Day 3

Up and at 'em for another day of battlefields and cemeteries. I am realizing by this point how little I actually know. The guilt of perhaps leaving my students unserved for so many years is only to get worse as the tour continues.

Our first stop today was to talk about the 2nd Battle of Ypres--perhaps most famously known to Canadians for the Germans' use of gas here.

We are learning that some of the things that have been traditionally held to be true by Canadians aren't necessarily so.

The 2nd Battle of Ypres would be the first battle in the Great War where Canadians saw action. It's frightening to stand there and look over the countryside and imagine a green cloud of death coming towards you. People blame the French for running. They didn't run. They had been gassed. They were looking for help. It would take some of them 72 hours to die--drowned in their own mucus. This would have been an awful place to be.

I kept hearing things and seeing things about this "Ypres Salient". I finally figured out what it meant--basically a bulge in a line into the other side's territory. Why they couldn't call it a bulge, I don't know--but Salient it is.

Shortly after our time in the farmer's field talking about Ypres, we went to a little tiny place called Saint Juliaan (or St. Julien). It was just a little corner but here was a monument to the Canadians and their efforts at the Second Battle of Ypres. There were a number of things that heppened here to warrant acknowledgement. The monument here is known as the "Brooding Soldier". I actually quite like it. Apparently there was quite a decision-making process in the Canadian government about where monuments were to be located and what they would look like. The brooding soldier may have been intended for more than one site but for some reason, only one was ever put up. There was also considerable discussion about this being the location for the memorial that is now at Vimy. Based on what happened here and near here, it is certainly a valid location for significant remembrances.

Later on we went to Essex Farm--the location of Colonel John McCrae's field hospital. It was on the far side of a river/canal which gave it some degree of protection but not from guns. There were guns behind it that fired over top of it onto the battlefield. You can still see the bunkers where the medical staff did their work. Originally there were just earthen dugouts. After some time, they were reinforced with concrete and became like small rooms. But, I cannot imagine trying to put a bandaid on someone in there, let alone perform major surgery and keep people alive. It's astonishing that anyone survived at all. This is where he wrote "In Flanders' Fields". It's still the only poem to which I know all the words. Is that pathetic or not? There is also a cemetery here with casualties from the field hospital.

After this , we were off to Mount Sorrel--one of those places that Canadians should know about but it has been overshadowed by more "significant" locations. One of the things that we were asked to do was to examine why some places are more recognized than others. Mount Sorrel is marked with the standard Canadian cube monument--which is what is at most of the Canadian sites near Ypres.

We then went to one of our first cemeteries--La Laiterie Military Cemetery. It was really quite small in comparison to what we would see later. But, you begin to see where the "between the crosses, row on row..." comes from.

We didn't have any more official business out in the field this day so we headed back to Ypres. We did have some responsibilities at Menin Gate this evening. We had to go out, get something to eat and get dressed for the ceremony. I think I stopped in a chocolate shop to get some treats for the wonderful humanitarians who were looking after Pixi and Henry for me.

People got all changed and dressed appropriately and we headed over to for the Menin Gate Ceremony. This is one of the gates of Ypres that has been established as one of two memorials for soldiers who perished in the war but for whom no remains have been found. Soldiers from British and Commonwealth armies are included here. The monument is here because most of the soldiers who fought around Ieper would leave the safety of the town through this gate to use the Menin road to get to the front. Thousands of them would never return. There are almost 55 000 names on the Menin Gate and another 30 000 British are inscribed at Tyne Cot. There are also separate locations for New Zealanders and Newfoundlanders.

Anyhow, I have digressed. Every night at 8:00 p.m. every day in every kind of weather, the last post is played in a ceremony for the fallen. Groups can come and lay wreaths there if they give some advance notice so every day someone or some group is providing a clear indication of remembrance. Mike, Paul, Lane, Nathan and Tammy were to lay the wreath for our group. There were a few ahead of us. At the ceremony we saw, a young boy played the bagpipes and the buglers played the traditional taps. Everything near the gate stops for the ceremony. No traffic, no people can get through until it's over. Every day at 8:00 p.m. almost 90 years after the war, the town and the visitors remember. And express their gratitude or whatever it is you have to say to the guys on the walls.

I had Paul and Tammy's cameras so I was across the way and did some picture taking. I don't think they were of any great quality. It was really stressful using other people's cameras--I shoulda just stuck with mine.

After that, we looked around the monument for a while. Tammy had a book of boys from Summerland BC and a number of them were on the monument. We took some time there and did some name rubbings for Tammy to take home.

Nathan had a story about a couple of the names that were on the wall. A father and a son. I can't remember all of the details--I'll have to get him to send out the story. It left us all in tears. We took out photos and gathered our thoughts and then headed away from the gate.

There was time for a drink and a snack before we had to head to bed. The next day we were off again and we had to pack up all our stuff to move to our next stop.

I really liked Ieper. It was a nice town. Fantastic town square--great architecture--they had rebuilt it almost exactly as it had been before the war. I could go back there again.

We were on to Arras. And another phase of the war.

Battlefields Tour--Day 2

Day 1 was plenty long enough and we were up early to leave Paris at 7:30. The guys did a good job of picking hotels with high quality breakfasts--this meant that we could stock up for lunch.

French hotels have an interesting variety of yogourt flavours--my roommate was quite thrilled. Pink grapefruit for example. I wasn't sure the citrus should meet the dairy but it was really quite good. I was excited that they had cherry. My favourite cherry yogourt here has been discontinued :( But, I digress. You cannot have too much pain au chocolate--even at breakfast. Unfortunately, they don't travel well. But, we stocked up and loaded up and headed out of Paris.

The traffic wasn't too bad and our destination was about 3 hours away. It was a really nice drive up in the northeastern part of France and into Belgium. I did try to take some pictures through the window--bad idea. There were 5 of us in the van + Ben stuck in the little seat in the back. He bailed on us at the first rest stop though and went into another car where he proceeded to torment Lane for the next 2 weeks. We had 2 vans and a station wagon so we were a convoy of three.

Aside from a pee break/coffee break at a gas station along the highway, we drove straight through. Tim Hortons should look at France for expansion. There was no fresh coffee at the rest stop. There was just a row of machines that distributed coffee, tea and hot chocolate. There were those tall bar tables in the open space near the machine so you saw all these travellers leaning against the tables drinking these teeny tiny cups of coffee--a Timmy's large would knock the socks off of these folk. I don't think coffee and driving has permeated French culture yet. They don't have lids. And, there is a serious lack of cupholders in the average Renault Espace.

Late in the morning we pulled in to Ieper in Belgium. We stopped at a little bar/cafe thing just inside one of the gates in the old medieval wall. We had a chance to go to the bathroom and get something to drink before we did our first stand. A stand is where we stop and get a sense of the land around us and learn about the events that are relevent to our location.

I have to tell you about the bathrooms in Belgium and northern France. They are not quite like anything I have ever seen before. You go through the bar and follow the signs. They point you right through the bar and then out into the back yard. There, there are a couple of urinals and if we are really lucky, a toilet with a door on it. The sink is often outside too. There isn't really much separation for the sexes while you are going about your business. A little strange. I live in residence, I can pee at the same time as guys. But I would imagine that some more conservative members of North American society might have some difficulties.

Be that as it may. We went up on top of the wall--there is an old medieval wall that at one time surrounded Ieper. Parts of it made it through the war. We listened to Lee up on the wall. He talked about the reasons that the war started and why Canada chose to go and why the history of the First World War has been written the way that it has.

At this point, I found out that the little notebook that I had brought was in no way going to be enough. I don't listen and remember very well so I have to write everthing down. I needed to track down another, larger notebook. And a pen that worked. I hauled pens across the ocean that didn't work. Dumbass.

There was a little war cemetery there. We were to find out that there are little war cemeteries everywhere.

We were going to go to a little restaurant that seemed geared for Canadians but it was Sunday and it was closed. I think we went back into Ieper to have lunch that day. I can't quite remember.

We went to our next stand--in the middle of some poor farmer's field. We spent a lot of time in people's fields. I think the Belgian farmers are just used to weird Canadians disembarking and poking around. Ben is a shrapnel savant. He likes nothing more than seeing a freshly plowed Belgian field. Lee and Blake had been saying that Ben was brilliant at finding shrapnel. I figured that after 90 years, you would have to be pretty good at finding it. After all, how much could be left? Ben found shrapnel left right and centre. All he did was walk up and down the furrows of the field and low and behold, it was sitting right there, waiting to be picked up. He found a fuse cap and a bunch of other pieces. He also found a grenade. I think it was all he could do not to touch it--you never know if it's going to explode or not. I took a wander too and surprisingly, I found some shrapnel too. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it's still surfacing. When we had the farm, we were constantly harvesting rocks that hadn't been there the year before. But shrapnel after 90 years--I still can't believe it.

Towards the end of the afternoon, we ended up back in Ieper again. We went to the Flanders Fields Museum. It was really interesting--a lot of great information and exhibits on the First World War--not just Ypres and its battles. I took tons of pictures--we didn't have time and I needed to be able to come back later and look at the information. The museum is in the old Cloth Hall in the main square of town. It's the only place I really did any shopping. How sad is that??

Our hotel was just off the main square so we could walk back to our rooms. We went to the main square for dinner. There were tons of places to choose from and there were chocolate shops and bars as well. We went to a place that had enough room for a lot of people and had beer and something to eat. Kreik. They had Kreik. Cherry flavoured beer-pop. I think I could move to Belgium. An awesome town square and Kreik. Some people went over to the Menin Gate and watched the ceremony there. More on that tomorrow.

It was a very full day.

Battlefields Tour--Day 1. Paris

Well, it's kind of day 1. Actually, I am home now. Things were so busy every day that I never had a chance to put pen to paper, so to speak.


It was a mad rush to get ready to go. May and June at school is at least hell and we finished on June 30. We had my Grandma's birthday on July 1 (even though she is no longer with us) and so I had the 2nd to get ready. The flight left on Saturday evening. I had packed everything I needed except an umbrella--an error I would discover several days later.


I hate flying. They don't make seats long enough for people like me. Even though I took my pillow and blankie, I only got about an hour's sleep. I could feel my feet and ankles swelling. I hate that.


So, an uneventful flight later, we landed in Paris. As we were going through the customs line, a guy walked up to me and asked if I was on the Battlefield tour. That was Paul. He had found Tammy--I thought she might be one of us as she was reading a book called "D-Day". A bit of a tip-off I thought. So we banded together. We were at Terminal 3 at Charles De Gaulle Airport. That means it's the Bataan death march to get to the train to take you to Terminal 2 where you can get cabs or the RER to take you into Paris. We were also on the lookout for Blake & Ben, Murray and Lane--all of whom were arriving around the same time that we were. We did find Blake and Ben but none of the others. I was rather looking forward to taking the train into Paris and making my way to the hotel. However, the others wanted to take a cab and bowing to peer pressure and not wanting to annoy my new acquaintances, I went with them. We found a cab, piled all our stuff in and off we went. At one point, we were doing 160 km/h on the highway. I've never driven that fast in a car I don't think. He first of all took us to the wrong hotel. Good think I noticed and said something because I had no idea where we were by this point. Eventually, we made it to our hotel in Montmartre. I think we paid too much for the taxi but we were there. We were too early to check in so we left our stuff in a locked room and set off to see a few things in Paris. I had been there before and knew how to use the Metro so I was designated tour guide. Turns out our hotel was around the corner from the Moulin Rouge so we took some pictures of that as we went to the Metro station.


We bought a day pass so we could get on and off a few times. It was only about 6 Euros so that was worth it.


Our first stop was the Arc de Triomphe. We popped up from underground and surprise, there it was. Took some pictures and went back downstairs to go across the road so we could get directly to it. I had not been that close before. Took some more pictures. There were tons of people there surprise, surprise. We didn't have time to dawdle. Next we were off the the Eiffel Tower. I have been there before too. Paul and Tammy wanted to climb the stairs up. No way I was going to do that--didn't want to wreck my knees completely before we even got going. So I waited at the bottom.


They wanted to go to Notre Dame and I wanted to go back to the hotel so I gave them the directions to get there, and they went that way and I headed back to the hotel to check in. It was nice to get into the room. Really nice place too. Mercure in Montmartre.


That first night, we had a group dinner--there was an English group with about 16 all together and a French group with I am guessing about 10-12. We walked again past the Moulin Rouge and up a small sidestreet to a restaurant that was opening just for us. The owner came and opened--brought us wine an appetizers and we had them on the sidewalk outside while we were meeting everyone.


The called us in when dinner was ready. We were served something that looked pretty weird and all of us ended up with different glasses of it--turned out it was beets in something that tasted like chip dip--it was really good despite my reservations upon first glance--beets are not my favourite. Then we had roasted chicken and quinoa which was also quite good. They brought in a woman to sing some traditional French songs about the neighbourhood and the area. It was interesting but I think some of it was lost on us English people. The lady was a little weird--maybe just French. Dessert was a lovely apricot/almond tart. Some people left early and missed it. Ha ha.


It really was time for bed by then. We walked home. I ended up walking home with Murray. Good thing too. What I hadn't realized was that in order to get to our hotel, we had to walk through Pigalle. All I have to say is that I am really glad that we didn't let the kids go to Pigalle when we were on our school trip a couple of years ago. It seems to live up to its reputation. Sex shops galore. I can't post some of the pictures since this might be read by someone who maintains polite company. All I can say is euw. I think Murray was a bit relieved to have me nearby on the walk home as the bouncers trying to entice men into the strip clubs kind of left him alone.


So, to the hotel and to bed it was. Morning was to come early the next day. We had to be packed and loaded and out by 7:30 in the morning. Off to Belgium!!