And now... time to blog about the 2nd day of our Belgium trip! Gosh I am SO behind on blogging, as I mention every single post... it just takes forever to load pictures and honestly I bet a lot of you just look at the pictures on here anyway!
The day began with a little jaunt around Ieper to buy chocolates. The city area is very 'European' in atmosphere... and the city has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years! The main reason why we visited Ieper was to see a lot of the WWI history, because A LOT of WWI took place at Ieper. The way I understand it was that the Germans were making their way northward and they would need to get ahold of Ieper... and once they advanced... Britain sent soldiers to fight along with the Belgians and whomever else they could force onto the battlefield. As you can tell, my understand of war is very elementary. I've never been able to understand all of the intricacies of who did what and how that caused this and all of the things that are going on at the same time and, and, and...
Well. Here's one of my friends sitting outside of the hostel we stayed in:
This is the town center and it was built in the 13th century!
In case you can't read this picture of a sign I took, it says "15th century Gothic remains of the 12th century of St. Martin's Deanery. Tombstones, damaged sculptures and fragments of the destroyed St. Martin's church in 1914-1918."
Trying my best to be a Gothic statue...
And then we visited one of many, many graveyards... I can't remember which is named what, honestly. But it was a beautiful day outside and to think of all of the soldiers that were brutally murdered in the VERY SAME place that we walked on that bright and sunny and green day was just unreal.
Right here, battle took place... We learned about all of the wounded and the 'medical care'... the soldeirs would get a shot of morphine if they were lucky and were basically doomed to die. Sanitation was unheard of... chemical warfare was 'invented'.
Then we visited a mock trench. It wasn't actually used during the war, but it was a good example I guess... minus guns and bombs and mustard gas and death and blood and everything else terrible you could think of...
The soldiers made these raised areas to walk on, I think to help prevent getting trench foot, which would happen to them if their feet got wet and cold inside their boots... eventually they'd turn blue and swell up and get blisters and then you'd get gangrene and then they'd have to be amputated.
Walking inside the trench... it was clean and sunny and obviously I can't begin to picture what it must have been like to fight in those conditions, but I know it WASN'T PRETTY...
A little hole to stick your rifle into to shoot at the enemy...
Then we went to the Langemark German cemetery:
Obviously no relation but I took a picture anyway:
And here is the mass grave that is the resting place of almost 25,000 soliders. Oh gosh. How can anyone stomach that? In the rest of the cemetery, over 10,000 soldiers are buried and out of all of the dead in this particular cemetery... about 3,000 of them were SCHOOLBOYS/CHILDREN. They just plain needed BODIES to send into battle. A lot of them were tricked into going. Hitler visited this cemetery at some point, I also remember.
When I got back from the trip, I listened to 'Zombie' by the Cranberries and it suddenly meant something much different to me and I think it's about being shell-shocked (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) during WWI. It's a really powerful song I would recommend listening to, but here are the lyrics:
Another head hangs lowly,
Child is slowly taken.
And the violence caused such silence,
Who are we mistaken?
But you see, it's not me, it's not my family.
In your head, in your head they are fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are crying...
In your head, in your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie,
Hey, hey, hey. What's in your head,
In your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, dou, dou, dou, dou, dou...
Another mother's breakin',
Heart is taking over.
When the violence causes silence,
We must be mistaken.
It's the same old theme since 1916.
In your head, in your head they're still fighting,
With their tanks and their bombs,
And their bombs and their guns.
In your head, in your head, they are dying...
In your head, in your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie,
Hey, hey, hey. What's in your head,
In your head,
Zombie, zombie, zombie?
Hey, hey, hey, hey, oh, oh, oh,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, hey, oh, ya, ya-a...
And then off we drove some more through the Ieper countryside... we were really blessed with a beautiful day...
And we visited another cemetery. It was really breathtakingly gorgeous... really well-maintained and looked after...
And I had to show a few of the ages on a few of the graves...
This one says "Believed to be buried in this cemetery".
Kids from our group:
I really don't have much to say about the cemetery because I think you can see for yourself...
Afterwards we visited Talbot House which was a sort of refuge for soldiers during their time off. It was a really nice little place. We learned about how when a lot of soldiers had their time off, all they would care about was having a good time because it could be their last good time... and so alcohol and women (and I don't know what else) were not in short supply.
Really adorable signs up in the house...
There was a chapel in the attic:
One of the rooms which I quite liked:
And the Talbot House still receives guests there today! I would love to stay their sometime if it wasn't such a pain to get to on my own...
Then of course, we visited a bakery that was just across the street. The man in the picture is Julian, the professor that went on the trip with us. He's my History of London professor and he's really interesting!
My treat! The pink stuff is all marzipan (my favorite!!!) and inside there was a little cake-type thing with cream. Really delicious but I couldn't eat it all at once actually.
Then, we visited a prison. Here's a one of the walls inside the prison, all scratched up by the prisoners:
We learned about all of the things soldiers could be punished for... and of course the most memorable one is for desertion. I can't blame the soldiers that panicked and fled. Sometimes I wonder if our bodies will even physically allow us to march into gruesome battle? Well, I obviously wouldn't know. But a lot of the prisoners were given a last meal, some alcohol, had a bag stuck over their head...
And were taken out here to be executed, oftentimes by their friends or brothers. A lot of the time, they wouldn't even know what was going on because they'd have the gas mask on backwards over their head and it would just be silent. This is all just completely gruesome to me... but it doesn't compare to the torture I learned about in Scotland... compared to the Scottish, this is all quite humane and merciful.
So really, Ieper stands in my mind as cemeteries and chocolate. An awful combination but at least it wasn't all war and bloodshed... it was a great trip but I would only recommend going if you're interested in the history of everything and 'don't mind' being reminded every other second about all of the thousands and thousands that died there.
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