Passchendale

If you've been following my entries on the First World War (WW1 for our American Friends), you'd know that Passchendale is a little town just outside of Ieper (Ypres) in those very Flanders fields that John McCrae wrote about in his famous poem In Flanders Fields.

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scare heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead.  Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye brea faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grown
In Flanders fields."

Those words were especially poignant to us as we toured the towns, memorials and cemeteries of Flanders.  First we stopped at Tyne Cot Cemetery where almost 12,000 (including 966 Canadians) Commonwealth soldiers were buried - almost 8,400 of these are unnamed.  In addition, it contained the memorial wall for the other 34,000 Commonwealth (excluding Canada and New Zealand) soldiers who died after August 15th, 1917 without a marked grave.  It had a memorial centre with some exhibits of materials found in the surrounding fields to bring it to life, but the spookiest thing was the piped in announcements every few seconds of the name of one of the soldiers on the grave or the wall, their rank and their age.  You couldn't see the speakers but as you were wandering around the grounds, you could hear a young British girl reading the names... it was very moving.

Tyne Cot Cemetery - so named because the farmhouse they used as protection here in the battle resembled a cottage in Tyne Cot and the troops had marked it as such.

We saw this a fair bit... I gather they were not able to separate the remains.

You can see the nationality (Canadians are marked with a maple leaf), the religion, date of death and rank of the person... if known.

Just part of the wall memorializing the OTHER 34000 soldiers that died after August 16th, 1917 and did not get their names on the Menin Gate.

Then it was on to the nearby town of Passchendale to see the Canadian Memorial there.  It was just off a street called Canadalaand and again was deeded to Canada in perpetuity by the Belgians.  At Passchendale, we suffered almost 16,000 casualties.  To put this in perspective, on D-Day we had about 1,200 casualties at Juno Beach and the American's suffered 3,600 on the cliffs of Omaha Beach - and this when Canada only had 8M people.

Passendale today...  all complete rebuilt... including that Church which was completely flattened.

They have a large park area around the small monument

Surrounded by houses on one side

Canada looks after it.

Not huge considering we lost more men here than at any other battle...ever.

This was considered High Ground.... and why we had 16,000 casualties to take it. (that is a candle... not a beer can)

Our trusty Ford Focus Wagon...it is a big car for over here but gets fantastic gas mileage (5.8L per 100KM on the trip). It is a 6 speed manual diesel.  I would replace the Buick for it if they sold such a beast in Canada.... sadly, Canadians and Americans do not like wagons or diesels according to the car manufacturers...  I say build one and try us! 

If you have seen the Canadian movie Passchendale, you can get a sense of the senseless slaughter on all sides in the miserable conditions - if you slipped off the duckboards lining the floor of the trenches, you were likely to drown in the mud.  The allies had tried for three years to take over Passchendale and the surrounding towns at a cost of more than a million and a half men without success (500,000 on one 100 day campaign that changed 8 kms of land from German to Allied) but the Canadians reassigned right after their successes at Vimy Ridge somehow managed to capture the ridge and the town.  This cemented our reputation as fierce fighters amongst our allies but also amongst the Germans.    Unfortunately, the allies were not able to capitalize on their advances and the war returned to the quagmire until the events of 1918 put an end to the war.