My Trip to Ypres, Belgium
The first thing we did when we got into Ypres was to go to a museum site where they had preserved
actual trenches from WW1. The trenches were tiny and extremely muddy, and there were loads of
massive puddles that you got your feet stuck in. It was like walking through a bog! As I was walking
through the trenches, I realized just how horrific it must have been to spend almost all of your time
there, they were so damp and muddy. Being in them, it was very hard to see how they offered any
protection whatsoever, especially since even the shorter of us had to duck through certain areas and
walking upright, you could see all around the trenches.
The museum itself was very interesting, and there were lots of relics from the war such as helmets worn
by both the Axis and the Allies, as well as fully uniformed mannequins and weapons. There were also
lots of paintings, as well as a family tree of some royals. There were lots of boxes that had eyes holes cut
in so that when you looked inside them, they had photos of the war.
The second place we went to was the largest British cemetery in the world for soldiers in WW1. But it
wasn't just British soldiers. Soldiers from Italy, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt and even
Cameron were all commemorated there. It was incredible but also saddening to see just how many
graves there were. Looking at them, a very large percentage of them said "Known only unto God". All of
those graves belonged to soldiers who had died or gone missing but had not been identified. The sheer
amount of graves with that inscribed onto them was ridiculous. And the other graves that were named
were both saddening and infuriating. Many of the men who had died were 21, 22 and even 19! The fact
that they had died so young was absolutely terrible. However, it infuriated me that many of the graves
had things inscribed on them such as "Duty nobly done is the greatest reward". I felt so angry looking at
that, because it should never have been their duty. So many of the graves belonged to countries
hundreds of thousands of miles away from where the fighting was taking place. The fact that their
reward was death was most likely the worst thing about looking at the graves.
We went to the Menin gate in the evening, which was a memorial to the missing soldiers from Britain
and the Commonwealth. It was situated on the route that the Allied soldiers took when going to the
front lines. On the bridge, it said "To the armies of the British Empire who stood here from 1914 to 1918
and to those of their dead who have no known grave." On either side of the inscription, in Latin, it said
"Pro Patria [To die]" and "Pro Rege [For the King]". The inside of the bridge itself was covered from
bottom to top in names. The sheer amount of names of people who have no grave was unimaginable. At
about 8pm, the nightly service began. They have done a service every night since 1927. Over 8 decades
of ceremonies to remember the dead. Tonight, the person remembered was a 40-year-old man named
Patrick, who had died 100 years ago on this day. He was killed in a shelling by the Germans, and he had
only been on the front line for 2 months. Three others had died in the same attack as Patrick, but his
was the only name mentioned. Four veterans from WW1 played The Last Post at the beginning and end
of the service. It was incredibly moving, and it almost brought a tear to my eye.
We went to the German Military Cemetery first thing on the second day, and there didn't seem to be as
many graves as at the British one. However, upon closer inspection, we discovered that there were
seven or eight names on each slab. Many of the slabs had one or two names on them, and then the
phrase "one/two/three/etc unknown German soldiers" (written in German). This cemetery was much
less personal than the British cemetery, with multiple people all being put on the same slab and only a
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date of death, no age or anything else. The fact that we had to look down at the graves felt somewhat
disrespectful. All in all, the cemetery was a lot different to the British one.
After visiting the most amazing Chocolate shop ever, we visited In Flanders Fields museum. To get in, we
were given wristbands with microchips in them that allowed us to view extra information about the
exhibits. The museum was absolutely immense and there was so much everywhere. We followed a path
that led us through the war, and there were loads of different photos, relics and even some videos from
very official looking people. As we walked through the museum, there was so much to take in and to
look at and to do, it was insane. The most amazing thing in the museum by far, however, was the display
at the end of the museum. It was 10 flag-type hanging fabrics. On each one was a timeline of wars since
WW1. The amount of wars was staggering. I saw so many wars I'd never heard of, and a few I had. The
saddest thing was that the end fabric was half filled in, leaving space for the more wars that were
inevitable in the future. Many of the wars towards the end of the display, such as the "War in NorthWest Pakistan" and the "Yemeni Revolution" had beginning dates, but no ending dates. The amount of
wars that have happened in the past 100 years and the length of many of these wars was surprising. The
fact that people have still not learned what war causes and that wars continue today...
After the museum, we went to Essex Farm Cemetery, where the author of "In Flanders Fields", John
McCrae, worked, and saw his best friend die (which was the inspiration for the poem). Also in the
cemetery was the grave of quite possibly the youngest person to die in the war, 15-year-old V. J.
Strudwick. The amount of flowers and poppies on his grave made it so that it was almost impossible to
read the rest of the inscription on the gravestone. The fact that he had lied about his age to get into the
army, and he had died only two years older than I am was incomprehensible. He had been 12/13 when
the war began, and it must've required a true sense of bravery to sign up to a war that had already killed
so many.
Our trip to Ypres was a really interesting trip as I learned a lot of things about WW1 I hadn’t previously
known and I got to look at and experience things like trenches first-hand, which isn’t really the same as
looking at them on a video or reading about them in a textbook. The graves we went to and the
memorials really helped it sink in how brutal and terrible WW1 actually was, and how so many mothers,
fathers and wives had to bury their loved ones, and how so many people died and never got a grave
with their name on it, as no one knew who they were. The war promised these men that they’d be
hailed as heroes, when in reality so many of them were left without even a grave for their families to
mourn them at. Many went missing, so their families never even knew what happened to them. Dead,
alive, dying? You wouldn’t know, and you couldn’t know. Obviously know, we know that the majority, if
not all, of the soldiers who fought in WW1 are dead, but many families may have an ancestor who
fought in WW1 and won’t even know about it. Looking at the graves, and the memorials, and the
trenches, it made me wonder why so many governments are so eager to go to war, without even
thinking of the civilian casualties. Right now, there are troops in the Middle East who are fighting and
dying, much like their ancestors did. A hundred years on, and the world has still not learned what war
does. What war causes, and what war makes of people.
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