Ypres - A sobering day out

May 24, 2025

Dear fellow travelers today was a day out to Ypres to visit WWI commonwealth war graves and the Flanders Museum. Ypres was the site of the Passchendaele battle which was technically the third battle for/in Ypres during WWI. The sites we visited were the Ypres Reservoir Cemetery which was in a lovely peaceful setting despite being boarded by the local fire station and prison. We then went to the Menin Gate that lists the names of 54,594 causalities of WWI from the battles for Ypres, from Australia, India, the UK, Canada and South Africa. Not many kiwis listed as these are recorded at the Tyne Cot site along with UK soldiers who died after the 16th August 1917. Kiwis who were killed before that, with some exceptions, are listed at the Buttes New British Cemetery and Messines Ridge British Cemetery. There is also a German Military cemetery but it was quite a way out of town. There was a school trip here and at the Flanders museum, which I will get to shortly. The Menin Gate is part of the battlements of Ypres so we wandered along these, through the trees etc. before descending back into town for lunch and a bathroom stop.

After lunch we visited the In Flanders Field Museum which was very interactive and well represented of all who participated. The audio guides were very good as were the visual displays. It was as much a social history museum as a military one, as much concerned with the impacts of the three battles for Ypres on the local community as the military action. It was very moving. As a lot of Ypres was destroyed and the local population having fled, incentives were introduced at the end of the war to encourage them to return with marginal success as a third didn't which had quite an impact on the local rural economy. You can view the town from the bell tower and I sent a representative to do just that.

I have now been to two WWI commonwealth grave locations, Anzac Cove and Ypres, and two museums Monte Casino and Ypres. While the commonwealth cemeteries are alike in appearance they are different in outlook as in Ypres we were assisting the locals to remove invaders where as in Anzac Cove/Gallipoli. Added to this is that Ypres is inhabited where as Anzac Cove is not and lies close to the Thracian Sea and while we were there, there was a thunderstorm out at sea and I had visions of Jason and the Argonauts waiting to appear out of the gloom....Both sites were very peaceful. Museums also paint different pictures with the one at Monte Casino not that kind to us kiwis and allied forces, a useful reminder that not all events are viewed similarly.

So a sobering day out!