The year our family traveled the world: Ieper (Ypres)

After our sobering visit to Vimy Ridge, we continued on to Belgium to visit the little town of Iepers. Ieper was known to the Allies by its French spelling as Ypres (generally intentionally mis-pronounced as Wipers by the British and Canadian Troops). As most Canadian's know, Ypres was the site of many of the main battles of WW1 and is located in the county of Flanders (hence the Flanders Fields references in the famous poem).

Ypres occupied a strategic position during World War I because it stood in the path of Germany's planned sweep across the rest of Belgium and into France from the north (the Schlieffen Plan). The neutrality of Belgium was guaranteed by Britain; Germany's invasion of Belgium brought the British Empire into the war. The German army surrounded the city on three sides, bombarding it throughout much of the war. To counterattack, British, French, Canadian and other allied forces made costly advances from the Ypres Salient (pocket) into the German lines on the surrounding hills.

There were three battles for Ypres occurring annually over four years from 1914 to 1917. The Third Battle of Ypres is also known as the Battle of Passchendale which I will talk about in the next post. We had picked up a map of Commonwealth war graves, which was a small booklet of 90 pages with 58 maps of each of the cemeteries and memorials in Belgium and Northern France. The map for Ypres has 146 such markers and the map is mostly blue with them. It is completely sobering to look at and realize how many young men on all sides were killed here. The town was rebuilt from the ground up in the old style with German reparations (the unaffordability of this to the Germans was part of the cause of the second World War barely 20 years later).

It is a charming little town with lots of old buildings and a massive cathedral they call Cloth Hall that dwarfs Notre Dame and is stunning to see at night. Like most of Ieper, it was totally destroyed and rebuilt following the first world war. We had dinner on the main market square at a nice little restaurant overlooking the old buildings and found an apartment to spend the night. The real reason we came to Ieper though was to watch the Last Post at the Menin Gate.

Cloth House

The Menin Gate was a memorial built by the British (and led by Churchill in the 20's and 30's) to honour Commonwealth war dead that were never found. When it was initially conceived, they had thought it would contain something under 50,000 names but the British were forced to build another memorial to contain the more than 100,000 names in total and stops at 15th of August 1917 (the war continued until 11/11/18). It forms part of the old wall surrounding the old city (built by the Romans) and crosses the moat. It is an impressive structure. Every night at 8pm for the past 90 odd years (excepting under German occupation during WW2), the local Belgian fire brigade performs the Last Post with the support of any veterans or civilians who want to participate in wreath laying. It was a very chilling ceremony and a touching tribute to those soldiers without a known grave.

Menin Gate

The night we were there, the Fire Brigade played their Last Post but there was a troop of English Air Cadets along with some Legion members and some family members who also laid wreathes. There must have been about 500 people in attendance. It was quite something to see that after 95 years, all these men are still so well remembered. There were a lot of Canadian flags there as well (although the Canadian missing are not represented here but at Vimy Ridge and a separate memorial for Newfoundland as NFLD didn't join Confederation until after the end of the Second World War in 1947).

The next am, I stopped at a local Belgium bakery and we picked up some baguettes and various pastries before heading out on our way to see the rest of the memorial sites we'd planned. I quite liked that little town and would love to go back someday... especially later in the summer when we could sit outside in the market without 7 layers of summer clothes trying to be warm!

Ieper (Ypres) Market Square in the centre of the old city. We had dinner at the first glassed in restaurant on the left. Very good traditional Belgian meal and Laffe Beer!