This is the place that caused the German advance to be bogged down. The dikes
were opened here flooding the lowlands along the river. The result was a
four-year-long stalemate broken when America joined the fray pushing the
Germans back and forcing the armistice (how is that really spelled?) and
the end to the war (but then setting the almost inevitable next war’s
stage).

I’m at a restaurant for dinner. I never stopped for lunch, and almost all
the restaurants here feature seafood. Being on the ocean and a popular
tourist destination adds to the demand for seafood. I wanted steak, so it
took a couple of stops in different restaurants until I found one that
features red meat on the menu. Even at that, rather than bread, they
brought some strange looking shrimp, probably cooked in something, still in
their shells. Along with them came an empty bowl. I tried to peel one, but
it just came apart. I’m not interested in whole tiny, cold, damp shrimp so
the small bowl full of them are just sitting there. I’ll let the waiter
take them away when he brings my meal.

I’m not even half way done on this tour. It’s 6:30 pm and I’ll be here
another half hour. There’s two more stops in this town, including a walking
tour around the locks, before continuing back south on the German side of
the line.

Since this was the sector assigned to the Belgians and they were supposed
to be neutral in this conflict (the Germans certainly didn’t care about
that), the Beligian army took essentially a “stop them and hold them”
stance. They did not attack or become the aggressors in the war at the
order of their then King Albert. My next stop is a monument to him.

Also, most of this tour has been about the Belgian involvement, told from
their viewpoint. I learned today some interesting things. At that time the
official language was French. The officers spoke French and had been
trained by the French. Most of the enlisted / conscripted ranks spoke
Flemish (a dialect of Dutch) and didn’t read or write French. That lead to
huge communication problems that were never really solved during the war.

There had already been a big separatist movement before the war. As these
dissidents were conscripted into the army, they began organizing the
soldiers and campaigning for equality of Flemish. Many were sent to jail
and a few were executed for insubordination, further exacerbating the
situation.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the line, the Germans were promising a
Flemish state under German rule, of course, in return for Belgian
cooperation, which was meet with disdain by dissident and loyal citizen
alike. The Germans were not light in their retribution, executing 10
Belgians for each act of supposed insubordination. So there was a kind of a
civil war going on under the umbrella of the larger conflict.

The meal has been good. Steak with a mushroom sauce, fries (of course), and
a pretty good side salad. The sky, which has threatened rain all day, has
brightened up a bit. I’ll at least visit King Albert and then decide what
to do after that.

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There are only three or four Belgian war cemeteries as most of their dead
were taken home or buried in local churches. One is just outside
Ramskapelle where about 340 soldiers are buried in 9 large semicircles.

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This small town has two somewhat noteworthy items. At the entrance to the
town is the second of two demarcation posts (saying “Here the conqueror was
stopped”) that the Germans missed destroying during WWII. It’s also the
site of the only successful bayonet charge of the war (the French and the
Belgians counterattacking the Germans at the train station). After that,
trench warfare took over and machine guns ruled. Each year this town re-enacts the battle. For some reason each war starts off using the previous war’s weapons and tactics but then one side or the other quickly evolves.

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I parked by the side of a bicycle path and walked a half-mile (each way) to
Old Stuivekens. The town has been relocated about a mile and a half onto a
more main road when the railroad track was taken up in the mid-70’s.
Remaining is a small church, Chapel of Notre Dame of Victory, and the base
of it’s bell tower. The tower was an observation post for the Belgian Army
until German artillery took the tower down.

The notable item, however, was a small stone pillar on which was carved in
Dutch: “Here the conqueror was stopped.” Very few of these markers remain.
During the German occupation during WWII, special units were commissioned
and sent out to obliterate any monuments to the German defeat in World War
One! They missed a few, and this was one of them.

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This area north of Diksmuide was strategic during the early part of the
war. Several very large oil tanks stood in the middle of no-mans-land and
both the Germans and the Belgians (who were assigned this part of the front
to defend) began trenching towards the tanks. Neither side attained the
objective. When the Germans realized they couldn’t get there, the tanks
were shelled and destroyed. Before that, however, both side took heavy
casualties while digging the trenches at night and defending them during
the day. Hence the name: the trench of death.

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Two hours later and I’m just on the outer edge of Diksmuide, stop #4. I
don’t know where 2 and 3 are — the street was closed and it took a bit to
circumnavigate the closed area. I either need a navigator or a driver! It’s
sometimes hard to do both.

The Peace Gate includes a tall 84 meter tower, 22 floors. It turns out the
elevator goes up, but you have to walk down as the museum is on the floors
as you descend. I’m pretty sure there was information about this, but not
in English! While some of the museum was about the two wars, most was
dedicated to the Flemish separatists who were striving for an independent,
Dutch speaking state. While the history was somewhat interesting, there was
very little in English (not surprising considering the subject matter). So
— on to the next stop: Death Passage.

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I’ve now started the Yzer Front tour of significant places during World War
One. This is another town on the front lines completely destroyed even
though it was never occupied. The town sits on the Ijzer River, now a
popular location for luxury yachts well protected from the sea. During The
Great War, the Belgians flooded the Yzer plain blocking the German advance.
This 48-mile driving tour today goes along the river on both sides with
many stops along the way at points of interest.

Getting here was a bit of an adventure. I needed gas and nary an open
station was to be found. Many would take a credit card 24 hours a day, but
only with a PIN number. My PIN from the US wouldn’t work. I stopped at
several stations trying various cards without luck. Finally, with the car
making lots of ringing bells and chimes to tell me that I’m running out of
gas, I saw a fellow inside a closed station. I was able to convince him to
come out and sell me 50 euros cash of gasoline. I’m now good to go for the
rest of the day.

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It’s just 10 pm and I have just gotten to my hotel room. I stayed in Ieper (I learned from the material that the British call it “Wipes”) and had dinner there — pepper steak (with fries, of course). Also in the material was info about a group of Ieper buglers who perform “Last Post” at 8 pm. I got to the place about 7:55 and while I could hear them, the huge crowd meant I couldn’t see them. I probably needed to have been there about 20 minutes earlier. It was nice, however. The British built a huge war memorial to all those whose remains were not recovered. The “Menin Gate” goes over the road on the way into the center of town. The gate is about 50′ tall, three lanes wide, and about 100′ long inside — kind of like a tunnel. Inscribed on all the walls are about 55,000 names of the missing. The buglers stood inside the gate so their sound echoed in the gate. Quite impressive.

On the way out of town headed back to Kortrijk, I passed several more British cemeteries but didn’t stop until I saw a sign for “The Scottish Stone”. For that I turned off the road. First, I found another big British monument to a group of “miners” who were killed underground. These were tunnel builders who would tunnel underneath German lines and plant huge caches of explosives (mines) which would be blown up at the start of an attack to open up ways though the lines. Very interesting. My brochure talked about an attack that started with 21 tunnels and mines being laid. “They ended in small rooms where thousands of kilograms of explosives were brought. Two of the 21 mines did not explode; the 20th mine exploded during a thunderstorm on July 19th 1955. The last mine is still keeping it’s explosion a secret.” One of these craters is now a park called “The Pool of Peace.”

A bit further on was the memorial to the Scotts for an ill-fated charge in which 2/3rds of them were killed.

From there it was back to the hotel for the night. A very interesting day!

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