The End

Today this is what my house looked like. Now it is pretty empty. It's seeming very clear that our time here in England is almost done. 

I've enjoyed so much doing this blog. I'm going to miss our time here in England and forever be grateful we were able to have this experience.

Cemeteries and Memorials

Outside Ypres lies one of the largest WWI cemeteries, Tyne Cot. I think of about 12,000 burials there, 8,000 or so are of unknown soldiers. World War I cemeteries seem to be scattered everywhere in the area, as most soldiers were buried near where they died instead of being placed in one large cemetery.

I was interested to learn that WWI had units of bicyclists who carried machine guns. Every army had a cyclists division.

The German cemetery across town is a little starker. Perhaps it's my country bias, but at the various Allied cemeteries I often feel appreciative about the sacrifice the soldiers made. Here at the German cemetery I just felt like what a waste and tremendous loss it all was.

Mike found some Eberles on the list of soldiers with unknown graves, even a Richard Eberle, the same name as his father. They are probably not relations though, as Eberle is apparently a common name in southern Germany and Austria. 

In the town of Ypres is the Menin Gate, honoring 54,389 WWI soldiers with unknown graves from the British Commonwealth, where every night since 1929 (except for 4 years of German occupation during WWII) a Last Post ceremony is performed. I find it pretty incredible that so many people come every night to honor the fallen soldiers after so many years have passed. There were choirs who sang, a prayer given, wreaths were placed, a minute of silence observed and soldiers played 'Last Post' on their bugles. 'Last Post' was traditionally played in the British military to signal the end of the day. It's a touching ceremony honoring those who died for their country.

War History Tour

Camille has been studying World War I in school this year, which inspired us to visit some of the important sites and museums about that war. Our first stop was Passchendaele where they have reconstructed trenches on an original site. 

Anya realized the helmets were very heavy and not all that comfortable. 

All you need to do is add some lice, rats, standing water and winter temperatures and you can imagine how comfortable the soldiers were.

Here are bunkers at Essex Farm. John McCrae was working here as a medic when he wrote his poem "In Flanders Fields." 

Hill 60 is a small hill in the generally flat landscape, making it of strategic value during the war.  The pock-marked landscape is from craters blown by mines during the war.

In the town of Ypres is the In Flanders Fields Museum, an exploration of World War I. It's one of those modern museums full of videos, music, and interactive displays, as well as objects and written material. I'm all for that style. When I go to a museum I'm generally not in the mood for reading long essays of material. I've got a short attention span - entertain me! Maybe entertain is not the right word for the subject, but I definitely learned more about World War I than I've ever learned anywhere else. (But don't get the impression that I've ever gone out of my way to acquire a lot of WWI info). I'd highly recommend this museum for anyone. You can also climb the bell tower of the Cloth Hall while attending the museum, which is what the above photos are from.

We also found a World War II site to visit. La Coupole, about an hour from Ypres in St Omer, is the site of a huge underground bunker built with slave labor by the Nazis during World War II. They planned on using it to launch their V2 unmanned bombs on London. They ended up not ever using the site, as approaching Allied armies forced them to abandon the site in 1944. The museum has a lot of sobering information about Nazi atrocities. In fact, I steered Anya away from viewing some of it.

La Coupole also has a 3D IMAX theater where they were showing a film about the D-Day invasion. It was informative and interesting without being too graphic for children.

Lille and Ypres

For our last family European trip, we took the Eurostar to Lille, a city in northern France. We just spent one night, so only had time to walk some of the grand squares, do a little shopping and of course sample some French food.

My favorite part of Lille was visiting the chocolate and sweet shop Meert. First, isn't it lovely? And second, they have this local waffle speciality where they sandwich these very thin waffles with a sweet filling in the middle. We were surprised how good they were. They're called gaufre and well-worth trying.

Next we headed off to Ypres (or Ieper, or Leper, depending on the language in this tri-language country). It's a beautiful little town that had to be completely rebuilt after it was destroyed in World War I. Ypres was a strategic route for the Germans to march into France in October of 1914. They were stopped here by the Allies in the same year. The famous Christmas truce took place in the fields outside Ypres, then the fighting continued here until 1918 when the war ended. The last photo shows the town in 1919. Everything in the town was destroyed. The photo above it is of the same location now. They rebuilt the town as close as they could to how it looked originally, so it's still a charming little town. We enjoyed that it was a nice small size with plenty of shops and restaurants and central to so many of the places we wanted to see.