This was the last stop on this 48-mile tour of the area around the northern World War One battlefield. By this time there was a pretty good rain coming down which only goes to soften and enhance the picture of the Van Couillie mill. The area around here is quite flat and was for centuries a bog and marshland which would flood during the late winter and early spring, never really drying out. Then came dikes and locks and pumps and the land was drained and reclaimed for farming. The pumps as well as the mills were all wind-powered systems. Gristmills were placed on as high ground as possible to catch the wind and then made as tall as feasible (and affordable) so that huge sails could be installed. This mill was one of the largest and tallest in the region. It was captured by the Germans before it could be destroyed by the Belgian engineers. It served as a lookout and surveillance point through much of the war. One particularly important use by the Germans was to look for and pinpoint artillery muzzle flashes so that the German guns could target the allied artillery. As such, the mill was also the target of the allied artillery as well. The picture shows what remains of the mill which stands as a monument to the war.

So, the Ijzer Battlefront Tour is complete. It took much longer than I had anticipated but was quite educational. Additional pictures may make it to the website! I took more than 800 pictures on this trip…. I finished the tour about 2 p.m. in the afternoon.

The original plan was to go to Church and then complete the tour in the afternoon. The Hotel people were kind enough to try and contact someone who would know where the Branch met. I got back to the hotel last night to find a phone number to call. It was the Kortrijk missionaries’ cell phone. They told me the Branch was now meeting in Moeskroen — a town about 10 miles south of Kortrijk. There was a French-speaking branch and a building in Moeskroen (Mouscron in French), so the Kortrijk Branch had moved there some months ago to save on rent. However, the missionaries couldn’t give me the address or tell me how to get there. They gave me the phone number for the Branch President — the same number I had called the week before. I called the president who told me that the members met “behind the train station at the bus stop — the only bus stop behind the station — at 9:15 a.m. and carpooled to the branch.” So, at 9 a.m. I was at the bus stop. There were no group of branch members carpooling. About 9:20 an elderly woman showed up (the only person I had seen anywhere in the area). She spoke only French. When I asked if she was Mormon, she nodded in the affirmative. She either didn’t know or couldn’t tell me that she knew the route to the Church building. She stayed about 5 minutes, then got on her bicycle and rode away the way she had come. I waited another 10 minutes and the left myself. It shouldn’t be this hard to go to Church in a foreign country!

So, I went back to the hotel, changed out of my church clothes, and headed back to Keiem where I had left off the tour the night before. After completing the tour, I headed for the freeway planning to make a fast drive to the office where I could get a good Internet connection (that’s where I am now, at about 8:15 p.m. on Sunday evening Belgian time — the times on the weblog entries are all Pocatello time). I saw a McDonalds on the way — the first one I had seen in that area — and stopped for a Big Mac lunch meal. Then to the freeway and almost an immediate traffic jam. There was an accident ahead. I crawled along with thousands of other cars for an hour to the next exit where I made my way overland to the office.

So, I’ve spent the last four hours fixing some pictures and uploading them, putting a picture on each of the posts relating to World War One. I started linking up some other pictures in the text, but haven’t gotten very far on that activity. When I get home I’ll put more pictures on the website under the Pictures! link. It’s been a good trip.

I’ll be in the office all day on Monday. I’ll check out of the hotel on Tuesday morning and make my way to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. My flight is at 4:30 p.m. so I should have plenty of time to get there. Early is good — I can always wait at the airport in the lounge! There will likely be limited posts until I get home from here. I’ll spend the time categorizing pictures and getting them ready to be uploaded instead. I’ve got a lot of pictures to toss out!

Albert, known here in Belgium as the Knight-King, along with his wife Elizabeth, were king and queen of Belgium as WW One began. Belgium had not joined either alliance and had declared itself neutral, as had Switzerland and the Netherlands. In the course of international politics, that had no bearing for the Germans. They demanded that Albert allow the German army to pass through Belgium on it’s way to France to do an end run around the French army which was stationed all along the French-German border. The Germans fully expected Albert to capitulate and were not pleased when he did not but rather mobilized the Belgian Army. The Germans struck first at Liege, a reasonably well fortified city, thinking they could quickly take that city, move through Antwerp, and west and south from there. Albert instructed his army to resist at all costs and what the Germans expected to do in two days took more than ten days at a significant cost of lives for the Germans. Meanwhile, the British Expeditionary Force was moving in to help defend Antwerp. The Belgian army fell back to Antwerp and defended that city as long as possible, then falling back again to the Ijzer River. Fortified by the British and some French, they made a stand there.

The Germans invaded Belgium on 4 October 1914. On 18 October they were finally at the Ijzer River, a full ten days behind their Grand Plan’s schedule. After seven more days of heavy fighting, the Belgian army was faced once again with the need to fall back. Then a brilliant plan was put forth. Much of this region was below sea level with locks and dikes holding the ocean back. Karel Cogge, the lock keeper, and Hendrik Geeraert, a sea captain, opened the locks so that at high tide the waters would flood the lowlands. It took a couple of days for the full flooding to occur, but it stopped the German advance. Meanwhile, the British and French had also stopped the Germans all along a line south into France. That line would more or less be maintained for the next four years.

The huge memorial to King Albert at Nieuwpoort commemorates the king’s role in this event. Albert was the commander-in-chief and was with his troops (or at least with his officers) during these battles and retreats and at his command the Belgian army was finally able to make a stand that lasted for the remainder of the war. Albert seems to be both venerated and scorned. His military actions earned him the veneration. His failure to keep promises to the Flemish people caused significant problems that lasted through WWII. By not following through on his promise to make the Flemish language equal with French, a near civil war occurred after World War One. That encouraged the Germans during WWII to make promises to the Flemish people, who by that time were all tired of being second-class citizens. Many Flemish dissidents collaborated with the Germans during WWII feeling at that time that the Germans were going to win the war and they wanted to be on the winning side. More than 200 collaborators were executed in the months following the end of WWII. That caused the dissidents to resort to terrorism which further inflamed the Belgian Government. Much violence and bloodshed could have been avoided if Albert had only kept his promise. Politics are never simple and this situation was no exception. The lens of hindsight makes the poor decision-making stand out while I’m sure the events of the day were clouding up everyone’s vision.

Just outside King Albert’s memorial is a large monument to the British soldiers killed in the defense of Antwerp. Around the monument was a very thought-provoking statement. It had essentially no beginning or end — it could just be read around and around. I wrote it down starting at an arbitrary point:

“At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them. They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.”