 |
| The Menin Gate |
At 8pm precisely every evening, snow, rain or shine, the
Last Post is sounded by buglers at the huge gate which leads in an Easterly
direction out of the town of Ypres, called in Flemish Ieper (pronounced
Ee-purr), and by the British and Allied troops in the First World War ‘Wipers’
(see the 'Wipers Times' below).
 |
 |
| Three pages from the famous 'Wipers Times' |
Since the beginning of the
centenary of WW1 in 2014, increasing numbers of visitors, tourists if you will,
have come to this place to remember and to pay homage. The Menin Gate, the Menenpoort, has become a
focus for all those who feel touched by this conflict to come and remember and
make what a friend of mine has called ‘An Observance’. The advantage of this description is that it
does away with any religious or pacifist ideals. It simply describes the pull that those who
come feel, without explaining why.
Indeed, it would be foolish to suggest that people come to gain an
understanding. How can one understand
the incomprehensible? And is there any
use in coming here while myriad barbarous armies still hold vast numbers of
peoples in subjection? These facts are
beyond us. Neither is there anything one
can do about those who are already dead.
But what is it motivates British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and
other commonwealth citizens, all at least three generations separated from
those who fought here to come and ‘pay their respects’, to lay a wreath
perhaps. For some families there must be
a sense of closure – a grandfather lost in a distant land to whom no subsequent
member of the family made obeisance and acknowledgement. This perhaps explains, apart from the notable
anniversaries of particular battles why so many Australians were present when I
visited on Friday September 18th, 2015. For those who only have a vague inkling that
the Menin Gate is important; like its counterpart on the Somme at Thiepval, it
is a memorial to the missing. Almost
55,000 names of those who died and were never found are inscribed here. The names of UK soldiers who were lost up
until 15th August 1917 were carved on the stone. After that the space for names ran out, and
the remainder are commemorated at Tyne Cot, near Passchendaele. The first ‘Last Post’ was sounded at the
inauguration in July 1927. If you wish,
you can listen…
During a tour of the battlefields and memorials of the Ypres
Salient, the contrast between the reality of 100 years ago and the here and now
constantly intrudes. Next to the Essex
Farm cemetery, which contains the bunkers used as field hospitals by John
McCrae, the Canadian army surgeon who wrote the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’, cars
race by on the Ypres bypass. McCrae had
seen service in the Boer War, but volunteered again for service in 1914. He even brought his horse, ‘Bonfire’, with
him. He died in the last year of the war
from pneumonia and meningitis. The
poppies which he left in his poem as an indelible reminder of the experience
grow on poor or disturbed ground, and were everywhere in Flanders. Nowadays however, at Essex Farm, no trace of
a poppy is seen. The fertile flat
farmland, as far as the eye can see, is uniform, cultivated, and carries no
visible reminder. Even at the nearby statue
of ‘The Brooding Soldier’, a Canadian memorial, the fields run up to the little
road at the side, with not a trace of red except for the enormous agricultural
machines which chug along the neat furrows.
 |
| The 'Brooding Soldier' |
 |
| Adjacent to the Brooding Soldier memorial, no poppies, just red machines |
Another place of interest, Langemark Cemetery, is a vast and
sinister necropolis of German dead. In
later years, owing to the legend which grew up around the many dead of the 22nd
and 27th Reserve Corps buried here, it became a place of pilgrimage
for Adolf Hitler. The myth of heroic
German students, going to their death singing the Deutschlandlied, proved a
powerful propaganda tool. And until the
De-Hitlerisation of Germany, there was a Langemarckstrasse in almost every
town. 24,917 German soldiers and airmen
are buried here. The expressionist
statues of soldiers by Emil Krieger give an otherworldly and alien feel to this
cemetery.
Passendale, previously Passchendaele, is a tiny village in
the middle of further vast tracts of unremarkable and innocent-seeming
farmland. If it were not for the
association with the 3rd Battle of Ypres in Summer and Autumn 1917
it would be only too easy to pass by here, on the way to somewhere else… It is of course immortalised as the site of
the largest mud and blood bath of the First War. The largest British Commonwealth cemetery anywhere,
at nearby Tyne Cot, is the most popular place to visit in the whole of this region. 11,956 Commonwealth war dead are buried here,
and the memorial wall contains the names of 34,957 missing who died after 15th
August 1917. Here again, the everyday and
the ironic seem to intrude. Perhaps it
is the very popularity of the place – there are many visitors every day of the
week. But something jars: parties of
schoolchildren roam all over, even climbing the central memorial cross,
shouting at one another, playing games, fiddling with iphones and ipods. Is it right to drag these armies of young
people to this place? Their youth gives
them that impenetrable belief in their own immortality. What would the armies buried under the turf
think? Or should one agree with David
Geraint Jones, war poet of the Second World War, who wrote ‘… Your peace is
bought with mine, and I am paid in full, and well, if but the echo of your
laughter reaches me in Hell’.*
The tour of the Ypres Salient teaches one a few things which
had been a puzzle in the past. Why were
Hill 60 and Hill 62 so called? (They
were 60 and 62 metres above sea level respectively). Why was the mud of Passchendaele, which
swallowed entire trains of supplies, horses, men, and armour, so severe? (The heavy rains of late July 1917 fell on
agricultural land whose elaborate drainage system of ditches and channels had
been destroyed by the bombardment). And
why was it a ‘salient’? (The bulge in
the battle lines around the town of Ypres created a classic salient, which in
warfare is a military position which can be attacked, but can also fire, on
three sides).
Returning to Ypres, another oddity. Sipping a glass of Passchendaele beer in a
lovely old bar, it is hard to believe, but true, that this is an enormous theme
park, if you will, a recreation, a ‘Disney’.
Many people, including the British, did not want the ruins of Ypres to
be razed and rebuilt. Churchill said; ‘A
more sacred place for the British race does not exist in the world.’ And yet it was, and the Menin Gate, as night
falls, gives a glimpse through the arch of the beautiful Cloth Hall, Belfry,
and St Martin’s Cathedral, such as it might have looked a hundred years ago.
These are sombre musings, and I can’t help feeling that
those carefree children might someday return with their children or
grandchildren, and feel differently about the silence that hangs about these
places.
But finally, and most upsetting of all. At Essex Farm Cemetery, amid the neat rows,
is the stone to Valentine Joe Strudwick, one of the youngest soldiers to die in
the Great War. Others may have been
younger – there is some dispute over the family names and the exact ages, but
Joe is known to have been only 15 when he was killed on 14th January
1916. Here is a photograph of his
memorial.
 |
| Somehow, most upsetting of all... |
Postscript:
 |
| John McCrae's poem. Pacifists prefer to quote only verses one and two... |
*David Rhys Geraint Jones is an intriguing and little known
figure. His poetry is scarce and extremely
difficult to find. I first discovered
the poem referred to in the post above in an anthology of Second World War
poetry edited by Brian Gardner entitled ‘The Terrible Rain’, published by
Methuen, London, in 1966. The poem had
been taken from an earlier anthology published in 1950 by Oxford University
Press, then entitled, ‘For Your Tomorrow’.
Jones died of wounds received in Normandy on June 28, 1944. His parents lived at Merlin’s Hill,
Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire. He had
been educated, first, at Haverfordwest Grammar School (as was I), later at Cheltenham
and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Gardner
titled the poem ‘The Light of Day’, which is taken from its first line, but it
seems that it may originally have been entitled ‘Your peace is bought with
mine’. The three poems Geraint Jones
wrote in early 1944 have also been set to music by a horn player, Anthony Randall. Perhaps even more famous is another of the
three entitled, ‘Let me not see old age’.
Here are both of them:
The Light of Day
The light of day is cold and grey and there is no more
peace
By the high white moon-washed walls, where we laughed and
where we sung;
And I can’t go back to those days of short unthinking
ease,
When I was very foolish and you were very young.
For you the laurel and the rose will bloom, and you will
see
Children asleep and dreams and hearts at ease, when life
will be,
Even at its close, a quiet and an ageless wonder.
For me the poppies soon will dance and sway in Haute
Avesnes:
The sunrise of my love slides into dusk, its day
untasted:
Yet as I lie, turf-clad, and freed of passion, and of
pain,
I find my sacrifice of golden things not wasted;
Your peace is bought with mine, and I am paid in full,
and well,
If but the echo of your laughter reaches me in hell.
Let me not see old
age
Let me not see old age: Let me not hear
The proffered help, the mumbled sympathy,
The well-meant tactful sophistries that mock
Pathetic husks who once were strong and free
And in youth’s fickle triumph laughed and sang,
Loved, and were foolish; and at the close have seen
The fruits of folly garnered, and that love,
Tamed and encaged, stale into grey routine.
Let me not see old age; I am content
With my few crowded years; laughter and strength
And song have lit the beacon of my life.
Let me not see it fade, but when the long
September shadows steal across the square,
Grant me this wish: they will not find me there.
