En route to Calais, we stopped in Ypres to make good on our vow last year to see the In Flanders Fields museum at the Cloth Market.
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| Another canal-side camper-stop (improvised) |
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The Cloth Market; rebuilt in the 1920s and re-opened in 1932; the
original, centuries old, and one of Europe's very greatest buildings,
was destroyed by the Germans quite early in the war; In Flanders
Fields is in the Cloth Market |
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| Last good days, 1913 |
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| Depicting the first battle of Ypres (there were several) |
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| Most of the death and carnage was caused by artillery |
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| And machine guns |
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| The Germans initiated the use of gas warfare at Ypres in 1915 |
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The countryside is dotted with beautiful little ponds like this;
enormous craters resulting from underground warfare...dig under
the enemy's lines, set a charge, blow him up; one was so large
its detonation was heard in London |
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| Ypres...early in the war |
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| A Canadian enlisted man's kit |
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| German |
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American...Ypres was contested throughout the
war, as armies advanced and retreated over the
same ground for 4 years; the Americans didn't
arrive until 1918, but some of the worst of the
fighting remained |
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| French (somehow I missed the British) |
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| Ypres by 1916 was a wasteland |
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After the war, temporary housing; Churchill had proposed leaving
Ypres as it was as a memorial to the hundreds of thousands who
died in its precincts; the Belgians refused this and rebuilt |
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| Memorials |
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One exhibit simply names and identifies all who were killed
here |
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| A sad long list of all the wars since "the war to end all wars" |
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| McCrae's famous poem |
