In the Shadow. Thursday 5th September - Diksmuide

It’s a lot easier to push the events of the past into some recess of the mind, to be brought out only on a particular day of remembrance when one is happily detached on the other side of the world, but we are not, we are once again in what was at one time “the thick of it”.

It may not be apparent in this photograph, but the the Peace Gate, the ruins of the first Yser Tower, and the current tower which houses a twenty-two storey high museum, are positioned in a way such that the Gate frames the inscription on the ruin, and the tower provides a perfectly aligned backdrop to both. We are moored exactly on this axis and no more than fifty metres away, so it is impossible to escape the shadow of the past.  Had we wanted to do that, perhaps we should have avoided Flanders altogether, particularly just two months before the centenary of the end of “The Great War”.

There will be more to say no doubt, as our journey continues, but for now the inscription that we read each time we look out of our window is enough to ponder; (loosely translated) “ Here they lie like seeds in the sand hoping for a harvest in Flanders.”