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.