Passchendaele

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Every year on Remembrance Day we all note the wars from WW2 up to todays modern wars.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the 3rd battle of Passchendaele or as it was known to the Tommies "WIPERS" , a three month long offensive that cost the lives of 100s of 1,000s of men, many whose remains where never recover as the were blown to pieces of dead or wounded sank in the mud of the battle field. This battle was as usual months before our colonial friends from across the pond joined the party ( Funny they did that during WW2 as well (just jo king ) ). The so called war to end all wars.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Almost a whole generation of young men of European nation wiped out

Comments

The poems of 1914

persephone's picture

Robert Laurence Binyon wrote this in 1914.
It had changed by Paschendaele in 1917

~o~O~o~

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

~o~O~o~

Siegfried Sassoon 'Suicide in the Trenches' 1918

Persephone

Non sum qualis eram

Also Canadians and Newfoundlanders

taggrrl's picture

Before the Americans entered the 'Great War", the Dominions of Canada and Newfoundland were punching beyond their weight and used as cannon fodder by the commanding British generals. Not to mention, those troops from Australia and New Zealand. On Remembrance Day (November 11th), we Canadians honour the fallen of this war and all other troops lost from the following wars. And yes, the bloody mud bath that's Passchendaele has Canadian bodies there, as well. May their souls find peace, for the Hell they had to live through. I write these words, as the eldest child of a Dutch immigrant to Canada, in June 1952, at the age of 16. Whose family lived through 2 invasions and occupations by German troops, in World War 1 and World War 2.

Perfection is, always, one step beyond, where my feet are.

I know the Canadians where

jacquimac's picture

I know the Canadians where there as well as just about every country that was then part of the Empire even troops from little Monserrat, I was having a friendly dig at the US who seem to turn up late to the ball almost every time.
Even today the body count is high with our Brass British troops are still cannon fodder and always will be, as a Russian general said at the siege of Sevastopol "The British troops are Lions led by Donkeys"

Where do you think the guns

Where do you think the guns and ammunition used in the battle came from? Or the uniforms and gear? Or even the ships that escorted the supplies? It's not the UK- a vast majority came from the USA!

US Navy and Coast Guard along with US Merchant Marines were heavily involved in the war before the soldiers from the US were able to depart. As soon as war was declared they were joining the Royal Navy in escort duties getting the above mentioned supplies to the British Army.

You don't train, equip, transport 1,000,000+ soldiers immediately, especially with a small number of transports and an ocean to cross. They got there, they fought, they were the deciding factor in the war. It's insulting to their memory to use their deaths in this way.

I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime

Passchendaele showed Canada's strength and passion too

AuPreviner's picture

If anyone wants to know how valuable Canadian soldiers were to the fight in WWI, then they ought to go on Youtube and watch Passchendaele written and directed by Paul Gross of Due South fame.

It is an intense film. I had my boys watch it so they wouldn't just walk away from Wonder Woman and think that the brief scenes of WWI were fabrications.

BTW, George Lucas wasn't the first to use the term storm troopers. It was the Germans. That is what they called the Canadians because they fought so fiercely and so intensely. Canadians have a right to be proud of their soldiers.


"Love is like linens; after changed the sweeter." – John Fletcher (1579–1625)

Unfortunately there are those........

D. Eden's picture

Here in the United States who live under the delusion that like a turtle we can pull our heads, tails, and limbs into our shell and hide from the rest of the world. That the fact that we are separated by two oceans from the vast majority of the world makes us untouchable. This delusion has affected the masses of our country repeatedly throughout our history, and many have failed to learn just how wrong this self-delusion is.

We now find ourselves fighting against another round of this moronic isolationism. Our so-called leader, Donald Trump, has jumped onto the "patriotism" train - patriotism in this case being a misnomer for bigotry and isolationism driven by fear and stupidity. By people who are incapable of adapting to the real world, people who are too ignorant to be able to use their brains to achieve a good life for themselves and their families, people who because they are incapable of succeeding in the real world refuse to admit that this fact is due to their own failings and choose to blame it on those who are different than them - those who don't share the same ignorant and ill conceived beliefs as they do.

At least twice in the last century we have been forced out of our hiding place by war - wars which we might have been able to shorten, or possibly even prevent if our great nation had chosen to act earlier rather than hide.

Thomas Jefferson once said that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Perhaps he should have said that the closed minds of the ignorant must be opened from time to time by the blood of the innocent. That would perhaps have been more accurate.

D

D. Eden

Dum Vivimus, Vivamus

Thank you for this

I have three great Uncles listed as dead either on the Menin Gate Memorial (2) or at Tyne Cot.
I think every gung ho, lets all go in with guns blazing general [1] in whatever army it is needs to go to Ypres and see what the often futile war did to a whole generation. Listen to the Last Post being played at the Menin Gate and I dare them not to be moved.
I have and just typing the words of this post has left me in floods of tears.

Samantha.
[1] You can add pretty well all Politicians to that list as well.

[edit]
I wrote a story about WW1 that is posted here.
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/25255/shell-shocked
It merely touches the very top layer of the sort of sacrifices that people of that generation made.
Did what I describe happen? Quite possibly.
My grandfather was captured after a gas attack. He spent the rest of his war in a Salt mine in the Sudatenland. He didn't return to England until late 1919 which may have saved him from the influenza epidemic. But his lungs were totally shot and he never worked again. He died the day the first V2's came over in WW2.
The BBC News site has a number of videos about the Ypres conflict.

National Gratitude

Speaker's picture

My mother is old enough to remember seeing mutilated ex-soldiers trying to scrape a living by selling matches on the streets of London in the 1930s. My grandfather was 56 when he died worn-out: he'd been buried alive when a shell hit his trench but survived to work long hours for a pittance. He carried on working through WWII, but spending long, terrifying nights on firewatch duties during the Blitz probably finished him off. My in-laws and friends' parents and grandparents, who are Italian and German, had similar experiences. War isn't glorious. Nobody wins. It is organised mass murder. No amount of memorials, flags, or patriotic pride (why be patriotic - did you choose where you were born?) is worth the pain and horror.

Speaker

Your post remined me of this

Your post remined me of this quote from Only Fools and Horses : "They promised us homes fit for heroes...instead, we got heroes fit for homes"-Grandad

it touches us all

Maddy Bell's picture

I have a great uncle buried at Railway Cemetery just outside Ypres, he received mortal wounds at Windmill less than a mile away, dying two days later in the field hospital at the chateaux.

As a family we came out quite well, most came back. My grandfather had a friend who was Cavalry at Passchendael, he was a nice chap but clearly never recovered from the experience, reliving the thing on a daily basis.

Not been myself but my Brother has been several times, taking parties of UK school children to the battlefields. Maybe that's got more value than trying to change adults views, get them young.

We shouldn't forget but nor should we hide in the past.


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Madeline Anafrid Bell

The actions described in the

dawnfyre's picture

The actions described in the biography below are an example of how much both world wars both were impacted by Canadian troops and had an impact on them.
I heard an interview with him in a TV Documentary, he and Willie were only scouting,Willie's death had him trying to die, the complete routing of the NAZI forces and freeing the town were unintended side effects. Leo and Willie were buddies from day 1 of basic throughout their training and service until then. He never spoke of his actions, his family and he had no idea how much he was idolized in Zwolle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Major


Stupidity is a capital offense. A summary not indictable.

That is why...

...I used the experiences of the older men in WWI to illuminate Gerald's life in Longer War. To an extebt, it is fear of the last war that shapes the new world each time. Ted Heath and co told endless lies to establish the European Union as an attempt to create a continent in which WWIII could never happen. The isolationists and disarmament champions between the two wars did what they could to remove the ability for anyone to start WWII. The trouble is, the only real way to stop wars is to engage with the rest of the world, accepting that not everyone is on your side. Pacifism works in a world where everyone shares the same values; in one where Saudi Arabia gets elected to the UN human rights and gender equality bodies, and in which the three greatest powers are run by, variously, an entirely selfish group of rapacious racists, a neofascist Mafioso and a spoilt and narcissistic idiot draft-dodger, it gets a little less effective.

Keeping their Memories and Stories Alive

Extract from the novel Catlin.

The Trench Raid

September 1917, Ypres, France

“Right, once more from the top,” Cassidy announced to the small cluster of black faced men gathered about him. “We go up and over at midnight in the following order; myself, Gallagher, Sheehan, Lieutenant Moore, Lynch, Doyle and Corporal Dempsey. Dempsey will bring up the rear, making sure no one lags behind or goes astray. Two flares will be fired to the rear of the German trenches every fifteen minutes on the quarter hour. We head off toward the one on the left.” When Moore had asked Cassidy earlier in the afternoon about the use of flares to guide them, wondering aloud as he did so why they didn’t simply use a compass, the veteran platoon commander informed him a compass would be useless in no man’s land. “There’s simply too much metal scattered all about. Discarded helmets, smashed weapons, bits of gear, shrapnel, plenty of shrapnel, the odd unexploded shell and of course the wire, ours and theirs. Compasses simply can’t be relied upon. A few months back a newly assigned officer in B Company spent the whole night leading a raiding party about in circles because he insisted on using his compass. If someone hadn’t shot the damned fool bugger they’d probably still be out there.” Cassidy didn’t bother to tell Moore rumors had it the fatal shot had been fired by one of the officer’s own men.

“Once we’re through our own wire and as close to the Jerry wire as we dare go we wait until the barrage opens up at oh one hundred. On my command we go forward in the same order.” Pausing, Cassidy looked over at his corporal. Though Dempsey was only a junior NCO, he had made it clear to Moore that on this night, if anything should happen to him Dempsey was in charge. “What happens if we take fire before we reach the German trench?” Cassidy asked his corporal.

“Turn around and head back the way we came,” Dempsey replied without hesitation.

“Right. Just don’t be in too much of a hurry. Make sure the man behind you headed back as well.” Pausing, Cassidy took to looking at each of his men in turn. “The same goes for the rest of you. Don’t head back until whoever was in front of you has turned around and is ready to follow you back.”

Only when he was satisfied that they all understood did Cassidy continue. “Now, assuming we do reach the German trench, once we’re in we’ll take a minute to sort ourselves. “Gallaher, where is it you’re to go?”

“Front Bayonet man, on the corporal’s left.”

“Sheehan?”

“Behind Gallagher and to your left.”

“Lieutenant Moore?”

“Behind you and Private Sheehan.”

“Doyle?”

“To the left of the lance corporal here,” he whispered as he glanced over at Lynch.

“And which way will be you facing?” Cassidy asked.

“To the rear, sir, watching for any Germans comin’ up behind us.”

Cassidy rewarded the man with a quick smile and nod, causing Doyle to flash him a smile of his own that reminded him of a school boy who had just been complimented by his teacher for rendering the correct spelling of a particularly difficult word. “Remember you two,” Cassidy went while glancing back and forth between Lynch and Doyle as he did so, “keep your arses cheek to cheek with Lieutenant Moore’s. If you don’t feel his bum, pick up the pace.”

Had the new officer been a known quantity and his platoon commander had not warned all who were going out with him that night to mind what they said around Moore, Lynch would have cracked a joke or said something colorful. Instead, he simply nodded.

“Good, good,” Cassidy muttered before he reached up under his wooly-pully and took to fishing around until he grasped the silver flask he kept in his left breast pocket. After unscrewing the cap and letting it hang by the chain connecting it to the flask, he passed the flask around to the man on right. “Right, lads. You know the drill. A quick tip before we go out and one more when we make it back.”

When Corporal Dempsey saw the expression on Lieutenant Moore’s face, he couldn’t help but snicker. “A man’s got to have something to look forward to after crawling about half the night where no sane man would go if he had a choice, sir.”

When Moore glanced over at Cassidy, he noticed the veteran officer was also wearing a smirk. “This is an Irish regiment, after all.”

The newly assigned officer was still staring at Cassidy when the man next to him all but shoved the flask in his face. Not wishing to come off as a prude and seeing no harm in doing so, Moore took the flask and up ended it. As he sat there letting the warmth of a fine whisky course its way through him, he held the flask at arm’s length. In the faint light of a dying flare he caught a glimpse of a name beautifully engraved across the front of the flask. “Who is she?” he asked as he turned to hand the flask back to Cassidy.

“Who is who?”

“Caitlin?”

Dropping his chin a smidge, Cassidy smiled to himself as he took a moment to screw the cap back on the gift William had given him not long after they’d met. “Someone near and very dear to my heart,” he whispered longingly.

~

As much as he had wished it to be otherwise, Cassidy’s small party made it across the torn and tortured landscape that separated the two embattled armies without being detected, denying him the opportunity to use the excuse they had no choice but to turn back before reaching the German trench. Both the time of night and the steady rain of shells impacting beyond the German forward trench that sent fragments of British made shells zinging just overhead allowed them to slip unnoticed into the firing bay of an unguarded stretch of trench. Without a word being uttered, everyone automatically assumed their assigned positions. Only when he was sure they were set did the red haired officer slipped a Mills bomb from the vest he wore and took in a deep breath. “Ready,” he whispered as he pulled the pin from his bomb. When he heard the unmistakable sound of Sheehan pulling the pin of his first bomb as well, he gave the order to go. With that Corporal Dempsey and Private Gallagher stepped off with their bayonet tipped rifles held out before them at waist height, stopping as soon as he reached the first traverse.

It came as something of a surprise to Moore Lieutenant Cassidy, the senior platoon leader in the company had assigned himself as one of the bombers. Anyone who knew better would have found Cassidy’s decision to be in line with what they had come to expect of him. Besides being the second best bomber in the company, Cassidy was one of those officers whose interest in the welfare of his men was as much a part of him as was his coppery red hair, quick wit and unerring accuracy when it came to tossing a bomb. With well practiced ease, he and Sheehan let their bomb’s arming spoon flip up and away before chucking them over into the next traverse.

Less then a second separated the twin detonations which served as the signal for the whole tight gaggle to go forward, around the corner into the traverse they’d just bombed and up to the next corner where Cassidy and Sheehan once more tossed their bombs up over the intervening patch of dirt that lay between them and whatever was in the next bit of trench.

Moore followed along, ignoring as best he could the choking dust and clouds of burnt cordite that seared his lungs and left his eyes watering. Holding his pistol in his right hand safely pointed up just as Cassidy had instructed him to, he held fast to a handful of that officer’s sweater as they rushed forward, stopped, bombed, then rushed forward again. Twice he stumbled over the bodies of dead and wounded Germans, earning him a muted curse from Cassidy. “Damn you! Pick up your feet, man. Pick up your feet.”

The sound of a whistle and the cries of German NCOs all about them screaming at their men to rush to their alarm positions served as Cassidy’s signal to give the order to break off their raid, go up and out of the German trench and make for their own lines. He and Sheehan were the last to leave. Standing back to back, the two men each threw a few more bombs to their left and the right as quickly as they could. “Up you go, lad,” Cassidy ordered with a casualness that anyone other than another veteran would have thought to be out of place. When he was gone, the young red haired Irish officer took a second to determine where the greatest threat to him was coming from before chucking one final bomb off in that direction.

Cassidy didn’t linger in the German trench in order to savor the all too familiar sound of animalistic cries and screams the detonation of this last bomb left in its wake. By then he was already well away, scrambling along the ground on all four as quickly as he could. The once still night was now very much alive as flares burst just overhead and German machineguns came to life, sweeping the ground before them like a scythe being swung back and forth.

As they had before, the raiding party relied on flares to guide them through the featureless landscape, this time fired by their own company’s 2IC. Unlike before, the men were scattered due to the rear guard action by the two bombers. Dempsey had the bulk of the raiding party well in hand, Cassidy was sure about that. While he tended to an insufferable bore when the battalion was out of the line, Corporal Dempsey, like all the 1914 lads was solid and reliable when they were in the trenches. And Sheehan, a tough little Mick if ever there was one, was the kind of man who knew how to take care of himself in a tight corner. That left Cassidy with nothing to worry about other than making his own way back across landscape pockmarked and scared by years of incessant war.

Had he been able to be honest with himself, Collin Cassidy would have had to admit to wishing things could be that way all the time. Being responsible for no one other than himself was by far preferable to being in charge of an entire flock, a thrown together hodgepodge of men made up of every sort, ranging from tough old veterans like Farrell, Dempsey, O’Donnell and Sheehan to wide eyed novices such as Doyle who were all too often nothing more than a burden to the unit and frequently of little use in a fight.

Scrambling about from shell hole to shell hole, often crawling, sometimes rising upright in order to make a dash to what he hoped was cover he could reach before the German’s spotted him, Cassidy ignored the chatter of machineguns, the deafening crump of shells impacting and every so often the voice of someone yelling an order or crying out in agony. Oddly enough, it was at times like this, in the midst of a man made hell that the young Irish officer found his mind wrapping itself around memories of the all too brief interludes he enjoyed in Amiens, cherished snippets of time when he was free to give himself over to his true nature and enjoy life the way he oft times wished he could. In his mind those precious few hours were not an escape from reality. Rather, it was the time he spent in the line with his platoon that was the act, a farce he put on in a vain effort to prove to the world he lived in outside that small hotel room that he was no different than any other man.

A sudden yelp and cry just up ahead put an end to Cassidy’s effort to divorce himself from his surroundings. It was Sheehan. He instinctively knew that in the same way a mother is able to hone in on the sound of her own infant’s cry in the midst of a room full of wailing babies. Quickly changing directions, Cassidy made toward a monstrous shell hole where he thought Sheehan might be. It didn’t take long to find him, guided as he was by the man’s breathless whimpers. Rolling up over the crater’s rim, the young red haired officer half slid, half tumbled down until he found his soldier laying face down near the bottom.

The same barrage of flares the Germans were sending aloft in a vain effort to find Cassidy and his small raiding party provided him with more than enough light to do a quick assessment of Sheehan’s wounds. What he saw caused his heart to sink. A stitch of machinegun bullets had hit him square in the back. The blood, liberally mixed with mud, made it hard to determine how many times the man had been struck. “Ah, Rory, they’ve made a mess of you. But you’re not to worry. I’m here now,” Cassidy murmured in an effort to reassure Sheehan as he did all he could under the flickering glow of fading flares to stanch the bleeding with nothing more than a cotton bandage and his bare hands.

Hampered by the blood he was coughing up, Sheehan could do little more than make gurgling noises by way of response. “Now don’t you fret, lad,” Cassidy stated as calmly as if they were back in the pub where he’d first met Sheehan just after the two of them had enlisted. “I’ll get you home to your Da. He wrote me you know. Last week. He wants to know why you haven’t written him.” Whether the wounded man he was tending to understood what Cassidy was saying didn’t matter. With no hope of properly treating the man’s wounds in the bottom of a muddy water filled shell hole, the best he could hope for was that the son of a tenant farmer would be comforted by the sound of his voice and hang on long enough for Cassidy to get him back to the relative safety of their own trench.

Doing so was no easy matter. Though Sheehan’s stature was anything but imposing, like all but one or two men in Cassidy’s platoon, the wound man dwarfed his diminutive platoon commander in everyway imaginable. Had it not been for the courage Cassidy relied on to compensate for his physical short comings, bravery that had earned him both decorations and the respect of every man in the battalion, Cassidy would have had to endure in France the same viciousness his peers had heaped upon him when he’d been a boy.

Once he had managed to pull Sheehan’s arms up over his narrow shoulders and grasp the wounded man’s wrists with one of his hands, Cassidy used his free hand to claw his way up and out of the crater they’d been in. Sometimes staggering, sometimes crawling, the red haired Irish officer made his way back toward his own lines, finding the break in their own wire they had used on the outbound leg of their trip more by chance then by design. Only when he was sure he was close enough to be heard without giving away his position to the Germans did he take to calling out that he was coming in, doing so in quick, breathless gasps.

Like phantoms raising up from the ground, a pair of shadowy figures appeared and made their way toward their platoon commander and their mate. Upon being relieved of his burden, Cassidy sank down onto his hands and knees, hungrily sucking in great gulps of air as he struggled to gather up the strength needed to cover the last few yards. Above him he heard a voice. “Here you go, sir. Give me your hand.”

With more effort than such a simple act should have, Cassidy waved his arm about over his head until Sergeant Farrell latched onto. An attempt to thank the man was stillborn when the young officer found he didn’t have the air in his lungs with which to make the effort. Instead, he simply allowed himself to be shepherded along like a drunk being helped home.

Farrell waited until his officer had been afforded an opportunity to catch his breath and rest a bit before informing him the man he had struggled to bring back was dead. Looking over to where the stretcher party was in the process of covering the lifeless corpse, Cassidy told himself he’d still have made the effort even if he had known it was little more than a futile effort. To have left a man he had shared a drink with on the day they’d pledged their lives to the English King out there in the middle of no man’s land where over time rats and shells would have torn him to pieces, a man who had followed him through two years of hell without a single word of complaint would have been unimaginable.

“How do you get used to that?” a voice next to him asked plaintively.

Cassidy waited until the stretcher party disappeared around the corner before glancing over to where a very shaken second lieutenant sat with his knees tightly drawn up against his chest. Rather than answering the man straight off, Cassidy fished his flask out from under his sweater, slowly unscrewed the cap and took a long, lingering sip.

“Is that why you drink?” Moore asked.

Holding the flask up before him, Cassidy shook his head. “This? No. There’s not enough of this to wash away the memory of a man like Rory Sheehan.”

“Then what do you do to forget?”

Cassidy wanted to say you didn’t. He wanted to say you remembered them all, every bloody one of them, even the ones you didn’t see die. But he couldn’t. Instead, he looked over at the ashen faced officer who was leaning against the trench’s back wall, still staring at the traverse the stretcher party had disappeared into. “You think about something else,” Cassidy finally muttered before taking another swig of whisky.

“Like what?”

Before answering, the red haired officer took a moment to study the name engraved in the flask he held, running his thumb loving across it. “Something else,” he whispered.


~ ~ ~

"You may be what you resolve to be."

T.J. Jackson

Allow me to play Devil's Advocate

Haylee V's picture

It is well documented how we, as Americans, tended to remain "neutral" during these great threats to world peace. We were selling arms to BOTH sides, actually, and the ONLY reason we got into WWI was because Germany was sinking unarmed ships that passed into the war zone. Even then, we remained neutral until four American freighters were sunk by the Germans in late March, 1917. President Wilson and Congress declared war on April 2. We entered WWII for the same reasons - Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, HI, we declared war on Japan, and because they were allied with the Axis powers, Germany and the rest declared war on us, bringing us fully to the Allied side. Our laissez faire attitude is one reason we weren't respected by other countries until the advent of the League of Nations, and then the UN. Only AFTER we began to take an ACTIVE role in world affairs did we rise to the position we now hold.

*Kisses Always*
Haylee V

Tyne Cot Ceremony

I am a regular visitor to the Ieper Salient and the Somme battlefields, every November I take part in the Last Post Ceremony by laying a wreath to my local regiment The 10th Battalion Lincolnshire Regiment better known as The Grimsby Chums the only Pals Battalion called Chums. Tyne Cot British Cemetery (it is the biggest British Cemetery in the World) twelve thousand mostly unknown British, Commonwealth and four German dead and also a Memorial with nearly thirty five thousand names on, part of the cemetery is a battlefield cemetery near the cross of sacrifice which is sat on a German bunker one of three bunkers in the cemetery one man won a Victoria Cross in taking the other two bunkers but was killed while attacking the third which became an aid post once captured. Mondays ceremony was really good but the BBC let themselves down by talking to historians which should have been done in a separate programme and focused on the build up to the ceremony. The BBC also made the same mistake on Sunday instead of presenting from the centre of Ieper (I am using the Flemish spelling of Ypres as that is what is on signs). The In Flanders Museum inside The Cloth Hall is very good, it was refurbished a few years ago. The Memorial Museum Passendaele in Zonnebeke is very good, a few years ago the museum added an extension. There are some good battlefield tour companies out there I use Bartletts Battlefield Journeys www.battlefields.co.uk which gives in depth tours, they also provide information on your relative and also you can choose what cemeteries, memorials and museums you want to visit unlike companies like Leger who have a set itinerary. To lay a wreath at The Menin Gate Memorial get in touch with The Last Post Association via their website it's the same if you want to say The Exhortation. Tyne Cot British Cemetery and Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery with 10,786 graves both now have visitors centres, was a hospital Cemetery . Etaples Military Cemetery in France is the second biggest British Cemetery with 11,554 graves including some from The Second World War before the evacuation in 1940 and used again in 1944, Etaples had five general hospitals and was a major training area during The First World War. Last year in Vichte Belgium on 11th November I received a medal from the Mayor of Anzgem on my tenth visit to the village. There are over 150 cemeteries in the Ieper Salient. My great great uncle died from wounds on 26th August 1916 from shelling two days previously in his trench called Montauban Alley Trench just outside the village of Montauban (taken on 1st July 1916) and is buried at Dernancourt Communal Cemetery and Extension in France in Picardy region better known as The Somme

Family losses.

I suspect just about every family in Britain three generations deep, lost somebody in WW1 that is, grandparents, great uncles, parents, children, uncles and cousins. My family lost two of my paternal great uncles in the Atlantic and the other maternal side lost all but one of it's sons (My maternal great uncles,) in the trenches.

And before anybody criticises the Americans for tardiness, just remember that King George V, Tsar Nicholas of Russia and Kaiser Bill of Germany where all bloody first cousins. Queen Victoria was grandmother to all of them not to mention five other crowned heads or consorts of Europe. It's hard to imagine that the causes of WW1 were in no small part, little more than a family feud. Just how sick and futile is that?

The Americans were morally right to stay out of it until their neutrality was assaulted.

As to WW2, that's a different matter.

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