If you are thinking about a summer road-trip throught Belgium J, here are some remarkable sites linked with the I
World War in the surroundings of Yprès (Ieper), one of the most punished cities
during that war.
YORKSHIRE TRENCH & DUG-OUT
This underground war can still be found at a depth of 60 to 70 cm. This is
something the local population quickly learned, when from 1997 onwards a new
industrial site was developed along the Ieper-Yzer canal. Numerous
vestiges of the war were soon discovered: unexploded ammunition, constructions,
human remains,...
Since then, the bodies of some 205 soldiers of three different
nationalities have been recovered. The city acquired a small plot of land, for
the creation of a memorial site. This plot marks the location
of ‘Yorkshire Trench' originally dug by the British in 1915.
FRONT LINE HOOGHE
In July 1915 the Royal Engineers of the British Army tunnelled
beneath the German trenches and destroyed them with nearly two tonnes of high
explosive. The explosion, the largest in history to that time, created the
famous high mine hole which itself became the focus of bitter fighting for the
next three years and has been preserved on the site to this day.
Wartime records showed a number of trenches in the vicinity of this mine
hole and in 1995 one of these trenches was located and excavated. An astounding
number of wartime relics were discovered and have now been carefully displayed
together with photographs showing Hooghe during the war. Also at Front
Line Hooghe are some concrete bunkers, one of which is now possible to
enter and explore.
Memorial of the Menin Gate
One of the essential places to be visited in this city is the Memorial
of the Menin Gate, which was built between 1923 and 1927 as a memorial to
British soldiers who died in the Great War: on the walls of the monument are
written the names of 54,896 British soldiers.
Each
night, traffic on the door interrupted and the Fire Department represents here
Ypres what is called The Last Post, at 20.00, as a tribute to the fallen
soldiers. The land where the memorial sits was donated by the government of
Belgium to the British Empire, but recently has been handed back to Ypres.
HILL
60
This hill was created by the earth excavated from the adjacent railway
cutting. In 1914 it was captured by the Germans from the French. Later, this
sector was taken over by the British, who began an underground warof mines
and counter-mines.
The first British ‘deep' mine was exploded on 17 February
1915. Following a second detonation on 17 April 1915, the British were able to
temporarily seize the hill, but it was soon lost. The underground war continued
until the beginning of June 1917 (Third Battle of Ypres). Countless soldiers worked in the cold and the dark
of the mine tunnels. Some of them died there and are still buried beneath the
clay. In this sense, Hill 60 is a cemetery.
ESSEX FARM CEMETERY (Site John McCrae)
One of the most famous people in the area is John McCrae, a Canadian
born in Ontario in 1871, who graduated in medicine in Toronto in 1898. At the
outbreak of the IWW, enlisted and was sent to the Canadian artillery campaign.
He was at Essex Farm and in May 1915 wrote the famous poem "In FlandersFields" after one of his friends was killed and buried surrounded by
poppies. The English cemetery includes 1199 graves of soldiers from across the
Commonwealth.
In front of the cementery, we can visit the "French shelters".
They were built in the eighteenth century by the French military engineer Vauban,
as reinforcement along the canal that for years served as French border. During
the IWW were used as shelter and warehouses and after the Armistice, many
served as temporary refugees trying to return to their homes and property were
destroyed.
