Category Archives: World War One

Last Night in Kortrijk

E-Mail Musings, World War One

The workday is over and I’m back at my hotel. When I came in, the fellow atthe desk wanted to confirm that I would be checking out in the morning. I assured him that I was; he assured me that they needed the room. I’magreeable to this exchange.

I am now a bit suspicious of good parking places. The street in front of the door to the hotel had cars parked to a certain point and then the street was open from there to the corner. I parked and then looked aroundand found a temporary sign saying no parking starting today at 7 pm. The last car in the line was blocking the sign. So, I got back in the car andwent in search of a parking spot. Two times around the (quite large) block revealed no space, so I broadened my search and found a place a couple of blocks away. This one is for sure legal.

I am having dinner at the hotel. It’s a reasonably nice place and where I was put to sit was OK until the fellow at the next table lit up a cigar. My table was in the corner and all the smoke came there. Of course, most of the tables outside are occupied and the tables inside aren’t set for meals. Tough. I wasn’t going to sit in the cigar smoke. That’s one thing that theEuropeans have against them are the arrogant smokers. People put up with it over here. I will not. I’d like to have some very visible nose plugs to
convey the message that the smoker (and particularly the cigar smoker) isstinking up the place.

On the way from the office to the hotel I wanted to get four pictures and ended up with five. The first was in Oudenaarde. When I was at the American Cemetery in Waregem, there was a picture on the wall of the Visitors Centerof a monument to the Americans in Audenard. Beside the picture was a big map of the area and it was clear that Ardenard and Oudenaarde are the same place. I didn’t know where the monument was, but I figured it had to be inor near the main square. As I drove that direction, a sandstone structure off in a small park caught my eye. It was the monument and I’ve got thepicture.

Next was the nuclear power plant on the way. I got there, pulled off the road, and had a good view right out the driver side window. As I had the window down and was framing the shot, a couple of cars passed me. Thethought crossed my mind: “What if they think I’m a terrorist casing the plant?” I quickly took my pictures and drove off.

The next picture site turned out to be two places. There is a largeDutch-style windmill that I drove by each way between the hotel and work. Until this morning, there was a bunch of scaffolding on the front of thewindmill. Today it was gone! So I decided to get a picture on the way home. I pulled in, stopped, and took a number of pictures. In one of the shots I
also wanted to get the street sign in the picture. Then I realized what thestreet sign said: Twee Moellen Straat. Twee = Two. Moellen = mill. Straat = street. The Two Mill Street. So where was the other mill? I got in the car and continued down the side street. Sure enough, around on the other sideof the hill was another windmill, this one a big Flemish-style mill. Two
for the price of one!

Lastly, a sign on the road pointed off to the side to a British War Cemetery. It was on the way, so I went down the side street to a church and a church cemetery. Next to it was a military cemetery much like the onesI’d stopped at over the holiday and the weekend. I started to leave when I saw a headstone in the front row with a space to the side that looked quitedifferent. I went up to the headstone to see that it was inscribed in German: “Two unknown German soldiers”. I saw other headstones with German
inscriptions. They were kind of apart from the British headstones, at leastnear the front. Some had names, others had counts of unknowns, and others had both. I looked for the cemetery information plaque and learned thatthere were about 140 British soldiers and 57 German soldiers buried in the cemetery, all killed in the last days of the war.

What a thought. Of course in any conflict there is the last person to bekilled (and the last person to die from wounds). That person could be in this cemetery. The Great War came to a stop by agreement at eleven minutes after eleven a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year 1918. In some sectors, particularly on the western front, fighting
continued right up to the moment the white smoke flares went up which, along with the five cannon shots, marked the end of the war. What must it be like for the mother whose son might still be alive if the war had ended a minute or two earlier? Why did the war have to end at such a peculiar hour? It’s very curious to me and very sad for the mothers and fathers of these boys killed when the war was all but over.

The woman in charge of the restaurant isn’t having a good night. I started something, perhaps. Two other tables have asked to be reseated and the smoker is now on his third cigar.

Tomorrow I leave for Amsterdam and the flight home. It’s been a good tripand I’m ready to get back to my own bed!

The High Ground

General, Travels, World War One

The High Ground Mill

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!

Italian Prisoners of War

E-Mail Musings, Travels, World War One

Italian Graves

I’m at the penultimate stop on this tour — the Belgian Cemetery of Houthulst. This cemetery contains the remains of Belgian soldiers from the great push in September 1918. The war had at most six weeks left, but no one knew that. The Germans had launched a major offensive in the summer of 1918 closing to within 30 miles of Paris. About this time the Americans arrived to strengthen the defenses and to begin an offensive push. The result was the German army began to retreat. The woods around this cemetery, about five miles from the Ijzer River and the front, was where the Germans had set their artillery as well as the Long Max, a railroad based huge gun that could fire missiles up to 40 miles. This area was one of the key objectives of the allied offensive in the north in order to silence the guns. That goal was achieved in early October 1918 by the Belgian Army under the direction of the French. Almost 1900 soldiers from that battle
are buried here.

Also buried here, at the back of the cemetery forming a backdrop, are 81
Italian soldiers who, as prisoners of war, died in a German labor camps in
the region.

It has stopped raining! On to the last stop — an old windmill, the Van
Couillie Mill.

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Werken and the New Zealand Pilot

E-Mail Musings, Travels, World War One

New Zealand Pilot's Grave

The next stop on the tour didn’t have anything to do with World War One.
Werken has a historic Catholic Church with a “Way of the Cross” outside the
building around the outside of the cemetery and church grounds. The rain
had let up a bit, so I stopped as the Stations of the Cross are always
interesting. Do they stop with the crucifixion, or do they continue to the
resurrection? Unfortunately this one only had 7 of the prescribed 13
(though most stop at 12 and skip the resurrection), and like most Catholic
Churches and their Stations of the Cross, they stopped with the crucifixion.

But, two other things caught my eye! First was a small town memorial
erected in 1920 to the town’s sons who had died in the war. At the bottom
of the memorial were the words “Alles voor Vlaandren voor Christus” (All
for Flanders and for Christ). The letters AVV AVC (or AVV VVK) were often
arranged in a cross with the center V as the crux (see the Peace Gate picture at Diksmuide, or the view from the Peace Tower, for example). This phrase was
the rallying cry during The Great War for the Flemish separatists.

Secondly, at the entrance into the cemetery was the now-quite-recognizable
green War Graves Commission sign meaning that there are graves of British
soldiers in the cemetery. Since the guidebook I’m following had only to do
with World War One and made no mention of this cemetery, I looked for the
graves. I found a row of six graves, all airmen who died in 1941. One was
listed as being a New Zealand Air Force pilot. The rest looked to be bomber
crewmen. As I remember, the New Zealand Air Force provided fighter cover
for the British Lancaster bombers in the early days of the war. This fellow
died at age 26, someone’s son, buried a very long way from home.

It was only a brief respite. The rain has returned and it’s now really
coming down!

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Vladslo German War Cemetery

E-Mail Musings, Travels, World War One

Grieving Parents

A light rain has begun to fall and the sky is dark enough that pictures are
difficult to take. I’ve upped the ISO rating on the camera to 800, which
puts a little more noise into the digital pictures. The light rain and
somewhat gloomy skies match my melancholy mood for the time being.

This cemetery is the resting spot for almost 26,000 of the some 135,000
Germans who died in the war. The highlight of the cemetery are statues
of a mother and father grieving for their fallen son. Kaethe Kollwitz, a
well-known Berlin artisan, carved these statues in the likeness of her and
her husband in memorial to their son Peter, who was killed in Flanders on
October 23rd 1914 . These are very moving pieces of art and are placed
looking over their son’s grave.

The grave markers in the cemetery list the names of up to 20 soldiers on each marker, unlike British, American, and Belgian cemeteries where each person has an individual headstone.

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Kruiskalsijke Mill in Leke

E-Mail Musings, Travels, World War One

The New Mill

The guidebook says: “Miller Vandedberghe had to look on while his
livelihood, the Kruiskalsijde Mill built in 1871, was dynamited by the
Belgian Military Engineers on October 17th 1914.”

At that time, the windmill stood quite tall with huge sails to catch the
wind and turn the grindstones. It also would have made a good lookout and
observation tower over the Ijzer plain. After the war the mill was rebuilt
using diesel rather than wind power. It now stands empty — almost
abandoned.

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Back to Keiem

E-Mail Musings, Travels, World War One

Unknown Soldiers

After finding that all good arrangements for Church fell apart, I decided
to complete the route that I left last night as darkness fell. So, I’m back
on the track at another Belgian Army cemetery, this one in Keiem (known as
Keyem in 1918). Most of the 628 graves in this cemetery are “Unknown”.
These are soldiers killed after a ill-planned and disastrous attack on the
Germans on 19 October 1914. The better armed and better trained Germans
decimated the Belgian troops, separated the soldiers from their officers,
and turned the area into a killing field. That was the last Belgian attempt
at making an offensive attack for the rest of the war.

Today Keiem is a peaceful farming community well off the main thoroughfares.
The railroad in this area was torn up and taken away about 30 years ago. It
now is a bicycle path that goes along the back of the cemetery. The cemetery
is also a quiet, peaceful place. Rest in Peace!

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Belgium’s Knight-King Albert I

General, Travels, World War One

King Albert I

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.”