We shall not sleep, though poppies grow...

In Flanders fields where Poppies blow….It’s not the season for poppies at the moment but we did see a few planted blooms. On Graves. Miles and miles of white marble, all standing to attention in correct and rigid columns.

Pat and I have visited military remembrance sites before, yet I have never felt the devastating sadness which overwhelmed me in Ypres, in Flanders. We stood on a hill in the glorious afternoon sunshine. Admiring the green meadows, well tended fields, quirky Belgian farmhouses and from every angle we spied commonwealth burial grounds. Green dotted with white, jolting the traditional farming community with the regimented conformity of a military graveyard. It looked so beautiful and felt so desperately heartbreaking. 

Our first visit was to the “Essex Farm” memorial, where John Macrae wrote the now infamous “In Flanders’Fields”. Such a beautiful place, well they’re all beautiful, now.

John Macrae’s dug out, the medic post where he attempted to give succour to the wounded and make the last moments of the terminally injured, bearable, is now just a concrete bunker. Inside the bunkers people had placed wreaths and poppies. Leaning in rows, the poppy red a sharp bloodstain against the dank and dark interior. Outside above the entrances to the structure, the shockingly violent spatter of bullet holes still visible and a bizarre contrast to the now decades peaceful site. 

Pat had decided to place a poppy on the first RWF grave he found, as a mark of respect to his regiment’s fallen. Watching him from the corner of my trembling eye, I saw him stop at a grave, bend down, place the poppy and say a small word.

Walking in between the ranks of soldiers, silently apologizing for treading on their graves. Boys as young as 18 lay alongside their mates and between them, lay much older comrades, as though they were being watched over and cared for by "older blokes". My throat became tight and I felt the serious threat of much more tears behind my already wet eyes. Feeling a little embarrassed by my once again, brittle emotion I looked up to find Pat.

He was brushing gravestones free of leaves and dust. Talking to himself and busily cleaning up, curiously I walked closer to hear “Come on now Jones 60, your grave’s a disgrace, clean it up man”..and similar sentiments as he brushed up from grave to grave. Pat had found rows and rows of Royal Welchmen and in his own special way, was paying his respects to his comrades.

I do so love this man!

We drove by some of the sites, the overwhelming emotion too great to visit each one. There are so many it’s too, too difficult to take it in. The scale of loss of lives and the sheer enormity of the frontline is surreal, especially when we’ve never experienced war. It weighs heavily on your heart.

We carried on to Hill62.

Hill62 is now a museum. A former farm slap in the middle of the Frontline. The farmer’s son decided not to restore his farmlands and keep the damaged land as a piece of history. To show people how it was and that it should not happen again.

They rely on donations and entrance fees for the survival of the site.

He also has a herd of really stinky cats…but we won’t go there, yet!

Cases of (for want of a better word) memorabilia. Artifacts found on the destroyed site include helmets, cap badges, mortar shells, backpacks, guns, uniforms...a tremendous amount of war-detritus and personal items left abandoned by poor soldiers who gave their lives at that bleak place. Again, walking into the open-air part of this museum, the contrast between the surrounding fields and the ravaged land of Hill62, is incomprehensible. Rusty corrugated iron lines flooded, rathole trenches, vast and deep mortar holes pepper the ground.

Nearly a hundred years on and these scars of war are still clearly visible. Wear and tear and  nature’s progression have only made a slight impact on the man-made destruction. I can’t begin to imagine how it must have been, how deeply the mortar bombing penetrated the earth and the unavoidable fate of those caught in its path.
So this was Hill62, sixty two?  The same scene would have stretched for miles and miles. How many hills were there? How long must it have taken to nurture the land back to the fertile fields and valleys that is now the norm in Ypres. So many visitors stop here to pay their respects, we even met a group of English schoolchildren on a school history trip to learn about the consequences of this monumental war. Fancifully I imagined that some may even have been great grandchildren of the men who lay under the soil.

As we passed through the last cemetery, the wind whipped up and the trees began to whisper. I whimsically wondered if that was laughter I heard on the breeze.

Does the spirit of Tommy Atkins lounge under the Oak Tree planted in his memory and laughingly, shake his head at the hordes of people placing flowers at his grave.

Does he casually stroll along, having a bit of a flirt with the pretty young girls who stop and say thankyou for his sacrifice?

I like to think he does.

"We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
         In Flanders fields."

John Macrae.