In Flanders Fields

Posted by Caitlyn on December 15, 2011

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Belgium is known for a lot of things. A diverse lot of things, you might say. It’s known for its chocolate, beers, waffles, lace, and to some, like me, dodgy trains.

It’s also known for another important thing. When Europeans decide to have a good old war, they tend to choose to do it in Belgium.

One of the tours available to our passengers travelling to Belgium is run by Quasimodo Tours. It takes you to the frontline of World War I, in and around the infamous town of Ypres. Even though most of our passengers are in their early twenties, it is immensely popular and usually sold out, which was the case when I had days off in Bruges earlier this year. So, when fellow guide Lynda and her parents were visiting Bruges a couple of weeks ago, I temporarily forgot about my issues with Belgium and invited myself along.

Ypres is about an hour away from Bruges, deep in Flemish Belgium not too far from both the Dutch and French borders. It wasn’t particularly unique in any way; sure, it was a lovely old Flemish town encircled by a moat, but it was only one of a string of other Flemish towns which are just as picturesque.

The difference between Ypres and say, Bruges, was instead its location. You see, back in 1914 the Germans decided that they were going to jump into World War I, citing a treaty with Austria-Hungary as the reason, yet thought it was as good a time as any to take a big chunk of France along the way. They hadn’t forgotten Napoleon, and they were a relatively new country which needed a nice big military victory to instil a bit of national pride.

But you’re talking about France and Germany here, you’re saying. Where does Belgium come in? Exactly – it doesn’t really. It just happened to be in the way. Germany and France do share a border but the French had built up hundreds of defences in this region over the centuries. Going through Belgium would be quicker, the Germans thought.

Well, they kind of thought wrong. They got as far as the vicinity of Ypres, where the two frontlines hovered around for the following four years.

Stepping out of the minivan on that fresh November morning was chilling, and I’m not just talking about the weather. We saw dozens of farmhouses, spread out one after another, as far as the eye can see as Flanders is notoriously flat. All of the farmhouses were reconstructed after the war at considerable cost, yet they don’t have that rushed look as so many post-WWII reconstructed German cities do.

(Which, on a side note, really brought home how stupid it was to give the 1920 Olympics to Antwerp. It would be like giving the 2020 Games to Baghdad. The country was pretty much a ruin and the construction of swimming pools was so distant a concern that competitors in the diving had to use the city moat.)

Our guide, Phillippe, was fantastic. The amount of knowledge he had was amazing, and when I asked him whether he’d had any formal education in history, he shrugged. “When you grow up around here, everyone is an expert.”

Phillippe’s local touch was evident when he brought us inside a farmer’s garage. Inside was a card table and a couple of crates full of what he’d collected during the last ‘iron harvest’; the name given for harvests around Ypres which tend to offer up just as much shrapnel as potatoes. Even today, the farmer’s garage had only recently been filled with countless rifles, bullets and mustard gas canisters. The latter are the only ones treated seriously; they’re now taken away to be defused, a technique which has only just been perfected. Only a decade ago they were disposed of by being dropped in the middle of the North Sea.

Just your average West Flemish farmer's shed.

Another jaw-dropping moment was walking around Hill 60, the project recently immortalised in an Australian movie where the German trenches were blown up from underneath. You had to keep to the marked tracks as unexploded ordnances are apparently still everywhere. Apparently all underground bombs exploded as was planned, all but two it seems. One exploded in the 1950s after a lightening storm (it took the Belgians a couple of days to figure out why) and there’s still another one somewhere. Where though? “They think they know where it is,” Phillippe reassured us. How very Belgian of them.

One of the sobering Allied war cemeteries in Flanders.

But what has stayed with me the most has been the cemeteries. I had seen one American war cemetery once, off in the distance in the southern Netherlands, but this was the first time I actually had a chance to walk around and study the names and sometimes stories on the headstones. Tears came easily when you realised the average age of those killed was nineteen. One particularly sad grave was that of a fifteen year old Canadian; Belgian schoolchildren are now taken to his grave by the busload. Other headstones contained the message “he died for freedom”, which I found just as incredibly sad. We’re not just using that politicised word today, it’s been around for at least a century.

The grave of the youngest soldier to die in Flanders, at age fifteen.

Ypres today is again a handsome Flemish town, with a towering cathedral, stately Cloth Hall and dozens of immaculate guild houses. In parts, it could be Antwerp, Bruges or Ghent. But here it’s been completely reconstructed, brick by brick.

So what do you do when you’ve walked around the Menin Gate, and have twenty minutes to look around in Ypres? You take a photo of the cathedral, and the town square, like everywhere else in Europe. And we had a waffle, queuing up with the locals. Because even in Ypres, life goes on. Waffles are eaten, potatoes are harvested. In Flanders Fields.