Back In Belgium

All of the above pics were taken in Antwerpen.

We are in our hotel room in Brussels having a beer and lamenting the fact that this is our last night in Belgium and are flying home tomorrow. This trip totally exceeded all of our expectations; we loved all of it and met some great people. It was snowing this morning when we drove north to visit Rit and Kamiel and their two sons, we were due at their place for lunch. They stuffed us with excellent homemade Belgium food, then took us to Antwerpen for a tour with Kamiel acting as our guide; he was very good and very knowledgeable about Antwerpen. Rit and Kamiel likely think I have completely lost my mind because I went on and on about the doors, really, the doors on houses and old buildings are fantastic. If I knew about these doors before, I don’t know, I may have had to import one for our house.

After seeing Antwerpen we returned to Rit and Kamiel’s place where Rit said she was just going to whip up a few things to eat, it was more than a few things, we noshed on really good food again, their hospitality was unreal, after dinner we were given quince jam and lots of chocolate to take home. After saying our goodbyes to Rit and Kamiel, we drove to Brussels; it was snowing for about half of the drive but stopped before we got to Brussels. We got here around 9:00 pm, went for a walk around the main square and bought some beer to drink, John seemed to be in dire need of a beer for some reason even though the GPS only led us astray once in Brussels.

Limburg Province Netherlands

Gate in Maastricht

The hills of south Limburg province in Netherlands.

Traditional buildings in Limburg province.

Maastricht, Netherlands!

We are in Limburg province in the very southern part of Netherlands; the countryside is gorgeous, very hilly with trees, farmland and tiny beautiful villages. We were burned out by those Belgian drivers! on the drive here from Ieper, hahahahaha, this is for Rit and Kamiel, two super awesome Belgians we met at the B&B were we stayed near Ieper, we had dinner together and are going to visit them at their place on our way to Brussels in a few days.

Anyway, we didn’t feel like driving into a city yesterday so we hiked around the countryside near Epen where we are staying. The B&B there is quite incredible and we had the best breakfast in Europe there this morning. There are not that many English speaking visitors in this area so the waitress had to translate the menu for dinner last night, we thought we were getting duck but it may have been goose, not sure, but it was really good.

Right now we are in Maastricht, a very nice city and are on a self-guided walking tour but we didn’t get very far and are in a wonderful building called the Centre Ceramique which houses the library, we are here for free wireless internet. You pay for everything else including restroom facilities in stores and you have to pay for all of the maps you want to have at tourist centres. There is a café in the library, you can eat and drink at the tables, and there was a short concert with a jazz singer and another woman on the sax.

Maastricht is an old fort city so we are supposed to walk around and see old roman fortifications and whatnot, if we ever get out of the library.

Non-War stuff by John

Brugge, Belgium is a medieval city, but very touristy. The architecture is stunning. Of course, the chocolate is great too. We parked south of the city at the rail station and walked to the centre, around and back. They have horse carriage rides, canal boat rides and mega shopping of which we don't do any, except when Marsha broke drown and pulled out a few euros and bought a rooster pillow cover. In addition, we bought chocolate - yum.

And what started the whole trip - Within Temptation. The Parkstad Limburg theatre was much smaller than we had expected, with the front row balcony seats affording a wonderful view. Sharon, the singer, of course, amazed us with her astoundingly clear voice. She sounds better live than on their CD’s. The theatre concert included many visual tricks, as the images were projected on a semi-clear backdrop. We were also shocked about the crowd, a large percentage of “older” folks like us!

Ypres Salient (More pics added)

The Brooding Soldier was carved out of a single block of granite, this is the image used in the 1914-1918 Vigil across Canada that was posted at the beginning of this blog. This is a beautiful piece, a simple yet very moving sculpture; it is very special because it is a soldier rather than a symbolic piece. During the Second Battle of Ypres in April, 1915 the Canadians were in the line with the French on their left flank and British on their right. The Germans released chlorine gas from large cylinders and the wind carried the gas down to the French and Canadian front line, the French line broke but the Canadians held on while withstanding the gas cloud. The effects of chlorine gas were horrific, 2,000 Canadians fell.


Langemarck German Cemetery, this cemetery is very different from British and Empire cemeteries, it is dark and solemn. 44,292 burials, there is a large mass grave with 25,000 burials, many of the markers in the cemetery contain 4, 6 or 8 names, many unknown.


The Cloth Hall in Ieper (Ypres), this was totally destroyed by artillery fire during the war but was rebuilt, St. Martin's Cathedral in the background was also destroyed and rebuilt.

Memorial to the Irish Munster Regiments.

Belgium War Memorial.

Tyne Cot cemetery is the largest British war cemetery in the world, 11,953 burials, the wall at the back of the cemetery is engraved with almost 35,000 names of soldiers with no known grave who died from August 1917 to the end of the war.


The Menin Gate contains names of British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Salient but have no known grave. There are more than 54,000 names; Canada has an alcove on the one side. Every evening since 1928 the police stop the traffic and buglers from the fire brigade come and play the Last Post. The short ceremony is very moving; the sound of five bugles playing in perfect unison and amplified by the Menin Gate is extraordinary. Busloads of British school kids attend and some of them laid wreaths the first night we went. The second night a piper played a lament, which is practically enough to bring one to one’s knees.

What you see on the walls are thousands of names of soldiers with no known graves, the Canadian alcove is in the centre with names along the side of the alcove and there is another passage at the back with names. Since we came right after Remembrance Day there are beautiful bouquets of flowers at all monuments and in cemeteries. All of the villages and towns in the region bring huge bouquets with their town name on a large ribbon draped across the bouquet. Because it is so cool and wet, the flowers stay fresh for a long time.

Canadian Memorial at Passchendaele

The Battlefield

Library and Archives Canada PA-002165

The Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) commenced on July 31, 1917. The British put countless divisions through the mud and horrific conditions of the battlefield but their advance went nowhere. The weather was horrible with non-stop rain and the artillery of both sides shelled the battlefield thus destroying any drainage. In fall, the Anzacs were called on to continue the battle; the Anzacs were the Australians and the New Zealanders. The Anzacs made very good progress against the Germans who had heavily fortified defensive positions on the high ground. Then the Canadians were brought in to try and take the ridge and the village of Passchendaele, the CEF commander General Currie estimated that there would be 16,000 CEF casualties and he was correct, the CEF took the village in early November. IMO, the success of the Anzacs and the CEF is rather downplayed in the primarily British interpretive centre at Tyne Cot, no shock there.

Somme

Regina Trench Cemetery, many Canadians who fought in the Battle of Courcelette are buried here, Regina Trench was very difficult to take and cost many lives, the Canadians suffered 24,000 casualties on the Somme, ~8,000 of those were killed.

Australian National Memorial, very beautiful space and well done. The names of 10,797 Australian soldiers who have no known grave are engraved on the walls.

Grave in the Australian National Memorial Cemetery

On the First day of the Somme, the battle opened with the detonation of large mines, this crater, The Lochnagar Crater is huge, the pic does not depict how big it is.

This is a road to two cemeteries where we almost got stuck, it was a sunken road during the war. The tiny cemetery in the pic is the 2nd Canadian Cemetery, Sunken Road. Most tiny cemeteries with fewer than 50 burials were merged into larger cemeteries after the war, this one was not, all buriels are from the 2nd Battalion Canadian Infrantry. If this was Sask we would never have attempted the road, the chalk under the soil provides great drainage, we were shocked to see tractors working on the land when it looked soaked like this. The road to Regina Trench Cemetery was the same, a mud hole.

This is Ulster Tower, a memorial to the Ulstermen of Northern Ireland. An Irish man named Teddy gives a great tour of a wooded area across the road complete with trenches, dugouts, trench mortor etc. We were with a bus load of British school kids who were excellent, Teddy dressed a kid in an original uniform complete with pack, gas mask bag and rifle, not long into the tour the kid could not handle the load and had to hand off both the pack and gas mask bag to other students, he would be about 15, the same age as some soldiers in WWI. We had the best tea in France at the cafe here, the Irish make great tea and sandwiches and OMG, they are nice people. The tours are popular and you have to book ahead.

Another heartwrenching grave stone in Y Ravine Cemetery in Newfoundland Memorial Park.

The caribou braying for her young in Newfoundland Memorial Park, the caribou faces the battlefield where the Newfoundland Regiment was slaughtered by German machine gun fire and artillery, 798 Newfoundlanders attacked and only 68 answered roll call the next day; however, according to the student guides, 114 in total were not harmed in the battle. This was part of the disastrous First Day on the Somme. The Newfoundlanders were not Canadians at the time and did not want to join the CEF so fought with the 29th British Division. A British guy asked us if it was an elk, he was an artist dude who is publishing a book about memorial sculpture in England.

The battlefield on Beaumont Hamel, Newfoundland Memorial Park, the Newfoundlanders lasted a half hour, the land slopes downhill, the soldiers were silhouetted against the hill behind them and were easy targets for German machine gun fire raining down on them from the ridges. Thier casualty rate was second highest that bloody day. The Newfoundland site is very serene, the remains of many soldiers are still in the battlefield.

Amiens Cathedral, we were late getting to Amiens and it was almost dark by the time we got there so only took a few pics, it is a Gothic Cathedral that is huge. Construction began in 1220.

We are in Belgium tonight in Iepers (Ypres) where there are many Canadian memorials. We hope to ride bikes tomorrow to tour the area, our host is very informative and very friendly, there is an Australian and a few Brits here as well.

Fantastic France

We have really no time to blog, a good thing! Northern France is wonderful, we have met some great people and are having the best time. Hope to get time to blog tomorrow night when we are in Belgium.

Vimy Ridge

As always, click on pics to enlarge

Okay, now that I am stuffed to the gills with French food and French wine, maybe I can write something coherent….

About Vimy Ridge, it was attacked by both the British and the French, though neither could take the ridge and neither believed the Canadians would have much success. This battle was the first time all four Divisions of the Canadian Corps fought together. The attack was meticulously planned and preparations took months. A large part of the preparations involved tunneling underground through the chalk. Many km of tunnels, command posts and rooms were dug out underground to move troops and supplies as the German Army held the high ground and could watch everything.

The gov’t of Canada has preserved a small series of tunnels with Canadian students acting as guides. We booked a tunnel tour and due to some mix-up, which baffled the student guides, we were double booked with a busload of French kids. Luckily for us, the French kids were late so John and I got our own tour.

After the tunnel tour, we walked through re-constructed trenches then headed up to the monument. I will spare you the details of the battle, it was a huge success for the Canadian Corps, they took most of the ridge the first day, Hill 145, the highest point where the monument stands, was taken the following day. The battle resulted in 10,602 casualties of which 3,598 were killed.

The monument is breathtakingly beautiful and loaded with symbolism. The figure of Canada, a woman grieving for her fallen sons overlooks the Douai Plain. At the foot of the monument below her is a tomb draped in laurel branches with a helmet and sword on top. The soaring twin pylons symbolize Canada and France, at the base of the pylons is a young dying soldier, the Spirit of Sacrifice and the Torch Bearer. At the top of the monument are figures representing Peace and Justice, at the back are figures representing Truth and Knowledge. On either side of the staircase are the male and female Mourner figures.

There are 11,285 Canadian Soldiers names engraved on the walls of the monument. These soldiers have no known graves.

Our timing was impeccable, as we had the entire monument to ourselves for as long as we needed. As we walked away, a busload of French school kids arrived. Most of the land in the Memorial area has been left as it was at the end of the war; the land is pockmarked with shell holes from artillery fire and craters due to mine explosions.

After visiting the cemeteries at Vimy, we went to a large French memorial with masses of French graves, it was very high ground which the Germans defended strongly.

Then we headed to a few cemeteries where local men are buried, and then we were off to Upton Wood cemetery where many men of the 5th Battalion (Western Calvary) are buried. It is an isolated cemetery down a donkey trail in the middle of fields and just on the edge of Upton Wood. The farmers were harvesting something that looks like turnips, they are sugar beets, the farmers leave them in huge piles at the edge of the field. They have very small fields and one guy was plowing the field with a very narrow plow that flips over when he makes a turn at the edge of a field. Most of the tractors are American manufacturers, JD, Massey and Case IH.

There was a very sad note engraved into one of the headstones at Upton Wood and we are posting the pic.

As we were starving we dropped into a Hypermarket to buy some food, the wine and alcohol is really cheap, all of the food was cheap and the choice was great.

We had to get to one more cemetery to get another pic of a gravestone of a local man then we headed back to Arras in the dark. Oh, the French countryside is gorgeous; there are not many farms, as the farmers live in the small villages. The houses are of a simple design with gable ends but they are all in brick, which is beautiful.

The food is awesome of course. The breakfast in our small hotel was excellent and the attentive service unsurpassed. We splashed out for dinner tonight and went to a really good restaurant within walking distance, it was really good, we were foaming at the mouth. The place is really slow at this time of year, hardly anybody in restaurants, there were only a couple of Scots and a few French men and that was it.

Tomorrow we are heading south to the Somme and plan to walk the battlefield the Canadians fought through in the Battle of Courcelette. Then off to the Ulster Tower commemorating the Ulstermen (Northern Irish) then to Beaumont Hamel to the Newfoundland Memorial Park where the Newfoundland Regiment suffered a horrific loss on the opening day of the battle of the Somme.

Arras Town Hall

We are right next to this beautiful building...

Flight and Arrival

The lunatics at Air Canada who checked us in gave us the worst seats possible, this was after we were told during booking, ages ago, that we had seats over the wing. We were the only people at the very back of the plane and as the pic indicates, there were a zillion better seats from which to choose. So the flight attendant gave us a row of four seats to use, we got to hog all the pillows and blankets in those seats. The airplane is an Airbus 333 and is noisy at the back, the movie was The Incredible Hulk which was terrible, but we watched it out of boredom. Dinner sort of came, for some reason which the flight crew could not figure out, they ran out of hot entrees so three of us, at the back, got served the salad and bun while the entrees cooked. Finally, a guy came and offered us Arctic Char, Beef something or veggie pasta dish, due to being dog tired, I cannot remember shit right now. Anyway, John got dibs on the beef so I had the pasta, this was food from business class as the other shmucks in economy with us got some groady looking pasta dish.

People were sprawled all over the plane due to empty seats, since John and I had four seats we actually caught a couple hours of sleep after the second movie finished, the monitor was near us so the light kept flashing and driving us mad.

The airplane route was in an arc, going over the center of Hudson’s Bay, over the southern tip of Greenland and over Northern Ireland. The flight took 8 hours and at 9:00 UK time, they served a crappy breakfast (white muffin, OJ and diet yogurt, blech) then we landed ahead of time at Heathrow. Heathrow was no problem, we hustled along and caught the bus to the other terminal just before it left. In Terminal 1, we went to check the flight board to get our gate and it wasn’t posted yet. Then a lady, who must have thought we actually had a clue, asked us where to get her flight to Madrid, hers wasn’t posted yet either, so we told her to wait and check back. The cheap Brits who run BMI, airline, which we took from London to Brussels, don’t even give water; you have to pay for everything. After a 45-minute flight, we landed in Brussels.

Picked up the sardine can car and then tried like hell to get out of Brussels, total nightmare. The drivers are aggressive and lay on the horn at all times, if it wasn’t for the GPS, we would still be in Brussels. The streets are narrow and at uncontrolled intersections, well, we don’t know what is supposed to happen, they seem to suspend logic and all drive at once, passing within inches of each other and it is a total gong show. If you snooze, you loose. We missed two turns and had two detours and it was bloody hell getting out, when you think you are out of the city you aren’t and then suddenly the lane we were on vanished and we had to turn left and do a u-turn to get back. We took secondary roads through Belgium and went through about 20 roundabouts, which blow your mind at first. There never seems to be much rural area as one town just falls into the next.
It rains a lot here, the deciduous trees are huge and the dairy cows are fat, really, really fat. The houses, new or old, all have beautiful doors for some reason. It was getting dark as we drove through Belgium and finally figured out the speed signs. We didn’t get onto any freeways until we got to France and then things went a lot faster (130 Kmph) and it was then dark. Got to Arras without any problems, found the Center and the hotel. It is a small, typical French hotel with closet sized rooms. Since we had not ate or drank anything for 9 hours since breakfast on the plane, we were famished so went and ordered mussels and OMG, we got a pot full each. We are bagged and have to pack it in, off to the Canadian War Memorial at Vimy Ridge tomorrow.

Flight day

We left after the ceremony, skipping lunch in the church basement. One has to love the Regina airport, as the pic indicates, the lineup for security was non-existent, so a bored group of security employees had a lot of time to spend looking over our stuff. They all had a total fit over my New Rock Reactor boots because of all the metal on them, saying they are not airport friendly so they called their colleagues to come look at the boots as they went through the x-ray scanner. I had to answer a few questions, are they heavy, where did you get them? Then when I went to put them on, one security person said she was moving because she didn’t want to get kicked by me.

John’s backpack was thoroughly scrutinized because he carries all of our electronic gear so it took him a while to get through. We are waiting in Calgary right now and stayed airside because we didn’t want to deal with security again. So we didn’t get a chance to look at the RCAF display.

Remembrance Day

This is the memorial window in the church in Silton where the Remembrance Day Ceremony was held this morning. The names of men who were killed in WWI from the area are imprinted on the scrolls at either end. Wreaths were laid today on behalf of the Silton Branch of the Canadian Legion, the Government of Canada and the Government of Saskatchewan. As the men’s names are read aloud, a kid pinned a poppy on the cross which sits in the middle of the window ledge.

Vigil 1914 - 1918

We took this pic last night at the Saskatchewan Legislature. All the names of those killed during WWI from the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the Canadian Merchant Navy and the Canadian Army Medical Corps are being projected continuously from dusk until dawn, ending November 11th. Each name will only be projected once as there are approximately 68,000 names. The vigil is taking place across Canada and in London, England. The figure in the centre of the screen is the 'Brooding Soldier' head bowed and hands resting on arms reversed, a memorial to the 18,000 Canadian soldiers who withstood the first gas attacks on April 22 -24, 1915 at St. Julien, Belgium during the 2nd Battle of Ypres. Click on pics to enlarge.