Friday, February 23, 2024
The poor city of Ieper had suffered much during the war. Early in the war, the Germans were racing for the coast to take control of Europe. They swept across France and then North to Belgium. They took Belgium in a little over two weeks. The Allies finally got their act together and held them off in Ieper.
The first battle of Ieper took place in November & December of 1914. While they held the Germans off, they made no headway, and the front lines came to a stop forming a Salient with Ieper right in the mouth of the Salient.
Constant shelling of Ieper pretty much flattened the city and the return shelling by the allies churned up the ground in the Salient.
The second battle of Ieper in April and May of 1915 has the dubious honor of being the first time that gas warfare was used on a large scale. When the wind was just right, 200 tons of heavy, green and yellow chlorine gas were released, and the Allies watched in confusion as the wall of green gas drifted towards them. The trenches were quickly emptied, and hundreds were left dead. The allies responded quickly and while the situation was desperate for a while, they were able to re-secure the salient.
Up until now the Germans were fighting a two front war but in March of 1918, they signed a truce with Russia. Even before the truce was signed, a million German troops were transferred from the Russian front line to the western front. Many of them to Ieper. This was the beginning of what the Germans called the Spring Offensive.
In response to the German Spring offensive, and largely because of their success at hill 70, the Canadians were sent to Ieper to save the day. By this time the City of Ieper was already in ruins.
The third battle of Ieper is arguably the worst battle in all of World War One. The objective was to take the city of Passchendaele which is why this battle is often referred to as the battle of Passchendaele.
After two weeks of heavy shelling to “soften the enemy”, the British (including the Canadians) and French launched their attack on July 31, 1917. Unfortunately, it started to rain on the same day and the rain continued for three weeks. This is what James had to march through and he carried his big gun and headed up the hill.
The soldiers were often in mud up to their waste and if they ever happened to find themselves in a shell hole, they couldn’t get out without the help of another soldier lowering his rifle into the hole to give the poor soldier something to grab onto. Many of the deaths in this battle were from drowning in mud. The battle was often referred to as a battle of mud and blood. The allies lost a quarter of a million soldiers in this attack and as bad as it was for the Allies, it was just as bad for the Germans. Their losses were similar.
One of the museums had quotes from soldiers who served in Passchendaele and one of the quotes read, “I spent thirty-one months in France and Belgium and I would do all the rest over again rather than those six weeks at Passchendaele.”
Ernest Black
After the loss of half a million human beings, the allies advanced about five miles.
The Canadians lost more than 4,000 men with 12,000 wounded. To keep track of James’ odds of survival, he had a 4% chance of dying in this battle and a 12% chance of being wounded. Overall, he had a 31% chance of being dead or wounded. If he had three friends, one of them would have been gone.
When we arrived at Ieper on the evening of Feb 22, 2024, the city was beautiful and showed no signs of a battle. After the war, Winston Churchill tried to have the destroyed city remain as it was, as a memorial to the evils of war, but the citizens of Ieper would have none of it. They wanted their home back. They rebuilt the city exactly as it was. It amazes me how it could have been done, these cities are very ornate and detailed, but they have reproduced it all. You would never know what the city was like after the war but a few people left a few remnants of the disaster.
Our first stop was to the cemetery where John McCrae is buried. John McCrae is the man who wrote the famous poem, “In Flanders Field”.
He wrote this poem while a soldier at Ieper and was killed shortly after he wrote it. In case you’re unfamiliar with the poem it goes as follows:
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
Scarce 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 break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Our next stop was the grand market in Ieper. It is fascinating what they do for the handicapped in Europe. This little model of the “Cloth Hall” sitting in front the actual cloth hall is for blind people so they can get an idea of what the building looks like.
The cloth hall was originally the headquarters and a trading place for cloth merchants during medieval times. It was first built 1200 and 1300.
Today the cloth hall contains a couple of museums which were quite amazing. Perhaps my favorite item in the museum was this section cut from the trunk of a fallen tree. The black marks in the cut section are bullets from WW1.
It was late so after grabbing a waffle we headed to our bnb. It was a small but amazing little loft that the owners built above their garage. As cute as it was though, the fact that the toilet is separated from the main room by a short wall took some getting used to. Alex enjoyed this fact far too much.
By coincidence, our B&B was on Patricia Street. That thrilled us because the regiment that James was in was the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry. Our hosts found that fascinating and told us about a memorial to the Princess Pat’s just a couple of hundred yards from their house at the end of the street.
On Friday morning, Feb 23 we headed to the Passchendaele museum. It was also quite amazing. I couldn’t possibly share everything we saw there but here are a few samples.
A beautiful old manor house had been converted into the museum.
These artillery shells look like a work of art but in reality, these are their original colors. Each shell is color coated to make it clear what kind of shell it is. Some contain poisonous gas, others, throw out lead shot and others just exploded.
At the end of the tour you head outside through a series of trenches. The trenches are made exactly how a typical trench at the time would have been. This is a German trench which typically used woven sticks to hold up the sides.
The Allies used corrugated steel and sandbags to support the walls. The boards at the bottom were called “duck walks” and they were an attempt to keep your feet dry.
And finally, the bathrooms. If our BnB wasn’t enough, the museum bathrooms were a further reminder that Europeans have a different level of modesty than Americans. This bathroom was used by both men and women and the door was never closed. You had no privacy when relieving yourself.
Our hosts told us that when they first bought their little farm, one of their neighbors told them about what life was like right after the war. Their house had survived all the shelling, but they of course had no electricity or running water. There was a shell hole just outside their house, so they used this new “pond” for all their water needs including drinking and cooking. It wasn’t until a few years later when the water dried up during a dry spell that they found a body at the bottom of the shell hole.
The third battle of Ieper had more missing soldiers than just about any other battle in Europe. Mostly because so many of the bodies were lost in the mud but also because the front lines moved a lot. The British would gain a few miles and then they would stop and bury their dead. The Germans would then push the British back and in so doing they would obliterate any signs of the cemetery and those soldiers buried there so now we have an entire cemetery with no way of finding them.
As we were driving from place to place and looked at the fields, it wasn’t hard to imagine just how tough it would have been for the soldiers. I can hardly imagine walking across this muddy field. Just imagine how much worse it would have been after being shot up by artillery.
We then visited the Tyne Cot cemetery. The Tyne Cot cemetery was created after one of the earlier battles of Ieper but was greatly enlarged after the third battle. To keep the whole experience authentic, it rained the entire time we were in Ieper. Actually, it rained the entire time we were in Europe, but it rained especially hard while we were in Ieper. In an attempt to make the visit authentic, Mom decided to roll in the mud while we were at Tyne Cot. There was a small slope in one part of the cemetery and mom slipped and slid down the slope. Other than a bruise on her tail bone she was not hurt. It was a job cleaning her coat though.
Just before we left on this trip, mom learned that Nana had two relatives at Tyne Cot. The body of Nana’s Great Grandpa Bernard Kerr was never found and his name is on the wall at Tyne Cot and her Uncle Albert Edward England is buried there.
Bernard Kerr died on April 12, 1918 and her uncle Albert England died on November 6, 1917. It is weird to think that these guys were there the same time as James Shaw was. Maybe they knew each other. They would never have imagined that their grandchildren would have met and married each other.
The cemetery was beautiful and kept up well.
Every single day at 8:00 the city of Ieper has a short service to remember those who fell in defense of their city. They call it “The Last Post”. As part of the “Last Post”, anyone can lay a wreath at the Menin Gates. Mom wanted to do this for her Great Grandpa so Friday night she prepared this wreath and off we went to watch “The Last Post”.
The Menin Gate is being renovated so they have the entire front of it covered with this sheet. It is a poor substitute for the real gate but the ceremony was quite amazing.
Mom wasn’t quite sure when she should lay the wreath so she asked a security guard what she should do and he took her right to the front. You can see her in this picture if you look for a heavy red plaid coat. She was cold so she was wearing Alex’s coat.
They had a high school choir sing and then two trumpeters came out and played the last post. It was quite solem and a great experience. I think that might be moms wreath in the to picture.
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