We have
brought many books with us to study the War and travel the countryside, but our
most indefatigable guide is the late Miss Rose Coombs, MBE who wrote Before Endeavors Fade: A Guide to the Battlefields of the First
World War (Essex, UK: After the Battle Magazine, 2006). This unbelievably comprehensive and detailed
volume is invaluable both for its precision (“Drive another two kilometers, and
then take the left on the other side of the road past the farm gate. The road is dirt, but passable in dry season. When it ends, walk 75 meters to the copse of
trees at your left.”) and its history lessons.
You can learn the essentials of any battle, as well as how and where it
is memorialized. There is an emphasis on
the British (Before Endeavors Fade: BEF,
get it?), so mostly Ypres Salient and the Somme, but plenty about the French
and the Germans and us Yanks as well.
Miss Coombs was a WW2 vet herself (Radar operator) and worked at the
Imperial War Museum. She led tours of
the Western front for vets and authors and interested parties, and documented
it all exhaustively. She shuffled of
this mortal coil in the 1990s, but faithful editors have kept the book
remarkably up to date. Much of what I
will pass on you to in this journal comes from Miss RC, a gal whom I would very
much like to have met.
I feel that
this journal needs a little intro to the war, so you have a sense of what we’re
talking about. So – ta da – here is the
First World War (Western Front – I’m embarrassed that I don’t know from the
Eastern) in one paragraph. By 1914,
everyone in Europe is tangled up in complex alliances that fall out either
Germany-Austria Hungary-Ottomans (the Central Powers) or everyone else which is
really Russia and France and eventually England and then the US (the Entente
Powers or Allied Powers) or neutral (Brave Little Belgium). Austria-Hungary gets mad at Serbia for
shooting their Archduke and his wife, so they mobilize and that means Germany
has to mobilize against Russia which means France has to get ready because
Germany wants more of France back so the Germans barge uninvited into Belgium
which pisses off the Brits who don’t like the buildup of the German navy (Poor
Little Belgium is just an excuse). The
Germans get pretty far into Belgium until the Brits (and their colonials) hold
them with just a teeny tiny salient around Ypres, and pretty far into France
until the French hold them along the Marne.
That’s 1914, and the Germans, being clever, basically just dig in and
build these incredible fortified lines with concrete trenches and bunkers. (And here, boys and girls, we learn the power
of the defensive position) In 1915 and
1916 the Brits and the French try to dislodge the Germans in Flanders and eastern
France along the Meuse, to no avail and millions of dead. In 1917 the Brits try in the Somme and again
in Flanders – more hundreds of thousands dead.
Meanwhile at home in France and Germany there are riots and food
shortages and currency deflation, and worst of all, Russia is having a
revolution, which really gets everyone going.
Then the Americans get into the mix and the Germans think, we have got
to end this before Billy Yank gets here so they have a big big push in the
spring of 1918 and get within 40 miles of Paris! But the US pushes back at the Marne and at
the St. Mihiel Salient that summer, and Germany hasn’t got anything left so the
Kaiser is advised to abdicate and Germany sues for peace and there you have
it.
See, one
paragraph! You know, people have written
multi-volume works on this topic. Now
that we’re done with that, you can follow along.
A great thing
about staying in hotels pretty much anywhere in Europe is that you can get
German breakfast: brötchen and meat and
cheese and yogurt and eggs. Also, the
good French stuff, croissants and excellent jam and the like.
A word on the
whole poppies thing. Your
first impression of Ypres, should you come here, is that it is all poppies, all
the time. Poppy pillows and t-shirts and
wreaths and Over the Top! Tours and whole English-language bookstores devoted
to this war and the other one that doesn't get much traction around here.
Why here? Well, the author of the famous poem “In
Flanders Fields,” John MacRae, worked at a dressing station just a few miles
away.[1] The
poem is about how the poppies, a summer wildflower here, bloom after a
battle. The legend is that white poppies
on a battlefield in ancient China turned red after a terrible battle. The biological reason is that things grow
after battles because the disruption to the earth turns up seeds, and poppies
grow here anyway, battle or no. Regardless, poppies as a symbol of remembrance in
this war started as a Canadian thing and quickly spread among the Commonwealth
dead. You see wreaths of poppies, and
individual crosses of poppies and plastic poppies and crocheted poppies and
ceramic poppies and all manner of handmade poppies. You do not see poppies in any other countries’
cemeteries or memorials or battlefields.
The irony is
that we saw not one live poppy in Flanders.
We had to go to France for that.
But the
excellent In Flanders Fields museum has a Marimekko-style poppy as its logo,
and that is the place to start if you are touring here. You get a little poppy bracelet that you can
use to log in and learn about personal experiences of people in the area, based
on your age, sex, nationality, etc.
There were not a lot of middle-aged American women in Flanders so I get
some artists and Marie Curie and others, but it is still pretty cool. The whole museum is fantastic, but the
highlights include a really cool animated computer graphic that shows how the
lines formed and stabilized around Ypres in the first months of the war and excellent
filmed monologues from actors portraying soldiers and nurses and doctors.[2] .
We are particularly struck by a monologue from a German soldier about
entering Canadian lines after the first gas attack. Nothing was living, not the men, not the
rabbits or rats or squirrels, not even the insects.
The museum
thoughtfully puts the really gruesome pictures – for this was a photographed
war and the imagery, while reminiscent of the American Civil War is far uglier
– into dark pyramids so you can avoid them if you wish. On the outside of one of the pyramids are
projected, one by one, the name and country of a soldier fallen in the Ypres
salient – one hundred years ago today, so August 3, 1915. The names change every 30 seconds or so,
providing a slow realization of the scale of casualties. All of this museum is accompanied by a
soundtrack of relentless gloom and doom – lots of slow minor chords and doleful
bell tones. It is fantastic.
A striking
thing about all of these museums and memorials is how balanced they are. There are plenty of German items here, and
stories, but it doesn’t come across as accusatory. There is more a sense of plus jamais, nie
wieder, never again.
Before the
museum we visited the British-built St. George Chapel, which is an entire memorial
to the British and Commonwealth effort in the Salient. Each chair has a kneeler cushion,
hand-needlepointed with a regimental crest.
The walls are covered with bronze plaques memorializing various
units. We are struck by the dozens of
memorials to the fallen from various British and Commonwealth schools and
colleges: To the memory of the 147 or
205 or 78 Old Throckmortians who died in the Ypres Salient. I’m making light but when you realize how
many of these plaques you have read, you start to get a sense of the
generational toll of this war.
Oh I forgot
about the Bell Tower in the Cloth Hall!
This, to Bill’s relief, has nothing to do with the War. There is a magnificent carillon up high, and
a good climb to get there, not to mention a spectacular view. And during the Middle Ages (well actually all
the way into the 19th) they had a festival every year where someone in
a jester’s suit would climb up to the top of the Bell Tower and throw cats off,
to rid the town of evil spirits. Now they
do it every three years (why three?) and they throw stuffed cats instead of
live ones. The carillon plays while we
are there and it is pretty loud!
This was a big
day. We are not quite half-done yet.
Cemeteries are
a key part of visiting the Western Front.
It sounds morbid, but it is in fact moving and peaceful and beautiful
and you can learn a lot. The biggest
British cemetery in the area is Tyne Cot, named after a structure that was once
here (like everything), that the soldiers from northern England thought looked
like a Tyneside cottage – a Tyne cot.
The building served as a dressing station and bunker for both sides,
changing hands a couple of times in 1917-18.
The remnants of the actual building are preserved under a big plinth
with a giant cross that you can apparently see from Dunkirk on a clear day. Immediately behind this memorial are arrayed
the original 300+ graves, as they were found at the end of the war, in some
disarray due to the heavy shelling.
This cemetery
contains the remains of almost 12,000 Commonwealth soldiers, 8,000+ listed as
only “A British Soldier in the Great War, Known Unto God,” with another 35,000
or so names on a wall surrounding, of men lost whose remains were never
found. There are four German soldiers
buried here, too. Miss RC tells us that
six recipients of the Victoria Cross (the British equivalent of our Medal of
Honor) are here. When you enter, you go
through a modern structure (dedicated by QEII just a few years ago), and
surrounding you is the sound of a young girl’s voice reading just names and
ages. The voice follows you into the
structure and out again, as you walk around the walls and into the
cemetery. This is the first cemetery we
will visit, ultimately we will see spaces representing five different countries. There are more poppies here – the British are
far more active and personal in their commemoration than any other nationality.
At one point,
we are approached by a jovial fellow who is a representative of the local
tourism agency. He asks if we’d mind
answering a few questions about our visit.
Always happy to promote war tourism, I offer him my email when asked for
follow-up. “Ooh, Har-vard!” he
says.
Think we’ve
seen enough? Retreat, hell, we just got
here! (That will come later in the
trip.) The thing about Flanders is that
the sites are all within just a few kilometers of each other, so you can see
dozens in a day.
After lunch,
we visit the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917, recommended by Miss RC as
having an excellent Trench Experience.
Never ones to pass up an Experience (see Ireland 2013), we explore what
at first appears to be a slightly musty museum that threatens kitsch – hey
kids, want to try on a gas mask? – but ultimately delivers a solid on the
Experience. Private H-P has about had it
at the samples of mustard gas, but perks up when she gets to try on a helmet.
THEN we
descend into the Dugout. Under the
building, a carefully-reconstructed facsimile of a German dugout, a sort of
underground barracks, has been built.
You tramp from room to room, ducking if you are our Transport Officer or
our Information Specialist because the ceilings are so low, and looking at convincing
cook rooms and storerooms and bunkrooms and dressing stations. It is impressively large and complex, and you
begin to understand the power of the defensive position. When you finally ascend into the light and go
outside, you are in the Trenches, and walk through reconstructions of French,
British, and German trenches, with quite good explanations on the different
engineering techniques of each. We
revise our impression of the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917, not the least
because of the Poppies (brand) Gin in the gift shop.
Passchendaele
is a name that lives in infamy for Britain.
The Germans had a tight hold on the Ypres Salient for two years, but in
August 1917 the Allied Powers decided to try a breakthrough, which became known
as the Third Battle of Ypres. They
tunneled under German lines, setting huge mines (the Germans were tunneling
too, and sometimes the two sides ran into each other, at which point they’d
have a little firefight underground and re-block the tunnel). A massive artillery barrage preceded the
mines blowing in early August, and the British troops rushed in – as did the
rain, torrential downpours for days, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in
decades. With rain and shelling, the
ground turned to ghastly sucking mud.
Trenches and shell holes filled with water, drowning wounded soldiers as
they sheltered from the barrage and waited for help. The numbers here are stunning. Over the course of four months, almost 600,000
men died for a gain/loss of five miles.
435 men for each square meter (or metre, if you are writing in
British). Today it is cows and nice
towns and farmland.
Not just mud
and mines, but gas. Just a few
kilometers from the museum is a marvelously massive monument known as the
Brooding Soldier, commemorating the more than 2,000 members of a Canadian
regiment who died in the first gas attack of the war, in 1915. The attack allowed the Germans to occupy the
town of Langemark, site today of a German cemetery. We check it out because here we are and there
it is. There are fewer visitors than Tyne
Cot (although that is not saying a lot) and this cemetery has a small entry
structure with interior walls covered with the names of students who died in
Flanders during the war. There is much restoration
work being done here, so we can’t walk around much. But we do find not one but two Peter
Lauterbachs among the 24,000 named who are buried in the Kameradengrab. Another 44,000 German soldiers lie in the
ground here.
Wow, six pages
in and we are just at our second day.
Fasten your seat belts, you are in for a long ride!
[1] In
Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
[2] Including Harvard man Harvey Cushing, a
surgeon at the Brigham.
No comments:
Post a Comment