The title is not only a reference to the fact that this is my last post from Belgium (news no doubt coming as some relief to those bored to tears by all this War misery !), but also a reference to a marvelously poignant daily ceremony that takes place every day at the Menin Gate in Ypres. Every evening at eight o'clock, no matter what the weather - as I can attest, having attended in freezing temperatures - between two and four buglers observe a small moment playing the "last post" and reciting what is called the exaltation out of respect to those lost in the Great War. It's a moving moment, performed every evening since the fighting ceased.
Ypres was a different place in 1918. The Germans deliberately and surgically removed this pretty medieval town from the map so that nothing was left standing by the end of the war, not even the 13th century Cloth Hall , the ruins of which remain a powerful icon to the destruction of this conflict. It was a quite spiteful act. Quite strategically unnecessary and leaving a biter taste in the mouth of the local Flemish that lasts to this day.
But to walk around Ypres – or to give it its proper Flemish name, Ieper – is to understand the power of renewal. The town was completely rebuilt, lovingly so in fact, and in such a way that unless you knew better you would be forgiven for thinking the new Cloth Hall is seven hundred years old, not less than one hundred. The town was reconstructed in the 1920s according to strict adherence to the original street plan. It is an act of defiance yes. But an act of renewal as well.
One of the many hills the town of Ypres was shelled from is Hill 60 – famous now for the new feature film (Beneath Hill 60 - - a smashing yarn well worth the viewing) about the Australian Sappers who built an intricate series of tunnels under a German gun emplacement in order to blow it up. This was in parallel and in concert with the remarkable British mining efforts under the Messines Ridge that saw some 19 enormous explosions blow in sequence one after the other along an important ridge along the Ypres Salient front line that blew thousands of German soldiers to smithereens and buried many thousands more for ever. The explosions, which were to said to have rattled the tea cups in Downing Street, were part of the most successful Allied offensive of the war.
But as you drive around the farms that have replaced the Messines battlefields on the French-Belgian border, there is very little to tell you this carnage and slaughter ever took place at all. A small cross to mark the spot of the Christmas Truce and the famous game of football that I have referred to before; the occasional run down and overgrown bunker complex; (and the ubiquitous cemeteries of course). But you have to know to find them. For the most part, even something that irrevocably re-arranged the landscape and widowed thousands in a single second is marked only by a number of craters, now filled with water and incorporated into either someone’s garden, or a golf course. For me, as with Ypres, and as with the way Australian bush regenerates itself after a cataclysmic bush fire, this speaks of the power of renewal. Its very encouraging, heartening and positive.
As Germany has made its very last reparations payment – some 91 years and 269 billion gold marks later - and Europe approaches the centenary of this vicious holocaust, perhaps complete renewal is now finally drawing close.
UPDATE: As I've already said, the Menin Gate is dedicated to all those who's remains were never found and were deprived the dignity of a proper burial. There are many graves in all of the many cemeteries in the area to an "unknown soldier" and many of the names would pair up with those on the walls. But many are still buried in the mud. In fact many are still being found. As well as the 56,000 names at the Menin Gate, there are another 30,000 names of lost soldiers at Tyne Cot Cemetery at Pascendale, and a further 11,000 near the Hyde Park Corner memorial further south near the Messines Ridge. With those three memorials alone, altogether thats more than 90,000 soldiers whose remains were never found.
That's more people than this year's record attendance at the Boxing Day Test at the MCG.