Battlefields Tour #7 - Final WWI Thoughts & Visits
Wednesday, October 25th, 2023 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
debris4spikeOne of our visits was one not scheduled ... and we went there for 2 reasons. The first was that many of the group were Scottish, so we were taken to Black Watch Corner -
As I got off the coach our guide called me aside, to show me the view across the main road .... Glencourse Woods. I had already been taken there on a previous visit, but this time it was across the road from where I was ... However, for me, it was in memory of my Grandfather. On the 10th August 1917 during the third battle of Ypres (The Battle of Passchendaele), this is where he was stationed. The lowere photo was taken in 2018 when the tour went along the other road, than the one we were on this time.
From there we went to The Berks Cemetery & Extension -
CWGC re-etching the stones
A German Jew ... sadly if he had survivied he would have faced the Nazi regime.
Lieutenant R Pouton-Palmer, an English Rugby Captain ... and relative of the "Hunter & Palmer" biscuit company.
As we were driving along we saw some of the German bunkers
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Another place we were shown was this re-built farmhouse, which (in the cellar) there are still the remains of the original cartoons of Old Bill, by Bruce Bairnsfather
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Our next stop was at Messines and our first stop was the museum.
Old Bill
Photos of the town at the end of the war
Copy of painting of St Nicholas' Church - Dec 1914, by Adolf Hitler
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The rebuilt Messines Church - where Hitler had been a patient in the crypt when injured in 1914
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... and a toilet for the men near the entrance
And, our final stop of the day was Ypres, or Wipers as Granddad would have called it. The city was totally destroyed during the war, but rebuilt to look as it did pre WWI. As I said, Claire's great-grandfather's name is on the Menin Gate ... but as you can see it is being renovated.
Since 1928, the "Last Post" has been sounded every evening at 8 p.m. by buglers of the local Last Post Association at the war memorial at Ypres in Belgium known as the Menin Gate, commemorating the British Empire dead at the Battle of Ypres during the First World War. The only exception to this was during the four years of the German occupation of Ypres from 20 May 1940 to 6 September 1944, when the ceremony moved to Brookwood Military Cemetery in England. On the evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres, the ceremony was resumed at the Menin Gate, in spite of the heavy fighting still going on in other parts of the town. These buglers or trumpeters, sometimes seen in fire brigade uniform, are members of the fire brigade representing the Last Post Association, who organizes the events. The Last Post Association uses both silver B♭ bugles and E♭ cavalry trumpets, with either British Army tradition being respected during services at the gate.
As I got off the coach our guide called me aside, to show me the view across the main road .... Glencourse Woods. I had already been taken there on a previous visit, but this time it was across the road from where I was ... However, for me, it was in memory of my Grandfather. On the 10th August 1917 during the third battle of Ypres (The Battle of Passchendaele), this is where he was stationed. The lowere photo was taken in 2018 when the tour went along the other road, than the one we were on this time.
From there we went to The Berks Cemetery & Extension -
CWGC re-etching the stones
A German Jew ... sadly if he had survivied he would have faced the Nazi regime.
Lieutenant R Pouton-Palmer, an English Rugby Captain ... and relative of the "Hunter & Palmer" biscuit company.
As we were driving along we saw some of the German bunkers
Another place we were shown was this re-built farmhouse, which (in the cellar) there are still the remains of the original cartoons of Old Bill, by Bruce Bairnsfather
Our next stop was at Messines and our first stop was the museum.
Old Bill
Photos of the town at the end of the war
Copy of painting of St Nicholas' Church - Dec 1914, by Adolf Hitler
The rebuilt Messines Church - where Hitler had been a patient in the crypt when injured in 1914
... and a toilet for the men near the entrance
And, our final stop of the day was Ypres, or Wipers as Granddad would have called it. The city was totally destroyed during the war, but rebuilt to look as it did pre WWI. As I said, Claire's great-grandfather's name is on the Menin Gate ... but as you can see it is being renovated.
Since 1928, the "Last Post" has been sounded every evening at 8 p.m. by buglers of the local Last Post Association at the war memorial at Ypres in Belgium known as the Menin Gate, commemorating the British Empire dead at the Battle of Ypres during the First World War. The only exception to this was during the four years of the German occupation of Ypres from 20 May 1940 to 6 September 1944, when the ceremony moved to Brookwood Military Cemetery in England. On the evening that Polish forces liberated Ypres, the ceremony was resumed at the Menin Gate, in spite of the heavy fighting still going on in other parts of the town. These buglers or trumpeters, sometimes seen in fire brigade uniform, are members of the fire brigade representing the Last Post Association, who organizes the events. The Last Post Association uses both silver B♭ bugles and E♭ cavalry trumpets, with either British Army tradition being respected during services at the gate.
