Passchendale

Once again the menu above does not give enough choices...most frustrating.

The Passchendale Museum and Tyne Cot Cemetery are incredible. A lovely home, rebuilt post WWI in the 12th C style of its origin, was turned over to the government to be made into a museum and it is lovely. The organization of the rooms allows for easy flow of people and a sequential understanding of events in the Ieper (Ypres) area from 1914 to 1918. Historical and anecdotal books are available for sale, too, which is nice for us history buffs. Today a couple of classes of schoolchildren went through, ate lunch on the lovely grounds, played on the playground, and filled the air with the laughter of freedom, an appropriate sound in those surroundings.

Tyne Cot is the largest British cemetery in the world. In one place -- one of the scores of cemeteries in France and Belgium -- are gravestones for the bodies of 12,000 men surrounded by walls on which are inscribed the names of 35,000 whose bodies have never been either recovered or identified. One grave holds the bodies of eight Australian soldiers...all their remains indicated was their nationalities but these remains were so compacted together that separation was impossible, hence the group burial. Nearby is a grave of three identified Australians, again so entwined in death that, despite being identified, individual bodies could not be discerned. Row upon row of headstones reads, "known only to God", occasionally with regimental identification; most often without. The book we use in class, "Generals Die in Bed" by Canadian Veteran Charles Yale Harrison comes to life in the museum and, ironically, in the cemeteries. Glancing around the central monument at plot upon plot upon plot, stone upon stone upon stone visible in the afternoon haze, if one squinted slightly, it was possible to see a multitude of young men, each one standing near a stone.

Several Englishmen of at least three generations were standing near or sitting on the steps of the central monument and we began talking. The central cross, the cross of sacrifice, stands over the final pillbox that the Australians finally captured, at great cost, in 1917. As I read the inscription aloud, I said, "Those Aussies are a tough and brave bunch;" to which all present gave assent, at which point I added, "Mind you, so are the Canadians; as a Canadian I need to point out that we were also here from the beginning." One of the Englishmen looked down from his perch on the steps and said, "We are grateful to you for being there with us both times." This is the first and only time anyone has said anything like this during all of our visits to the memorials and it brought tears to my eyes, especially remebering the grandfather who died as an old man with pieces of shrapnel still in his leg and the grandmother whose life was changed forever by events of October 28, 1917.

Tomorrow we return to London and, after a bit of work at the City University and a visit with an old friend, I return home to Canada, this time to stay for several months before another adventure calls me elsewhere.

Salut de France

Sola Nonna et Carolyn

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