Western Front Tour: Passchendaele

DAY FIVE ~ Wednesday 8th April 2009.
In Paris, sirens; in Ypres, church bells. This is a beautiful town. Like a phoenix, it has risen from the ashes. The town was in ruins at the end of 1918. Over 75,000 building were destroyed in Flanders. There was considerable debate about the reconstruction: should buildings be restored as they were or should modern buildings be erected in their place? Thankfully, the conservationists won. Ypres looks and feels as it must have for centuries prior to the Great War. The Cloth Hall dominates. The streets are cobbled. Restaurants and chocolate vendors vie for custom.
Delightful as Ypres is, the weather was dismal. Perhaps that was as it should have been. Our day began at Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. There are 1368 graves in the cemetery which contains 11, 953 servicemen. So many of them have no name. So many of them have no country. Again and again, headstones read: “A Soldier of the Great War – Known unto God.” The cemetery was on the site of a barn (Tyne Cottage) which was at the centre of several German pillboxes. One of the largest of these blockhouses became a dressing station after the Australian 2nd Division captured the position on 4th October 1917. The main cross was built over this blockhouse. The remains of another one of the pillboxes squats among the sea of marble headstones. Tyne Cot is a bleak place.
The Visitors’ Centre offers a moving tribute to the men interred at Tyne Cot. There was also an interactive map of the Ypres salient which made the importance of the sector and the significant of the Australian contribution abundantly clear.
This message was reinforced when we visited the Memorial Museum at Passchendaele. Housed in the historic park of Zonnebeke, the museum gives particular focus to the Third Battle of Ypres or Passchendaele. In 1917, more than 400,000 soldiers were sacrificed to Haig’s desperate defence of the Channel ports. The weather conspired with the intensity of the artillery to produce the most atrocious conditions. Men drowned in the mud. Men who were wounded and fell from the duckboards (dubbed “banana-skins” by the troops) were lost. Simply getting wounded men to Casualty Clearing Stations required a Herculean effort. The museum had as its centrepiece a recreation of the dugouts constructed for the battle. Lieutenant Edmund Blunden described the conditions in the dugouts:
For a week I think, I patrolled this dirty but precious underworld, and, I fancied, improved conditions. Not the actual state of the works. It was the business of the tunnellers to pump out the canals of foul water which stank along the passages, the light of electric lamps falling on it doubtfully from the black lattice of flies which hung to the warm bulbs, swarming and droning around the heat of the passer-by. The holes on top I did indeed cause to be filled. But I was of more use in finding out who ought to be in the tunnel, who not, and acting accordingly. The space available became hourly more important.
Passchendaele was hell on earth.
In the afternoon, the group took up Bruce and Sue Topham’s quest to find the grave of Second Lieutenant Frederick Birks for a friend. We found him in Zillebeke, in the Perth (China Wall) cemetery. Fred was a Victoria Cross winner and there was a strong sense of pride and of connection when we located him; it was strangely comforting to be able to understand part of the story of at least one of the beings who lay beneath one of the thousands of cold marble headstones.
At Polygon Wood and the Buttes New British Cemetery, we found more Australians. Given our trip to Fromelles, the 5th Division Memorial held added significance for us. As we strolled through the surrounding area, we looked for scars of the fighting among the budding trees.
We participated in the Menin Gate ceremony at 8.00pm. Brendan Carney and Melina McCallum-O’Dea represented St. Francis Xavier College proudly. They laid a wreath which carried a message from our Principal, Paul Desmond. As the Last Post echoed through the arch, which honours the 54, 896 men (including 6176 Australians) who fell in Flanders Fields, I felt torn between sorrow and pride. I was utterly convinced, however, of the importance of my pilgrimage here.