Day 4 was the last day of the tour, and true to form, it decided to rain most of the day, particularly the morning.

The first trip of the day was to the German cemetery at Langemarck.  Richard had said that it had a ‘dark’ feeling about it, and he was right, particularly with the rain.  As with many German cemeteries, the individual commemorative stones were dark stone, almost flat with the ground.  With the wet, and on many stones the names were not highlighted in white, so they were dark flat slabs.  At the rear of the cemetery, opposite the entrance, are the four, dark, statue figures as shown on the right.  (The blurring was deliberate by me in Photoshop.) There is a very ‘brooding’ feeling to the cemetery.

Robin Neillands in his book “The Great War Generals” says of Langemarck; “These engagements around Langemarck on 22nd October (1914), and the others that were to follow during First Ypres, have netered German history as the ‘Kindermorde von Ypern’, “The Slaughter of the Innocents at Ypres’. Today, the vast German cemetery at Langemarck, where most of these young people lie, has become a place of pilgrimage for their countrymen.”  The German generals kept sending the men forward against murderous British rifle fire.  “For hour after hour, these young German soldiers pressed home their attacks against the British infantry.  The attacks were hopeless, but they continued nevertheless, until the ground before the British line was carpeted with field-grey uniforms, the silent dead, the wounded crying out for aid or, most pitifully, for their mothers, their cries unheard under the thunder of the guns and the relentless crackle of rifle fire.” It is a sombre place on a rainy day.

In this view the four figures are in the trees, on the right, at the far end of the cemetery. At this end you lose some of the darker feeling, being out in the open, away from the trees. Also here the names are picked out in white on the stones, in the trees they are not, and so are very difficult to read.  In most cases each of the stone memorials commemorates eight German soldiers. Behind me, some distance back, is the position from which the Germans launched their first gas attack in April 1915.

After Langemarck, Kerselaar, and the statue of ‘The Sleeping Soldier’, commemorating those who died in that first gas attack mentioned above. This is a Canadian monument. Although it is known as the ‘Sleeping’ or the ‘Resting’ soldier, he is in fact adopting a position from the Drill Manual. He is ‘resting on his arms reversed’.  This is a drill movement used at funerals, I remember it well from participating in Churchill’s funeral procession as a young RAF Apprentice.  His rifle is inverted, muzzle down on the ground, with the magazine facing out, away from him. He then has his hands crossed on the upturned butt of the rifle.  This was possible on the old .303 Lee Enfield rifle, but I am not sure if this is still possible with the modern, very much shorter, army weapon.

I prefer my ‘modified’ picture on the first page of the tour section.

Following this we moved off to Tyne Cot, probably one of the best known of the Western Front cemeteries.  When we got there, Richard giving us the talk on Passchendaele, the rain teeming down, it was at least atmospheric, although difficult to imagine how the men of the time had coped with it all. Edmund Blunden in his book “Undertones of War”, referred to it as “..the slow amputation of Passchendaele...”

I preferred to reduce the colour photo to stark black and white.

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun In the wild purple of the glow’ring sun, Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear, Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, They leave their trenches, going over the top, While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!   Attack Siegfried Sassoon

Another photo by Malcolm Cooper, taken in finer weather than we had.

The afternoon was spent in Ypres, and by then the weather had improved.  I will leave with two comments of General Jack’s from his diary, one describes Ypres in 1914, the second describes it in 1917.

1914 “We return from our tour via the fascinating old town of Ypres, passing over the moat through Vauban’s 17th century ramparts by the Lille Gate.  The large cobbled square is full of British and Belgian troops, besides people of all sorts. We pay a too-brief visit to the wonderful Flemish Cloth Hall and St. Martin’s Church. It is a gem of a town with its lovely old-world gabled houses, red-tiled roofs, and no factories visible to spoil the charm.”

1917 “This once beautiful old town, situated amid the sluggish brooks and ditches of Flanders (which I had the good fortune to see in all its charm in October 1914), is now a shell-swept stinking heap of ruins, under damnable daily bombardments. Almost all the gems of medieval architecture have been levelled by shells; scarcely one of the lovely old gabled houses is left standing...Vauban’s 17th century ramparts, encircling the old town, have defied the batterings of three years with astonishing success; on their eastern, southern and western sides a moat full of stagnant, smelly water has helped in saving them from obliteration.... Joining the western part of the moat the Yser-Ypres-Comines Canal stretches northwards and southwards, its banks crammed with dug-outs for troops in reserve. Other accommodation exists in vaults in the ramparts and in cellars beneath buildings.

The Battalion area inside the ramparts near the Lille Gate is heavily shelled, less so on this wet day than previously.  Two of our companies are in the ramparts, the other two in cellars nearby.  The men are safe enough when underground, but the blast of howitzer shells outside is often terrific, especially at night when half the battalion is on working parties and carrying stores... I with a couple of orderlies and my bugler leave our rat-infested headquarters at the Lille Gate and cross the stinking moat...... The light is dull and we can see little; the site of the village of Hooge and the wooded heights about Stirling Castle to the right front; the depression of Bellewaarde Lake, the tree stumps on the crest, and the faint outline of Westhoek Ridge to the front. All else is a featureless blur of low ridges covered with long lank grass and weeds.” 

Ypres took a terrible bashing in the war, and in the museum in the Cloth Hall there are some wonderful photos showing the condition of the town at the end of the war. The Cloth Hall today is a wonderful testament to the will of the townspeople to rebuild their demolished town.