We’d hard-earned our twenty-four kilometres of progress today, with a bridge and two locks to negotiate and one of them broken, so were in no state to race off exploring the city in the afternoon, (which is code for: we will be here for a few days so a nice nap may well be in order). Having fully recovered by the early evening we set off for a minor reconnoitre of the village.
The Last Post has been played at the Menin Gate in Ypres every evening for the past ninety years as an act of remembrance and gratitude for the price paid by the British and Commonwealth soldiers whose lives were lost in “The Great War” while serving in this region and whose bodies were never found.
It’s a bit difficult while that’s going on, beneath the names of just some of the 600,000 who were killed on the nearby battlefields, not to think about stuff, to be more than a little grateful ourselves that by some cosmic quirk we were born in the place and time that we were. It was on that happy note, with a few thousand others clearly also pondering, we quietly filtered off into the night.
3 comments
Peter - Very well said
We were there last year, in fact only a couple of days before meeting up with you. It's a very moving service especially when you think that it has been happening for so many years and remembers the tragedy of so many young men. We thought Ypres/Ypers was a pretty little city. Have once again enjoyed your posts, it's our yearly vicarious journey through France and now Belgium. Safe trip home.
@Bob and Pen - Thanks for the wishes - we have just seven weeks to go which seems incredibly short to us, but of course more than most people get for their entire vacation!
On the WW! subject - we only joined the dots recently that WW1 is the same distance from us in time, that the Napoleonic wars were to the guys fighting in WW1. Not sure what to make of that, but it's think-worthy at least........
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