With the Tour de France starting in Ypres (or Ieper, if you prefer the Flemish), this seemed like a good opportunity to write about some of the ways World War I is remembered here.
Back in April, I visited In Flanders Fields, a museum dedicated to documenting the experiences of the soldiers and civilians. It was in front of the museum where Tour de France stage 5 began yesterday.
The museum is massive and sobering. It features posters, video footage and reenactments, uniforms, medical stretchers, texts galore in Flemish, English, French, and German, and countless other artifacts. I often balk at the cost of museum admission, but In Flanders Field is well worth a visit. The curators have approached WWI not as an opportunity to blame, but as a turning point in the past century that must be examined to learn from its lessons.
During the 4 years that the war stretched on, troops from across the Commonwealth were stationed continuously in Ypres. Of the 185,000 Commonwealth men known to have died here, 100,000 have no marked grave. The Menin Gate, built in the 1920s, bears the following dedication above the keystone: To the armies of the British Empire who stood here from 1914 to 1918 and to those of their dead who have no known grave.
The walls of the gate name over 54,000 soldiers who lost their lives in Ypres.
The old city walls are still standing and it's a lovely and peaceful place to stroll about.
Numerous cemeteries dot the town. Ramparts cemetery, positioned on the quiet river bank, is the final resting place for 153 British, 14 New Zealand, 11 Australian, 10 Canadian, and 5 unidentified soldiers.
