In August 2014 many countries, including some outside of Europe, commemorated the start of "the Great War" in 2014. Unfortunately it was NOT the "war to end all wars" as its survivors desperately, optimistically yet naively had hoped. Only 20 years after its end the world was on the brink of another global conflict, so "the Great War" became World War 1. My grandfather (Albert George Clayton) served in the Australian Army in WW1, but I have no knowledge of distant and unknown relatives who may also have fought in that conflict. Judy's family lost at least 3 members of her grandfathers generation. The three cousins died on the "Western Front"; two are buried in France, but one was never found, one of the hundreds of thousands with no known burial site.
Our Belgian friends and kind hosts, Mark and Ines, took us on a very special trip to the region around the city of Ieper, better known to the English speaking world as Ypres. As we were passing through the peaceful countryside it was almost impossible to imagine the horror and utter devastation of so much of the landscape during WW1. At the small museum, the memorials and grave sites, and then at the large commemorative places in Ypres we felt something of the desperate conditions experienced by the millions of soldiers, and civilians involved in that great conflict. It was a time for sombre reflection, and wonder at the indomitable spirit which so many required to just survive against truly appalling conditions.
Our first stopping place was the small "Hill 62 - Sanctuary Wood Museum", located about 3 km from Ypres, on the road to the Canadian "Hill 62". Hill 62 was one of several fortified hilltops which were fiercely contested because they provided a valuable observation post.
The farmer who owned the land at Sanctuary Wood returned to the devastated landscape after the war and found it riddled with trenches and dugouts. He decided to preserve a small section and then establish a small museum to commemorate the momentous events which occurred there. The museum has now passed to his grandson who maintains the collection and grounds. Apart from maintenance to remedy slumping of trench walls, to combat the intrusion of weeds and grasses, and the replacement of the rusty iron panels which support the trench walls the trenches are pretty much as they were left in 1918. The museum website tells some of the story, and also provides many links to accounts of the battles in the area. See: Sanctuary Wood Museum
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| Signboard outside the museum |
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| Helmets from several forces which fought there have been recovered. |
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| The fancy helmets may have looked good on the parade ground but they didn't offer much protection in the trenches. At the right is a heavy, reinforced helmet used by snipers. |
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| A bizarre furniture item - a clock stand made of shell casings and (possibly live) ammunition. The soldiers made some unusual items from materials at hand during quiet times. |
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| Around the grounds are various military items. This is a large "trench mortar" used to fire a shell high into the air so it would land perhaps only tens of metres away. Regular artillery which was used to fire shells hundreds of metres was of little use in the crowded trenches |
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| A section of the trench lines in which thousands of men fought, lived and died. After early fighting the shellfire and need for firewood had stripped away all the trees |
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| Another section of trench line. The brick structure would have been the entrance to a small fortified shelter or command post. The large piece of steel plate would have given snipers and guards some protection whilst firing from an otherwise very exposed position. |
The trenches rarely had straight sections more than a few metres long. There were several reasons but one important consideration is to provide protection against shells which exploded in a section. The unfortunate men in that section may have been killed, but those "around the corner" had some protection against flying shrapnel and debris.
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| Almost a hundred years after the battles the shell holes dot the area. |
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| Among the regrowth in the wood are the occasional rotted stumps of some of the original trees. They are riddled with bullets and shell fragments. |
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| Barbed wire was used as a common defensive weapon. It was produced by the thousands of kilometres. Now these rusted bundles of wire remain as a reminder of its use. |
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| Steel helmets provided some protection, but not against large projectiles. |
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| On the summit memorial of Hill 62 is this pointer to nearby "Hill 60". It was reduced to a crater after a massive explosion beneath it. |
An Australian film from 2010 tells of the efforts of Australian tunnelers led by Captain Woodward to undermine and blow up the nearby "Hill 60". It's worth seeing. Click this link to visit the "Beneath Hill 60" film page. After months of effort the chambers at the ends of the tunnel branches were filled with about 450 tons of high explosive. They were detonated at the start of the "Battles of Messines" in June 1917. Briefing the press on the evening before the explosion a senior British officer said "Gentlemen, we may not make history tomorrow, but we shall certainly change the geography." He was right.
The Sanctuary Wood museum and Hill 62 memorial set the scene for the next visit. Ypres and Hill 62 are not far from the border with France. Our next stop was across the border at a farm on the slopes of Mont Merris in the "Nord Pas de Calais". Here we came to honour Norman Dyson, a "Dyson" on Judy''s father's side of her family. We knew of Thomas Henry ("Harry") Dyson, her great uncle who was killed, aged 23, at Passchendaele. We've seen Harry's name on the war memorials in Adelaide and Canberra. Norman was Harry's cousin. Another cousin, Samuel Dyson, is buried in northern France but that site was too far away for our short visit.
Norman was a private in the 10th Infantry Battalion, a part of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, AIF. He had enlisted on 30th April 1917 and left Melbourne on 30th October, 1917, aboard a transport ship carrying reinforcements to France. Severely wounded in one of the many actions at Mont de Merris, he died of his wounds on 30th June, 1918, aged just 19. He is buried in the Borre British Cemetery near Merris.
Norman was a private in the 10th Infantry Battalion, a part of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, AIF. He had enlisted on 30th April 1917 and left Melbourne on 30th October, 1917, aboard a transport ship carrying reinforcements to France. Severely wounded in one of the many actions at Mont de Merris, he died of his wounds on 30th June, 1918, aged just 19. He is buried in the Borre British Cemetery near Merris.
As in so many other locations fighting took place around a hill which had a strategic location as an observation point from which troop movements could be seen, and from where artillery could be "spotted" (advised of targets and the fall of shot noted and corrected). The official war diaries rarely record deaths or injuries of individual junior soldiers, so we don't know in which of the many skirmishes Norman was injured. Certainly larger actions with significant losses took place in the attempts to dislodge the German forces from their trenches on the hillside. Even today the "scars" on the hillside can still be seen and bramble thickets also mark the rows of trenches. One record describes the Australian troops assembling at a bend in the railway line and charging up the hill towards the German lines.
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| The bushes mark the lines of the German trenches on this side of Mont Merris |
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| Australian troops charged up this hill to attack the German lines. |
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| The railway line still crosses the foot of the hill |
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| Norman's headstone at Borre British Cemetery, Section 2, C9 |
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| Graves of Norman and his comrades. |
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| Judy pauses a moment at the grave side, Borre. |
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| The printed register of those buried at Borre. |
From the Borre cemetery we crossed back into Belgium. Along the way there were road signs indicating the turnoff for Dunkirk, a famous place in WW2 military history. This area was occupied by the Germans in both world wars.
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| Road sign for Dunkirk |
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| The pharmacy at Poperinge. |
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| The decorated facade |
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| Civic building in Poperinge |
The "Second Battle of Ypres" began in April 1915. Here a new "weapon of mass destruction" was used for the first time - chlorine gas. Thousands of allied soldiers were killed. Later WMDs tested in this area included flame throwers and "mustard gas". By May 1915 the civilians had been evacuated, and before long the town was reduced to rubble by persistent shelling.
The "Third Battle of Ypres" began on July 31st, 1917 and culminated in the bloody battles of Passendale (Passchendaele) of November 1917. This battle is sometimes described as a "massacre". About a half million soldiers were killed in the vicinity of the town. Civilians began to return in 1919 to rebuild their town. They painstakingly rebuilt the town according to old plans, drawings and photographs. The supreme example of the restoration effort was the medieval Cloth Hall which houses the "In Flanders Fields" museum.
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| Some of the reconstructed buildings around the "market square" |
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| The museum is housed in the Cloth Hall |
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| One wing of the Cloth Hall and courtyard |
The museum uses relics, photographs, reconstructions and various media to portray the conditions around Ypres and put the battles into context. It is hard not to be touched by the tragedy, appalling conditions and grief in the area. It is also hard not to sense some of the wry "black" humour and the almost indomitable spirit of many of the survivors of that horrible time.
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| Allied wounded wait for transport |
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| A 3D "diorama" depicting a typical scene near Ypres. A wrecked tank is stuck in the mud between huge shell craters. |
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| Ypres at about war's end |
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| The tower of the Cloth Hall |
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| Golden figure on the roof ridge |
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| Fine restored building in Market Square (the former postal office) |
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| Tiers of attic windows on a building on the square |
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| There's just time to solemnly remember those who fell in a very Belgian way - Passchendaele memorial beer. |
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The Menin gate is just down from the old P.O. |
After the war the British Empire (now Commonwealth) countries decided that for historical, patriotic and practical reasons the hundreds of thousands of allied war dead would be buried near the battlefields in which they were killed. From the 1920s the Commonwealth War Graves Commission built 150 military cemeteries in and around Ypres in the honour of all those who gave their lives during the war. Next to the cemeteries the War Graves Commission built monuments in and around the city in order never to forget what happened in Flanders Fields.
The Menin Gate is one of the most significant and largest of these monuments, where every night the buglers of the Ypres Fire Brigade play the Last Post in memory of the soldiers of the (then) British Empire and Allied Forces who fell around Ypres during the First World War. The memorial was built at the site of the old "Menin Gate" (on the road to Menin) because many of the Allied soldiers passed through the gate (or its ruins) on their way to or from the front lines".
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| The Menin Gate |
A famous painting of the (then) newly built Menin Gate is held in the Australian War Museum in Canberra. Click here read about the painting and the background to its creation.
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| "The Menin Gate at midnight", painted by Will Longstaff, 1927 (collection of Australian War Memorial) |
The wall panels, inside and outside, list the names of about 56,000 allied soldiers killed around Ypres but who were denied a marked resting lace because their bodies were never found. They may have been buried deeply under soil as a massive shell exploded near them, or as was so often the case, they were literally blown "to smithereens". Skeletons (or parts) are still being discovered in the region almost 100 years on.
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| The crowd assembles inside the memorial |
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| Visiting young British Air Cadets form an honour guard |
We were not there just as curious visitors. We had a personal interest as one of the panels contains the name of Private Thomas Henry ("Harry") Dyson of the 48th Infantry Battalion, 12th Brigade, AIF. He was killed at the age of 23 in the charge up Passchendaele Ridge on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele, 12th October, 1917. His body was never found, so he is listed here.
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| Harry is remembered here, and on the memorials in Adelaide and Canberra. |
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| A visitor ponders the lists of names |
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| Some of the poppy wreaths left at the memorial |
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| The last rays of the setting sun catch the face of the memorial |
We were very moved during our visits to Mont Merris, Borre Cemetery and Ypres and are deeply appreciative of the kind actions of Mark who did the research to locate sites, and to drive us there.
Postscript:
The name of the museum in Ypres is no coincidence. One of the most famous of the poems to come from WW1 was written in Ypres. The Canadian doctor Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was inspired to write it on May 3, 1915, after the funeral of friend and fellow soldier Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres. A detailed explanation of the circumstances can be found here: Inspiration for "In Flanders Fields".
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.
by John McCrae, Ypres 1915
(in the autograph the first line ends with "grow", later to become "blow")
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| Poppy wreaths at the Menin Gate (Wikipedia: "In Flanders Fields") |
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