Ieper; Friday, 25 March, 2016

I had a quick breakfast in the hotel before heading out into town. I wandered over to the Grote Markt, the main square in the centre of town, and had a look round there before walking over to the Cathedral and visiting there. Given the whole of the city centre was just a pile of rubble in 1918 it’s amazing how well it was rebuilt to look like it must have done before the start of hostilities.

From the Cathedral I walked back to the station and picked up the bus out to Passchendaele and the Commonwealth War Graves site at Tyne Cot.

Built around a former German Pillbox this is the largest such site in Europe and the rows and rows of white headstones is very moving, what’s more moving is the much longer list of names inscribed on the walls of the cemetery for those who have no grave as no part of their body was ever found, and the list on the wall here only covers the period after 15th August 1917 as they had run out of space on the Menin gate so decided to add the names of those who went missing after that date to the memorial here. Next to the graveyard is a small interpretation centre that tells some of the background to the Third Battle of Ypres that saw the heaviest fighting around this area. Most moving of all at the site is the single voice slowly reading out the names and ages at death of the men who are still missing.

From the cemetery I walked back to the bus stop and caught the bus back a couple of stops to Zonnebeke and the Memorial Museum in the town. The museum has lots of detail about the Third Battle of Ypres, and also on the build-up to the war in general. The second part of the museum takes you down into the recreation of a British dugout that would have been built at the front to house men on the front line. The final part of the museum takes you up into a recreation of both a German and British trench line to get a better understanding of what they were like.

There weren’t very many people at the museum but even so with the previous couple of days rain it was clear quite how muddy and unpleasant these trenches got.

I caught the bus back into Ieper and had a late lunch and a bit of a wander round, taking in the Menin Gate and the row after row of names of the missing – 54,896 names in total. I then headed over to the market square and caught the bus out to Hooge to visit the Hooge Crater Museum.

The museum covers the fighting that took place in this area, and the craters that were created by forces tunnelling under the ground under enemy locations, packing the tunnels with explosives and then setting them off to create massive craters in the landscape – now mostly filled with water.

From Hooge I caught the bus back into Ieper and had dinner before heading back over to watch the nightly Last Post ceremony that takes place at the Menin Gate each night at 8pm as it has since 2nd July 1928, a continued act of remembrance for the truly horrific cost of war.

After the ceremony ended I had a bit more of a wander around the city centre at night before returning to the hotel.