Amy wanted a nice day in the house with Morgan today so I hopped in the car and drove to the other side of the country.
First stop was the Vladslo German Military Cemetery. There are four of these scattered around Belgium where the German and Belgian Government agreed to bury the German dead from World War I. This cemetery is the final resting place for over 25,000 German soldiers. All of the soldiers here died bewteen 1917 – 1918. They were buried in groups of 20. Local German Belgian citizens maintain the property.
There is a nice statue at the end ‘Grieving Parents’. The artist that did these had a son buried here.
On the way out I came across this one with a picture of one of the soldiers…
My next stop was so ugly (a giant cement tower/monument) I didn’t want to take pictures of it.. plus it turns out it’s a meeting place of Belgian Neo-Nazi’s since WWII.. so.. I decided I didn’t need to see it!
Next I went to the ‘Trench of Death’. This was Belgium’s last stand in WWI. The Belgian Defense Ministry preserves and maintains the site. Very neat to walk through the trenches.. and what a great day for pictures.. love the sky..
I think a bug walked across the lens here and it’s to big for me to nicely clone out.. so.. sorry about that.. bt it’s the only shot of the length of the trenches.. this is only about 1/2 of the trench.
3 comments:
i'm not sure it you know it (it is popular in some parts of the states but not others) but there is a poem that is famous in canada, writen by Canadian John McCrae that goes (by memory from grade school, so it might be off):
in flander's feilds the poppies blow,
between the crosses row on row,
they mark our place and in the sky,
the larks, still bravely singing, fly.
scarce heard amid the guns below.
we are the Dead. short days ago
we lived, felt dawn, saw sunset's glow,
loved and were loved, and now we lie
in Flander's Fields.
take up our quarrel with the foe.
to you, from failing hands we throw
the torch - be yours to hold it high
and if yee break faith with us who die
we shall not sleep, though poppies blow
in Flander's Fields
as a result, your picture of the poppy is really cool to me, because i've never seen a battlefield that actually had them before
You have a good memory! I think the site I went to was a less-traveled site than the Flanders battle museums that are a few towns over.
yeah, well the poem is read at every single remembrance event in primary school, and in grade 5 is was i was the one picked to read the poem and i had to do it from memory. they say what you learn when you are young never leaves you - maybe its true?
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