Not Forgotten

World War I ended 107 years ago. No one who experienced that war is still alive. No one who is the child of someone who experienced it is still alive. Yet the continued commitment to honor the men and women who served during the war in an area called the Ypres Salient in western Belgium is amazing. And the reminders of the intense and repeated battles that took place in a 54 square mile area there are abundant.

Depending on how you count, up to one million people died in the area in a four-year stalemate that included trench warfare, one of the first uses of poison gas and one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions that has ever occurred. It also produced the poem “In Flanders Field”, written by a Canadian doctor who worked in a damp bunker just behind the front line and had presided over the funeral of a friend the day before writing the poem. That poem's reference to red poppies is the reason that remembrance poppies are the symbol of those who have died in conflict.

Initially, the Ypres area was strategically important for the Allies to defend because it blocked Germany’s easy access to ports on the English Channel. As the war continued, it became symbolically important because it remained one the last areas in Belgium that did not fall under German occupation. Despite repeated battles, sniper fire, land mining and underground explosions, the battle lines never changed more than a few miles. What we saw when we visited the area in July was that active recognition for those who fought in the area and ongoing impacts from that fighting on the people living there today have also not changed. 

Menin Gate Memorial

Ypres is a town of about 35,000 people. Yet up to five thousand people join a ceremony held every evening since 1928 at the Menin Gate Memorial, which honors the British and Commonwealth soldiers killed in the area and the 90,000 of them whose bodies have never been found. 

Participation in the ceremony is actually increasing. The Last Post Association, which organizes the event, recommends visitors arrive at least 45 minutes early to get a good view of the buglers and the laying of the wreath. Every day, one or more visiting choirs, bands, student groups, civic clubs or families joins the activities or brings their own wreath to lie beneath the list of names of the missing. You can see the list of each day's special ceremony participants (or sign up yourself) here: https://lastpost.be/

Nearly 55,000 names of missing Commonwealth soldiers are listed on the Menin Gate Memorial. Names of 45,000 additional missing soldiers are listed on other memorials in the area. 

Increasing Interest

Attendance at the several public and private World War I museums and visitors to the more than 150 cemeteries and memorials in the area remains strong. And the number of tour services that can take visitors to area sights has grown. Guides can take you to a memorial tied to your nationality or interest or help find a grave or inscription related to an ancestor. You can visit a memorial that honors participation of troops from New Zealand, India, Canada, France, Belgium, Scotland, Australia, etc. You can walk through preserved trenches, tunnels, concrete bunkers and battle ridges.

Stereoscopes allow museum visitors to view photos from events in the area.  

You can visit preserved trench systems where troops would often spend from four to eight days. Rodents, insects, standing water and lack of sleep posed risks, in addition to the obvious risk of gunfire, grenades and raids. 

One of More than One Hundred 

Tyne Cot Cemetery is the largest cemetery for British Commonwealth forces anywhere in the world for any war. It is just one of more than 100 cemeteries maintained by the War Graves Commission in the Ypres area. 

Tyne Cot Cemetery contains a memorial wall with names of missing soldiers who are not listed on the Menin Gate Memorial. 

The number of soldiers buried in the area increases each year as remains are regularly uncovered by farmers and construction crews. In April of this year, 22 soldiers, mostly German, were excavated near a golf course. The Commission exhumes and tries to identify remains and provides each with a military burial or returns them to their family. 

Germans are Remembered Too

Of course, many of the casualties were the enemy. So, another of the cemeteries in the area is the Langemark, where nearly 45,000 German soldiers are buried. One mass grave contains nearly 25,000. 

This patch of grass is the final resting place for nearly 25,000 German soldiers killed in the Ypres Salient during World War I. 

Adolf Hitler spent 1914 through 1916 in Ypres as an infantryman and a message runner. And he returned to the area in 1940, just days after Germany took control of the whole of Belgium during World War II. He visited the Langemark Cemetery and walked through the same gates we did to enter the grounds. Clearly, the lessons Hitler learned by actually experiencing the trenches, the destruction and the aftermath of the battles were very different from those we learned just viewing the remains and the memories of the period. 

 

Our tour guide holds a copy of a photo showing Adolf Hitler entering the gates of Langemark Cemetery. 

 

We walked through those same gates, but the experience of visiting a cemetery marking 45,000 of his comrades killed seems to have made a different impression on us than it it did on Hitler.

Effects of the War Live On

Farmers and construction crews regularly encounter remnants of the war as they plow and excavate. Unexploded  bombs and ammunition can be placed by the roadside for special pickup and disposal. 

We saw recently uncovered munitions that had been left by the side of a country road for authorities to pick up and dispose of. 

Today the Ypres city center is filled with Flemish medieval and Renaissance style buildings – just as it was before the war. But, actually, constant shelling destroyed every single building in the entire town, except two. So, the city center is a reconstruction, deliberately designed to match the buildings as they were before the start of the war. And German reparations helped pay for that rebuilding. Those forced reparation payments were one of the factors that fueled German resentment and contributed to the start of World War II. 

The Ypres City Center looks very similar to the areas we saw in other Belgian towns. But the buildings are actually less than 100 years old. All of the original buildings had been destroyed and they were rebuilt to look just like they had before World War I. 

We spent nearly an entire day visiting multiple museums, being guided through cemeteries and memorials and seeing student groups, families and travelers from around the world doing the same. The people who endured the hardship and horrors of the Ypres Salient in World War I are absolutely being remembered and honored by the community and visitors. But I am not convinced that lessons of peace are learned and retained by experiencing or memorializing any war. At least 250 international and civil wars have occurred since the end of World War I, and more than two dozen are going on today. 

Stereoscope photos at the Sanctuary Wood Museum outside Ypres, Belgium.