Over the Top in France - August 2

Here’s how you know you are not in figurative Kansas anymore:  the bathrooms in the new arrival terminals at Charles de Gaulle airport are wicked cool.  They are paneled in deep orange and magenta Lucite, and have these chic slanty trough-like communal sinks.  That’ll wake you up after a red-eye.

But after the large numbers of disturbingly well-armed young security guards at CDG, the Excitement of Being In Europe diminishes.  First of all, the enfants fall asleep in the car about 30 seconds into the drive, leaving it to me to keep the Transport Officer awake. 

Also, the European Union has totally taken the fun out of international travel because there is no frontier between countries anymore, just a sign.  No border guards, no stamp in the passport, no red-and-white gates that say ZOLL.  But if you miss it, Verizon will helpfully send you a text saying “Welcome to Belgium!” and detailing the rates should you go over your paltry international calling plan. 

And, the town names become even less pronounceable than they are in France, because this is the Flemish speaking part of Belgium.  Siri is game for Flemish but just can't cut it.  She pronounces our destination (Ypres, in Flemish, Ee-per):  eye-ee-pee-ee-are-ess.  This cracks us up.  Those of us who are awake, anyway.

It is not surprising that she has trouble with it.  Everyone does, because as it turns out, Flemish as spoken in Belgium has many dialects.  Through the fog of his fatigue, Bill engages our lunch waiter in a little chat to learn about the language.  It is the same thing that they speak in Holland, but there they all speak the same version.  Here in Flanders, it might be spoken differently just ten k. away!

It is a bit weird arriving in a small-ish European town on a Sunday because everything is closed, and it is kind of quiet and not hugely welcoming.  The fun fair is in town, but even that is closed, until evening anyway.  Clearly, napping is the order of the afternoon. 

We note immediately that everyone is on bikes!  Big heavy comfortable touring bikes, with handy baskets or panniers, riding around the flat Flemish countryside with nary a helmet, but perhaps smoking a cigarette or with pants tucked into black socks (with sandals, natch). 

Things perk up a bit in the evening and our Information Specialist eats a ham hock as big as his head while the Payroll Officer and I sample some excellent Belgian beer and Private Hokey Pokey discovers that great love of Brits, spag bol.  This whole area really caters to British tourists because this was one of the two centers of British fighting during the war.  So you see things like spaghetti Bolognese (which British people adore for some reason) on menus.  This being Belgium, there are also frites with everything.  They would probably give them to you at breakfast if you asked.  And they are good.

But let’s get into it.  We are here to learn about the War, the Great War, the War to End All Wars (Except That It Didn’t), the only war that really matters around here, the First World War.  It turns out that our itinerary will give us an Entente-flavored tour:  starting here with the British (and by that we mean Commonwealth) war in Flanders, then to the great French scene of action in Verdun and the Argonne, and finally some American sights around the Meuse and the Marne.

Ypres itself was pretty much destroyed during the war, so the pretty old buildings and the grand medieval Cloth Hall are all reconstructions from the 1920s and 30s.  It became a place of memorial very quickly, the centerpiece of this being the nightly Last Post at the Menin Gate.  During the war, troops would march out of town through a “gate” (really just two stone lions) out the Menin Road.  In 1927, a massive memorial arch was built, that lists the names of all Commonwealth soldiers who died in the fighting around the Ypres Salient but have no known graves. This being your first exposure to the almost incomprehensible numbers and massive memorialization of the war, you might spend more time wandering around and looking at the names.  You would wonder at the many colonial regiments – not just Irish and Canadian and Australian but Indian of many kinds as well.  If you tried to count them, you would find that there are almost 55,000 names here.  And if you come at 7:45 or so, you would be there for the Last Post.  Every evening since 1927, a bugler plays the Last Post (it is a kind of British Taps) at 8 pm.  Some nights, like the night we were there, there is wreath-laying, and saluting from veterans – tonight’s were a shaky WW2-era vet who surely brought a tear to all those present, and a troop of scouts from the UK (this is clearly a standard UK scout pilgrimage).  Flags are dipped, silence is maintained, more bugling, and the ceremony ends.  Every night.  All year.  Since 1927.  There are crowds in summer, but none in winter.  But still the Last Post Association honors these dead.  During the Second World War they could not have the ceremony for four years, because the Germans occupied the town.  The day the Germans left, September 6, 1944, the Last Post sounded again.  (shivery, yes?)

We are far north of home here. It is still quite light at 9:30!