Western Front Tour: Two Museums

DAY SIX ~ Thursday 9th April 2009.
This day was dominated by two very different museum experiences: one at the In Flanders Fields museum in Ypres; and the other at the Mairie (Town Hall) in Fromelles.
In Flanders Fields was quite an experience. The museum set out to engage visitors and to stimulate their interest as effectively and creatively as possible. Upon entry, each visitor is given the name of a person who was involved in the Great War. Visitors are invited to discover what happened to their particular person in the course of their visit. For example, I had Victor Sykes form North London, who joined the Territorials in 1908 “to find himself a useful hobby.” He was mobilised in August 1914 and eventually sent to Neuve- Chapelle in March 1915. Victor was seriously wounded on 22nd/ 23rd September by a shell burst. He suffered facial and head injuries. A piece of shrapnel remained lodged in his skull for the remainder of his life. Because he was 20% disabled, he took no further active part in the war. He did, however, serve in World War II. Victor died in 1976.
Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est was performed powerfully. Individual gas masks sat on stakes in separate tall glass cylinders. These were filled with light and smoke. Visitors were invited to enter the nightmarish world of the gas attack and then, perhaps, envision the agonising death of the young soldier more vividly.
Similar techniques were used throughout this excellent interactive museum. A bomb blast seemed to shake the building to its foundations at one point. There were quotations, dramatic presentations, and segments of film footage in addition to photographs, letters, posters and other artefacts from the time.
The images displayed were vivid and confronting. The 1917 photograph of two British soldiers washing in a bomb crater at Langemark was particularly disturbing. The bomb crater contained graves. They seem oblivious to just how putrid and horrific their “bathroom” is. Had they been so brutalised, so anaesthetised by the war that they could be so unaware?
The museum also emphasised the hardship of the civilian population. Many of them stayed among the ruins until evacuated during the Hindenburg Offensive of 1918. There was a poster warning them of the dangers of clearing their streets and fields when they returned in 1919: it depicted a young girl being seriously injured when she accidentally detonated an unexploded bomb. The citizens of Ypres finally completed their restoration of the medieval city in 1967. Little wonder The Last Post is played here each evening. There is much to remember.
After lunch, the main group recrossed the river LaLys and returned to Fromelles. With the assistance of the Commonwealth Graves Commission we had managed to contact Jean-Marie Bailleul, Vice President of the Fromelles Museum, which is open on every second Sunday or by appointment only. Generously, he opened the museum for us. It is situated in the attic of the Town Hall and is crammed with memorabilia and weapons and artefacts collected from the battleground. This time, it was the immediacy and reality of the material which was so impressive. The German bunk displayed was real, as were the guns, clubs and shells. A compass was notched by a bullet hole; perhaps it had spared its owner’s life. Incredibly, only three men maintain this superb museum. While it was not as dazzling the first, it was equally, if not more memorable. Monsieur Bailleur was a delightful and dedicated man.
We managed to glimpse the archaeological dig at Pheasants Wood and to visit Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery where Pompey Elliot had had his command post during the battle in 1916. The cemetery was beautiful; willows fringed the stonework separating manicured lawns from a gentle brook. Here men had headstones. At VC Corner, just down the country lane 500 metres or so, the many fallen had two stark crosses.
Ypres gave us a new experience of The Great War. As a base, it had served us well. The comforts afforded to us, the chocolates, the ice-creams, the beers were very much at odds with the hardship and suffering of those who had lived or served here in The Great War.