Not Quite “The Last Post” — France & Belgium Blog #1

What I like about Europe is how tall everything is. That’s not to say there aren’t any tall buildings in America — there’s plenty — but it just feels different here. In America, our skyscrapers don’t feel astonishing, and we often forget how incredible they really are when we don’t look up and gaze at their resplendent defiance of gravity. Here in Europe, however, their architecture is built to impress, impose, and inspire, and you can’t help but wonder how they managed to make it all work. This is not to mention, of course, that many of these structures have stood for hundreds of years and the weight of time has pressed down on their grey and white stone, serving to compound with gravity in its pursuit of returning it to Earth.

Though that is true in general, not so is the last part in Ypres (or Ieper in the local Flemish), where essentially the entire town was destroyed during World War One. Unfortunately, this included the medieval Cloth Hall, a massive trade hub in the market square, which was pummeled to the ground by artillery but for the base of the tower. Additionally, the three massive churches and the 17th century defensive ramparts of the town were thoroughly destroyed during the Great War.

However, the town has since been completely rebuilt, despite the protests of Winston Churchill, who advocated for the town to be left in ruins as a sort of memorial to the British soldiers of the First World War.

Our visit to Ypres was fantastic. We stayed at the Meningate House, just across the street from Louis XIV’s (the Sun King) ramparts and the incredible World War One memorial, the Menin Gate. By happy chance, our host at the Meningate House was also the chairman of The Last Post Association, which, since 1928, has organized a memorial ceremony at the gate every night, the only exception being from 1940–1944, when Nazi occupation forced them to continue the tradition in exile in England. The “Last Post” is a kind of thanks from the Belgian locals to the mostly British and Commonwealth (particularly Australian, New Zealander, Canadian, and South African) soldiers who successfully defended Ypres from the Germans in the First World War. Ypres (and the surrounding region of West Vlaanderen) was the only slice of Belgium that was spared German occupation through the Great War. As such, it became a symbol for Belgian resistance, as well as an early inspiration for Canadian and ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand) patriotism, becoming an important moment in their burgeoning national identities.

Before we reached Ypres, however, our journey took us to the site of the great 1815 Battle of Waterloo. We went to the memorial museum at the base of the lion hill monument, which immortalized the many Dutch soldiers who fought with the Duke of Wellington’s Coalition army by building a massive mound in the middle of the battlefield. Regardless, the museum was fantastic and I really enjoyed that whole area.

We then toured around two critical points of the battlefield: La Haye Sainte, a farmhouse at the center of the British line, and Hougoumont, a farm estate which played a very important role through the entire battle on the Duke’s right flank.

That night we drove from Waterloo to Ypres, where I began this slightly roundabout recounting.

The next day we embarked on another historic adventure that I was very excited for: our full day tour of the surrounding World War One battlefields with Iain McHenry. This was absolutely fantastic and I learned a lot. Through the day we traveled north of Ypres to the Passchendaele Ridge and village, where we visited the Passchendaele Museum in Zonnebeke. This was a great little museum and a critical introduction to the military history of the region. My favorite part was the replica trenches and underground tunnels, which presented the human aspect of the war for both the Allies and the Central Powers.

We also drove out to Messiness Ridge to the east of Ypres, another important battlefield in Flanders fields. There we saw Hill 60, where British tunnelers detonated a massive store of explosives beneath the German front lines, creating a massive crater that remains unfilled to this day.

I write all of this the next night but I am too tired to recount today as well. I guess you can look forward to hearing about a very long drive and the city of Rouen, which we stopped at for a few hours for lunch and a bit of sightseeing. Tonight we are staying in Saint-Lo, as a base for our exploration of the D-Day Beaches tomorrow.