The Battlefields of Flanders

Even for non-experts like me, signs such as ‘Menin’, ‘Passendale’ and ‘Ieper’ made it clear that, as we drove towards the last of these three destinations, we were heading for an area now intrinsically linked with the Great War and the battles which took place here nearly a hundred years ago. I had never been to this part of Flanders before and I think I was expecting more obvious signs of what had happened here.

But apart from the odd quiet graveyard with its ubiquitous lines of white markers and one or two concrete structures in the fields which may or may not have been bunkers, the agricultural landscape was fairly similar to anywhere else in Belgium. More than the cemeteries, the odd poppy dancing amongst the straw on passing verges moved me. And I wanted to be moved. Ypres in particular is a place of pilgrimage for many thousands of people from Britain and the Commonwealth who want to pay their respects to the soldiers who died here and also want to understand more about what happened to their ancestors.

Our hosts, the Flanders Tourist Board, are also keen to make the history of the area more accessible. We were taken to the now newly reopened In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres’ neo-medieval Cloth Hall, where modern technology allows visitors to interact with the stories of people who relate to them – either by gender or by the area they come from. You can even find out at the end of the exhibition how many people with your name died during the First World War. I strongly suspect that Emily Morrison would have produced far less ‘hits’ than a man’s name but thankfully I never got to find out.

The battlefield areas are also being developed. Hill 60, the Bluff, Bellewaerde, Wieltje and Pilkim Ridge are all to have new information plaques and cycling/ walking routes to show that the whole front is one big historic site and to provide a background history of each area. In some ways I agree with this idea. We enjoyed lovely weather when we visited these sites. The trees were in full leaf and our guide struggled with his English so we only got a very vague impression of the trenches, battles and ‘moon landscape’ that took over these woods less than a century ago. Even the massive craters made by underground bombs that shook the earth for miles around looked like tranquil, naturally created lakes.

But it’s very hard reconciling an area where hundreds of thousands of men died with the idea of a tourist attraction. The Last Post at the Menin Gate is gradually gaining in popularity. Even on a Wednesday night when we went, it was packed. I couldn’t tell whether this was due to a growing need to remember or because this nightly event (since 1929 – except during the occupation in WWII) has become a ‘must-do attraction’ on any Flanders itinerary. When that evening’s organiser said the lines:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

I did – I think everyone gathered did – as far as it is possible in the early 21st century to remember an event so distant, so completely alien and horrific to our modern sensibilities. But I wonder how it will be in twenty or thirty years time as the tour groups come through and whether this quiet and dignified ceremony will be enough to whet their appetites for understanding and for being moved.