This afternoon, we were in Ieper/Ypres looking at more WWI battlefields. WWI is the war that really matters in Europe -- 4 empires were either destroyed or so weakened they never recovered; a whole generation of men were killed and massive amounts of others were maimed; the economies everywhere were turned on their heads; and the whole ensuing confusion and chaos led just 21 years later to WWII.
In one day alone, the British lost 21,000 men on an 18-mile line of battle. It's an amazing figure. Try to imagine how you would stack 21,000 bodies in an 18-mile line. In World War I, Britain lost over 2,000,000 total; France lost 1.2 million total. And that doesn't count the living casualties nor does it count the damage done to farms, buildings, transportation, communication, etc.
The strategies and techniques that the commanders used and had learned in the military training were so overwhelmed by the newly developed weapons that much of the war was just guess and test as to what would work. Things were so bad that the French soldiers were mutinying refusing to move forward in 1917 because they had lost faith that their leaders were really planning to accomplish much without just sacricing all the men.
By the time the US came into WWI in late 1917, Britain and France had been fighting for 4 years and was just about out of resources of all kinds -- men, food, fuel, weapons, etc.
We have now been through northern France and are in Belgium visiting memorials and cemeteries. There are about 12,000 cemeteries in France with nothing but soldiers from the two world wars. World War II marked the 3rd time that Germany had invaded France in less than 100 years, so there are not so many resting places for Germans, but there are many for the British and the other allies who fell in battle.
Each allied country set up a commission whose job it is to maintain a record of each grave and to keep the grounds in good order. They have done an impressive job. In every cemetery we saw the grounds were carefully tended, the tombstones clean and in good shape. Some of the cemeteries are large with thousands of graves. Some are quite small with only several hundred.
The British buried their dead without regard to rank, just side by side sharing the same date of death.
The Germans have the simplest markers, and that is probably because they were allowed the least money when their decisions were made. In the WWI German cemeteries the Jewish soldiers are buried mixed in with the Teutonic soldiers. The German Jews volunteered in larged numbers for WWI because they wanted to demonstrate what loyal Germans they were. Based on events 25 years later, it did them little good. The marker in the photo is shared by four German soldiers, two on each side. Not all markers are shared but it is not uncommon and another measure of the little amount of money the Germans had to spend.
On one battlefield, there is a memorial for the missing, the soldiers whose bodies were never found when the battle was over. There are 72,000 names on this memorial!
Some of the trenches near Ypres are now inside the city limits. One company discovered that some of the trenches were on its property and reproduced them as a memorial. They are complete with the sandbags, the boardwalks, and the underground rooms. They have not built the actual rooms underground, because of liability concerns, but on the surface they have drawn the outlines of what was underneath so it is easy to understand the layout and size of this section of trenches.
In Ypres, there is a memorial gate for the WWI dead that holds a ceremony similar to Taps every evening at 8:00. The maps from the war show that several lines of trenches were located at aras that are now inside the city. One of the companies has created replicas of the trenches on its property complete with sandbags and underground rooms.
In Ypres also there is a terrific museum that tries to personalize the experience of serving in the WWI battles near the town. Each visitor is given a card with a soldier's name on it. At various stations throughout the museum, the card is entered in a computer and the visitor gets to find out what his/her "soldier" has been doing "so far" in the war. Mine was a miner from England. His job was to dig tunnels under the German lines which were then loaded with explosives and set off. He was killed in 1917, digging.
Ypres was the home of the fellow who wrote the poem, "In Flanders Field." I learned that the choice of poppies is much more significant than I knew. Poppies typically grow only on land that has suffered destruction and is not good for farming or building. Wow! Go read that poem again and see if you don't pick up a new layer of comprehension.
There was one section of battlefield in Belgium, near Ypres, where there was an interesting thaw. On Christmas Eve 1917, everyone was sitting in the dark in their trenches, when the British and French started hearing singing. They listened more closely and realized that the German soldiers were singing Christmas carols. Pretty soon the British and French were signing along too. After awhile, they starting raising their torches and came out of their trenches to great each other. For the next three days, both armies refused to fight, instead celebrating friends by playing soccer and visiting with each other. If you look on the ground of this photo you will see some small, wooden crosses. We saw these in every cemetery and memorial. They are inscribed with "We remember" or "Lest We Forget". There are also large numbers of the poppy wreaths that have been laid in remembrance.
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