Good evening, Kossacks. As some of you know, I spent a good portion of the summer carrying out archaeological field and lab research, first in Turkey and then in Belgium. While I was in Belgium, I had the opportunity to visit some of the World War I battlefields, memorials, and museums. Follow me below the colonial cheese doodle to see some images of Flanders fields 100 years after the start of the war.
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WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
World War I began in 1914, and this year we mark its centenary. It was also known as the Great War, and it was supposed to be the "war to end all wars." One hundred years later, we know that this was not the case. WWI is quickly receding from living memory. In the past few years, we have lost the last surviving veterans of the Great War. Those who still remember the Great War were small children at the time, and most are centenarians themselves. It is important that we do not forget the lessons of World War I, or we will surely repeat the same mistakes.
Perhaps the most moving of all the WWI memorials is the Canadian monument, which is also known as the "brooding soldier.". It marks the first use of poison gas in the war in 1915. The entire monument and the surrounding plants and trees were imported from Canada.
I have been an IGTNT diarist since 2007, and I have often made use Colonel McCrae's poem. Poppies have become the universal symbols of remembrance. However, I was not fully aware of the magnitude of the "crosses row on row" until I visited the British Tyne Cot cemetery. It is the largest Commonwealth military cemetery in the world, and it is the final resting place for nearly 12,000 solders.
As an American who grew up in a neighborhood full of survivors in the aftermath of World War II, I have never been very sympathetic to the German role in either the First or Second World War. However, the losses that the Germans experienced in the Great War were staggering. The Langemark cemetery is located at a site where the Germans suffered a major military defeat at the start of the war. Large numbers of poorly trained German volunteers, students, and cadets were no match for the British army, many of whom were veterans of the Boer War. The central portion of the site is a mass grave that is home to thousands of unidentified German soldiers.
The Flemish town of Ypres (often referred to as WIPERS by the Americans soldiers) was ground zero during the First World War. During the late Middle Ages, it was the third most important important town in Flanders after Brugge and Gent. At that time the Flemish were importing large quantities of wool from England and turning it into textiles. Ypres was reduced to rubble by the end of the war, and Winston Churchill suggested that it should be left that way as a monument. However, the residents of the town chose to rebuild it, based on photos and drawings that had been made at the beginning of the war. Here is an image of the reconstructed Cloth Hall that now serves as a WWI museum.
Here is a view of the Menin Gate in Ypres where the Last Post is played every evening. The memorial is covered with the names of the Commonwealth soldiers who remain missing in action a century later.
I would like to send every war-hungry American politician on a tour of these cemeteries. The losses are unimaginable. Peace.