the French cemetery.  The French used crosses instead of head stones, didn’t have any English translations, and was pretty scruffy, so we got to the gate, took a photo and left.  (BTW, I’m writing this in the square in Arras, France, and the French are being their usual charming and helpful selves – no seriously, we always find them wonderful – so we’re more in favour of them today).

In the afternoon, we spent about 3 hours in In Flanders Fields Museum, which is the building you can see in the comparative photos of Ypres.  It is a magnificent building, and the time at the museum just flew by.  The presentation is very multi-media, with videos depicting the war scenes, videos of individuals acting a role and describing their role in the war – a French, a British, a German and a Belgian soldier, talking about their Christmas Eve, and how they all came together in no mans land, a chaplain talking about using the church as a hospital, a surgeon, a nurse and a sister talking about the patients, both as a group, and as individuals.  It was a very effective presentation.  

There were also lots of static displays, and large wooden story boards telling how the war developed, ebbed and flowed around Ypres.  The whole message of the museum was what a tragic waste the whole thing was.  As we were leaving, there was a whole series of banners stretching across the entire width of the building that listed the conflicts that had occurred since WWI.  It was like saying, “you’ve been through here, you’ve learned about the war, you’ve seen it’s cost in terms of deaths, shattered lives of the survivors, the destruction of an entire areas, towns and countrysides, and you’ve learnt how important it is that this never happens again, but guess what, the people who need to learn, the world and national leaders don’t and consistently put their populations through these senseless losses of lives”.