In Flanders Fields

PT 13 July, Belgium

We have turned packing into a fine art now. Instead of shouting instructions and being completely ignored until we all reach breaking point, it now all happens in some sort of quiet anarchistic peace. Having packed up our gear and left the house in reasonable order (no need for cleaning here, nobody would know the difference), we hit the road. The first mission was to get our car back. Peugeot sent a taxi to pick us up - another inadequately sized one so we had to pack four across the back seat with luggage on knees... again... The driver gave us a lesson on how to drive in Paris. Oh, that's how you do it! Just close your eyes and put your foot down!

Reunited with our car, and its much-missed GPS we set course for Flanders in Belgium. We spend more on tolls than fuel in France, and today was no different as we headed for the border. The kids were occupied with a video in the back, so travelling is pretty easy. The Belgium border is like all others we have seen in Europe - some dis-used booths nobody in sight. Seems weird coming from NZ where customs and border control is so strict. More 130km/h roads and a fairly short drive meant we got there in good time - about 3pm. The house is a cottage that has been beautifully renovated and is modern and comfy inside. The owner is an older widow who lives next door. She left us home-made biscuits and information about all of the sights in the area - even some things she had especially found for us as we had indicated our interest in war sites. A very nice welcome.

We needed to head down to the supermarket to get something for dinner (only about our 5th home-cooked dinner of the trip). We were very pleasantly surprised at the prices. After being whole-heartedly ripped of by the french, this was the other end of the spectrum. Milk is about 50c a litre, a bag of rice was 50c and most other items well below what we pay at home. By the way, having traveled 9 countries now, I can report that there is nowhere more expensive in the world to buy milk than New Zealand. Even Turkey, Italy and Cambodia all sold NZ (UHT) milk for less than you pay at Pak 'n Save. Although it is very hard to buy fresh milk anywhere we have travelled - it is all the UHT long-life stuff just sold on the shelves. Anyway, that was a bit of a side-track...

If I stayed here, I would need to take up smoking and increase my commitment to drinking. Beer is about 50c per litre, wine 1-3 Euro per bottle and spirits start at about 5 E. You can buy tobacco from the supermarket in a pail, about the size of a paint can. 500g for 30 Euro. That's enough for 800 cigarettes (according to the label!). Packs of 20 are 4 E. From what we have seen though, there are not the social problems that drink brings to NZ. Not sure how they balance all that. Maybe they need to reduce the prices back home...

Unsurprisingly, the chocolate is quite good here.

With only two full days here, we got stuck in to some sightseeing. Linley's Grandpa fought in this area in WWI, so we were keen to see some of the memorials & museums. You don't need to go far to find war relics in this part of the world. Flanders bore much of the brunt of the front line in WWI, with more than half a million casualties. 400,000 died in just 100 days in 1917 at Passchendaele (including 2,700 kiwis) - that was our first stop. The war musuem was small but moving and had plenty to offer. Photos, maps, medals, letters, stories and rusted relics. We have seen quite a lot of this kind of thing here and in France, but we're still finding it hard to comprehend what it must have been like. Nothing good, that's for sure. Under the museum, they built a replica dugout that you could make your way through - basically just cramped tunnels lined with timber and sleeping quarters (two men to a bunk). In some cases, 200 men would have crammed into one of these dugouts. The smell of Lynx must have been overpowering ;)

After Passchendale, we headed to Polygon Wood Cemetery. This was a small mixed cemetery of blokes that had fallen in the area. Out of the 107 graves, about 60 were NZ'ers. This was an original wartime cemetery. Each of the cemeteries has a visitors book, so we noted our visit in there. Across the road was the New Zealand and Australian memorials (in Polygon Wood), and lots more graves. Every second headstone says "Here lies a soldier of the Great War. Known unto God.". In other words, an unidentified soldier. About 100,000 who died in Flanders never received a proper burial in an identifiable grave. Those are the saddest ones - lots of people leave flowers on those. The NZ and Australian memorials are on opposite sides of a large cemetery (Buttes New British Cemetery). Not as flash as the American cemetery at Omaha Beach, but more friendly - gardens and rose bushes amongst the grave stones. Like every cemetery we have seen (except one - see later), it was perfectly maintained. Every blade of grass manicured, and every headstone in pristine condition. It seems to be part of their way of respecting the dead, to take loving care of their 'eternal home'.

Messines was also on our list as it has a connection with New Zealand, as Messines was liberated from the Germans on 14th June 1917 by the New Zealand Division. There is a large monument and gardens dedicated to their efforts on "New Zealanders Street". Conspicuously, there are two German bunkers at the back of the gardens. We then continued to Tyne Cot Cemetery, where there are more than 12,000 graves - the numbers sometimes seem too large to have any real meaning... There is a curved wall half-enclosing the cemetery and bearing the names of 35,000 men who's bodies were never recovered. Incidentally, the 35,000 were originally planned for the Menin Gate in Ypres, but the numbers were much larger than they expected. The Menin was full after 50,000 names. At Tyne Cot, a recording plays through speakers outside with a girl's voice reading out every name.

There are cemeteries and memorials wherever you look. Some signposts have signs to half a dozen cemeteries. Many are smaller war-time ones in paddocks or among houses. Every one is meticulously cared for. Ypres (Wipers, as the British soldiers called it) seems to be the centre of WW1 tourism around here. There is an enormous museum and lots of souvenir shops, mostly selling books. It's a really nice town with a lot happening - a large square, plenty to eat and lots of street entertainment, bands etc. It was originally a fortified town dating back to the 1400's with walls and a moat. It was an important trade route and at its height, it was larger than London and Paris. In WWI, it was at the front line for most of the war and was totally (utterly) destroyed. With nothing to come back to, the locals decided to rebuild it. Many of the buildings were rebuilt exactly as they were before. Funny how people choose to rebuild the past... security maybe? reminds me of Christchurch...

We hung around until 8pm for the Last Post, which is played by buglers under the Menin Gate. They have done this every night at this time since the end of the war. It was only ever missed when it was banned by the Germans who occupied the town in WWII. The day WWII ended, the playing of the Last Post was resumed. The ceremony is similar to ANZAC day - although without the speeches. There were about 1,000 people crowded under the gate. It was just like any other night, so I assume this is a normal number. I bet in times gone by, it would have been a lone bugler on many nights. Coincidentally, we went on a night that some NZ politicians were there. Lockwood Smith and a few nobodies laid a wreath. Lockwood said the "we will remember them" bit, and managed to stuff it up by forgetting the minute silence... idiot. There were also a wreath from the Australian government the day before, so this sort of thing is probably pretty common. In all, about 20 wreaths were laid while a school choir sang and the ceremony was finished in about 30 minutes. There were no announcements to start or end the ceremony, people just gathered at the start, and dispersed after the playing of the Reveille. It was all very understated and humble.

On the way home, we stopped at a German cemetery - we were interested in the contrasting style. Contrast does not begin to describe it. Haunting would be more accurate. 50,000 graves in an area of a couple of hectares (compare this to the USA cemetery on 10,000 graves on 70 hectares). 25,000 of the dead were in a mass grave and the others just have plaques lying flat on the ground. They were laid out on patchy grass in rows that were not exactly straight, under large oak trees. The moat, stone wall and iron gates gave the place a rather menacing feel. Sad to see that German soldiers don't seem to get the same level of respect in death.