Ypres

(Written 6^th May 2006, about the same trip that brought forth "Vimy Ridge". You should read that one first, really.)

"Boom, boom, boom, boom
Boom, boom, boom, boom -"

As an unreconstructed trade unionist, I believe strongly in democracy. My birthday celebration it may have been, but there were three other people in the car, and all suggestions carry equal weight. Donna, for example, suggested that we visit Germany on Sunday, on the way to Luxembourg, and we all thought that wasn't a bad idea. So we did.

(Let's not forget, if anyone looks at a map and notices that Germany is not on the way to Luxembourg if you start from Reims - Paul and I were once driving from Dijon, France to Grenoble, France and decided to go to Switzerland for lunch. And, sitting by Lake Geneva, a very good lunch it was, too. So we may be slightly touched, but we're consistent.)

On Saturday, when Charlie mentioned that his grandfather was buried in Ieper (Ypres), we had a look at the map. It's only in Belgium, and that's just to the right of France, so we asked him if we could go and see Grandfather. A mildly flabbergasted Charlie said yes, of course we could, so that was Monday morning's itinerary sorted.

Ieper is the Belgian name for Ypres, but as we'll be considering more Great War material, I shall refer to the place as Ypres from here on. I only mention the current spelling in case anyone wants to see where it is on a map.

Ypres was a little out of our way, so an early start was needed, but two and a half hours later, we're within a few miles of the town. Luckily, Charlie knows which graveyard Grandfather is in, because there are graveyards everywhere in the area. Take a look at http://tinyurl.com/kfeaf - each pink circle is a graveyard. Grandfather is in the Zillebeke area, and we soon find signs to that, shortly seeing a sign to the China Wall cemetery.

There's almost no traffic, it's cold and drizzling fitfully, and there are no other people looking round the cemetery. As I park by the low perimeter wall, Charlie says "There he is - fourth one in." In less than a minute, the four of us are standing in front of a stone that reads:

Capt Hon. Charles Monck

Coldstream Guards

21st Oct 1914

The drizzle is forgotten, the chilly wind is happening somewhere else. There's suddenly a sense of timelessness... and the realisation that Capt Monck had a terribly short war. He'd already been wounded once, and sent home for a month to recover, Charlie tells us.

The China Wall Cemetery is a quiet place, by a quiet road, with a little farm opposite. It seems to me that it's no bad place for a soldier to take his rest, because surely what all battle-weary soldiers desire is silence, a chance to hear the birds sing and a lay down in pleasant countryside. It's what I'd want for myself... but I'm not sure that I could pay the price of admission to this place.

The saddest memorials here are to those who were buried in other cemeteries that were later battlefields, and whose remains are now lost. Imagine, if you can, shelling a cemetery... or driving a tank through one... and you capture a small part of the horror that is war.

A photo of one of these memorials is here: http://tinyurl.com/gcabp (not 56k friendly).

The China Wall (Perth) Cemetery takes its name from a trench that ran near here. It ran very deep into the ground, and soldiers called it "The Great Wall Of China". Later, a Scottish regiment that used it renamed the trench "The Perth Road". There's a photo of the entrance on the CWGC certificate of the final resting place of Capt Monck, here: http://tinyurl.com/h3a39

It's been good to meet Grandfather.

As we're near, and have a little time, I suggest that we drive into Ypres and see the Menin Gate. It's a big memorial - imagine Marble Arch scaled up by 50%. Now put another one 150 yards away, and a hall connecting the two, and you've got some idea of the Menin Gate. It's only as we walk through it that I find that the Gate is a memorial to all British and Commonwealth soldiers with no known grave. Their names are etched into the stone in letters about 3/4 of an inch high... and they're everywhere, covering every possible surface.

Half way down each side, stairs lead up to the ramparts, and the names continue upward with the stairs. They really are everywhere you look.

It's not a memorial that can be ignored, or missed - the gate spans a main road. In 1914, the "gate" was just a gap in the ramparts around the town which marked the start of the Menin Road, the road that led to the front line of the Somme. Tens of thousands of men marched through it and away to the fighting. Some came back. Some stayed here, like Capt. Monck, and can be visited by relatives, friends and friends of relatives. Nearly 55,000 just vanished. All we know is that they're around here, somewhere. They could be under our feet, or 50 miles away. No one knows.

And that, as I wrote a couple of days ago, is why we put names on memorials like this. Lord Plumer of Messines put it better than I can in his speech on the opening of the Gate in 1927:

"One of the most tragic features of the Great War was the number of casualties reported as, "missing, believed killed.

.............. when peace came, and the last ray of hope had been extinguished, the void seemed deeper and the outlook more forlorn for those who had no grave to visit, no place where they could lay tokens of loving remembrance.......

...........and it was resolved that here at Ypres, where so many of the missing are known to have fallen, there should be erected a memorial worthy of them which should give expression to the nation's gratitude for their sacrifice and their sympathy with those who mourned them.  A memorial has been erected which, in its simple grandeur, fulfils this object, and now it can be said of each one in whose honour we are assembled here today:

He is not missing; he is here!"

Every evening at 20:00, without fail, the police close the road that is spanned by the Menin Gate, and buglers from the Ypres Fire Brigade blow the Last Post. They have done this every evening since 1927, the only exception being when the Germans came back in 1939. The ceremony resumed on the very day in 1944 that Allied forces took possession of the Menin Gate again, despite the fighting that was still going on elsewhere in the town.

We walk on, and Charlie draws my attention to the ancient architecture of the shops either side of the street. It's pretty good, I say. It's been rebuilt, says Charlie. There is hardly a brick that stands in its original place in the entire town, which was almost flattened during the Great War. There's a photo taken from the air in 1917 here: http://tinyurl.com/s7vdr - the large structure at top left is the Cloth Hall, and it, too, has been rebuilt in its original Gothic splendour, as the photo at http://tinyurl.com/s574u shows.

We're passing a shop that sells all manner of books about the Somme in particular and the larger war in general, and as the rain is now becoming steadier, we take a look inside. While browsing, I notice that Remembrance poppies are on sale here all year round, and that bullets and shrapnel balls that have been recovered from the ground are also sold in aid of the British Legion and other military charities. I buy a bullet - an unmarked, undamaged one that clearly hasn't been fired. While it's a good souvenir to take away, I'd shrink from treasuring something that might have killed someone, which is why I don't buy a shrapnel ball - you can't tell with those.

I think I'll carry it with me from now on, and every time I feel a bit warlike towards regimes, countries, or people, I'll reach for the bullet in my pocket and remind myself that war involves using things like this heavy slug with a sharp point.

Maybe I'll have my name engraved on it - for remembrance and for luck.

My stomach reminds me that there's a duck breast in Dunkirque that has my name on it, and the cafe where it waits for the attentions of a skilled chef is an hour away, so allons vite, mes enfants!

Back, then, through the Menin Gate, and all those names... it is a terrible, terrifying, humbling monument to duty unto death, and what lies beyond blind nationalism and colonialism - the slaughter of common people, willing to be slaughtered to defend the values that leaders who they respect or defer to have told them are vital. Just as I carry my bullet, as we walk to the car, I wish that all leaders could carry with them the Menin Gate, a monument that had to be built so that mothers, sons, sisters, brothers, fathers, lovers and friends could have somewhere to weep.

That they could also be intensely proud goes without saying, and it's right that they should feel that way. It's another reason to put names on monuments, after all - this person is worthy, and his name is here to prove that for all time.

Those who seek to lead, though, should have "The Menin Gate is a monument to
failure" tattooed on their souls.

Suitably sobered, we drive off to Dunkirque.

"Boom, boom, boom, boom -"
"Don't tell me - boom, boom, boom, boom?"