MrGareth’s Missives

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 13^th 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.

As thoughts at Christmas are always drawn to the famous football match during the Xmas Truce in 1914, you are reminded of the incredible senselessness of the First World War.  But it wasn't until I went on a battlefield tour around the Ypres Salient yesterday that the scale of the slaughter really hit home.  Despite studying it at school and taking a lifelong interest in its history, I never truly understood how horribly wasteful the events of that conflict were.  In essence, I couldn't comprehend it.   

The moving Vancouver Corner Memorial to the Canadian casualties inflicted by the first use of Chlorine Gas in the Second Battle of Ypres.

Thanks to the thorough, informative and moving tour given by Andre De Bruin (of Over The Top Tours, which I highly recommend should you be in the area) in the company of Australian Blogger Kate Carruthers, (who was also able to offer considerable insight ) among other friends, I now have a much deeper insight into this dark and shameful chapter. It is an insight that – as the day went on – inspired a full spectrum of different emotions.   (Here is a slideshow of the tour)

There was  the anger inspired, for instance, by the pettiness of the Belgian Government in the way that the German dead are commemorated in comparison with those of the Allied dead.  The politics of the conflict aside – who started it and who won – the “sacrifice” of those fallen on both sides are the same, one would have to agree.  And yet if you visit the Langemark Cemetary to German dead just outside Ypres, you would I am sure be as shocked as I by the mass grave of 25,000 bodies amalgamated from several other German cemetaries across the area when the Belgian Government forced the Germans to consolidate their memorials.  It is a dark and infuriating site, where the tomb stones – black rather than white, and almost never of individual graves but only ever mass graves of various sizes – are forced to lie down on the ground to minimize their profile.  It mirrors the dreadful mean-ness of the Versailles Treaty in its lack of magnanimity.

There was anger too at the sheer magnitude of the insanity of the so-called “War to end all wars”, probably best exemplified by the Battle of Passchendaele.  Quite movingly Andre relayed a series of punishing statistics about the battle, fought over a small village on a ridge just north west of Ypres, as we drove through the snow across the site of the battlefield.  I will share them here because for me they represent the scale of the madness in a way that nothing ever has done before for me:

The three-month battle fought across a four-and-a-half mile front to secure a two mile gain in territory resulted in a staggering half a million casualties on both sides.  There was no shelter for the advancing troops – not a house, not a tree, not a bush.  The German machine guns had a range of one-and-a-half miles and at point 50 yards would decimate their victims.  The Allied shelling immediately proceeding the advance destroyed the intricate drainage system underlying the fields of the battlefront and as the battle got underway the week-long downpour turned the fields into an unprecedented quagmire of clag that prevented any chance of digging in for shelter.    The industrial scale slaughter amounted to 35 Allied dead per square metre.  Just Imagine that for a moment.  That represents a pile of bodies, every metre across a nine square mile battlefield.  The ground over which they were killed and into which their blood was shed was recaptured by the Germans no less than four months later.

There was even some relief in humour at the tale of John “Barnie” Hines, also known as “wild eyes”  , the “notorious” Australian soldier with a price on his head from the German Government.  He found a rifle simply ineffective for his purposes, and preferred instead two bags of grenades.  When introduced to a Lewis Machine gun, he was heard to have said, “This’ll do me…‘it’s just like hosing the bastards down”!  This killing machine was also a kleptomaniac and along with several pianos managed to steal a Grandfather Clock.  His fellow troopers were forced to destroy it though because it went BONG every hour and gave away their position!  Even this story ended in sadness, however, as the digger - who survived the war - wasn’t allowed to enlist for the Second World War and died a lonely vagrant in 1958

There was also the intense fury at the arrogance of the American commander who – with only six hours to go before the widely understood time of the cease-fire on the 11^th November 1918 – attacked a small village so that his men could have a hot shower…at the cost of 300 men.

There was also of course great sadness, for instance when you visit the dressing station where Canadian John McCrae was inspired to write the poem “In Flanders Field” which gave rise to the poppies as the emblem of rememberance.  

But most profoundly of all was the grief at the words written at the foot of one grave at Polygon Wood – scene of a particularly ferocious battle involving an Australian Division.  Every family was offered the option to include a small inscription – at a penny a letter – at the foot of their family members' gravestone.  The mother of one Australian, Lieutenant Harry Hill, chose to use the last words he wrote to her, signing off on his last letter home, “I’m alright mother, cheerio.”

Amid all the Ashes excitement in Australia, you wouldn’t imagine that there is a small grave in a field in Belgium with profound and poignant relevance to the world’s oldest sporting rivalry.  But I traced that very link from a last minute invitation to a very small ceremony in the Oxford Road Cemetery in Ieper (previously known as Ypres and colloquially known as “Wipers” by British troops during the First World War.)

Colin Blythe was a Sergeant in the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and was killed somewhat arbitrarily - like so many others - by a random shell in the battle of  Passchendaele  in November 1917.

Colin, also known as Charlie, was also thought one of the finest spin bowlers of the pre-war period, and played several tests for England - including Ashes series in England and Australia.  In 2009, the year that England reclaimed the Ashes from Australia after the debacle of the 2006/7 series, the England cricket team visited the Oxford Road Cemetery where  a stone cricket ball was laid at the grave of England and Kent bowler Blythe. "It was a deeply moving and humbling experience," said captain Andrew Strauss.

Also laid at the grave was a small miniature cricket bat, which was recently and astonishingly stolen.  And so it was decided by members of Kent Country Cricket Club (for whom he played) that it should be replaced and a ceremony was scheduled to dedicate it.  It was a very small, brief (6 minutes) but dignified ceremony – conducted by my father, the Chaplain to the nearby St George’s Memorial Church, Ieper  (which you can watch here on You Tube.)

The whole experience put today's Ashes events in quite startling perspective for me.

It’s an arresting place to visit.  Certainly not one of the large grave yards – for there are several vast cemeteries in the area to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of war dead in the area through 1914-1918.  But the Oxford Road Cemetery in particular is important for its location as well as for its significant resident. Situated just metres away from an important field dressing post on the road back from the  Passchendaele  Battle front.  Of the several hundred graves there, many of them all died within a few days of each other – between the 24^th October and the 7^th November 1917.  Of the graves there, all are of gentlemen younger than myself – which makes me very sad.

But as you tour around the rest of the area, you appreciate how lucky Mr Blythe is to have such a grave at all, let alone one so well attended.  Many of the graves in that cemetery are of an “Unknown Soldier” – sometimes its not even clear of what nationality.  But so many of the war dead were never even found. The grand Menin Gate in Ieper town centre records the names of some 56,000 British Empire dead – Canadian, Australian, Indian, New Zealand and South African as well as British – the remains of whom were never even found amid the mud of the Ypres Salient.

(More pictures of the Oxford Road Cemetery here.)

As usual, all the focus around ANZAC day  is always on ANZAC Cove in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 .  Admittedly its of obvious importance as the first time Australian forces were committed,  not as a division of the British Army, but as an Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.  The campaign itself was a complete disaster and the Allies abandoned the Turkish Penninsular beachhead within the year.  

The controversy around the British leadership of the campaign is the sharper end of an otherwise fond relationship between Britain and its former colony, but its always struck me as appropriate Australia’s military heritage is founded on a battle for a beach!

While the emphasis on Gallipoli is burgeoning, no doubt increasingly close to the hearts of those who have visited ANZAC Cove as part of their backpacker travels.  But its occurred to me that there is a somewhat blinkered obsession with the action there.

On St George’s Day my father was just appointed Chaplain of the St George's Church in Ypres, Belgium (congratulations Dad!).  Not many Australians seem to have even heard of any of the battles of Ypres, but they play a powerful and significant role in the British, French and German narrative of the First World War.  In fact, British Prime Minister Lloyd George of the Third Battle of Ypres – Paschendale (June to November 1917), ““the battle which, with the Somme and Verdun, will always rank as the most gigantic, tenacious, grim, futile and bloody fight ever waged in the history of war.” (In fact more Australians - 20,000 - died in 1917 than in the whole of World War Two.)  But Ypres or "wipers" as it was colloquially known - is fairly overlooked in the ANZAC Day legends.

Nevertheless it is staggering if you compare the realities of the ANZAC campaign at Gallipoli and those at Ypres.  For a start – and this is quite arresting – there were 2,700 NZ dead in the whole of the nine-month Gallipoli campaign but the New Zealand Army Core in Ypres sustained 2,700 casualties (800 dead) on the 12th October 1917 alone – just one day.  

Similarly, the comparison is even starker when you compare the Australian sacrifice at Ypres with that of the supposedly Legendary exploits at Gallipoli.  Overall, Australia sustained 28,000 casualties (8,700 dead) on the Gallipoli peninsular in a nine month campaign (important to remember Britain took 73, 485 casualties with 21,155 ded).  On the 26th September 1917 there were 5,500 Australian casualties – in one day!  That day – The Battle of Polygon Wood  - was actually considered one of Australia’s most successful engagements in the First World War!  

Overall, the Australian monument at Ypres today commemorates  48,000 Australian dead in the Ypres Salient!  But that might sheer guesswork.  So many soldiers just disappeared in the mud at Paschendale, there is no way of knowing who died where.  (Many Australian sappers died in the mine battles underground prior to the huge explosion at Messines Ridge   – a reality chillingly described in the bestseller Birdsong .)

So on this my ninth ANZAC Day in Austrlaia, I’m not going to obsess over Gallipoli this year, I’m instead going to think about William and Fanny Seabrook.  The Australian couple lost all three of their sons in the days following the beginning of the Menin Road offensive on the Ypres Salient on 20th September 1917.  While the younger brother Willam (20) was buried in the area around Ypres, the remains of his elder brothers Theo (25) and George (24) were never found.  It was their first, last and only action of the war.  

As my father wrote to me in an email: “ANZAC Day is commemorated in Ypres.  There is a Service of Remembrance at Buttes Road Cemetery at 06.00 (local time) and Last Post at the Menin Gate at 11.00.  We will remember them.”  Glad someone will.

UPDATE: In a recent visit to Ypres i was able to find William's name on the Menin Gate among those listed as disapeared - i.e. whose body was never found.  Here it is: