(Editor’s note: Travel writers garner the
mast envy from their newsroom contemporaries.
Any beat that calls for jetting around the globe,
eating in wonderful restaurants, and bobbing
along the ocean in the latest mega-cruise ship
sounds a good deal mare exciting than covering
municipal elections. And it is. But every naw
and then travel writers encounter the stark
realities of history, and no typical travel col-
nnn they can muster can get to the heart of the
matter, Writer David Wishart found this to be
the case during a recent visit to Flanders, and
submitted the following piece.)

drove along the coast from the

dreary port of Ostend and

turned south into Flanders on
what was probably the same road
where British and Canadian troops
marched to fight for king and
country in the First World War.

Tt was a beautiful day and I should have
been walking between the well-tended fields
just as the troops had done, shoulders back,
heads high and singing It’s a Long Way to
Tipperary.

Then, just on the outskirts of Ypres, I
saw the first graveyard and the crosses, row
on row,

/ A little farther
~ - = =n there wes
arenes oe ams = another, this

REMEMBRANCE | one with a

-~, _ Canadian flag

- ah over the place

‘ where Col.
John McCrae
wrote In
Flanders Fields.
There are,
unbelievably,
157

Commonwealth graveyards containing main-
ly British and Canadian soldiers around this
little medieval town. That does not include
German graveyards, or the tens of thousands
of dead shipped to Britain in night trains so
as to conceal the carnage.

By 11 a.m. on the 11th day of the Ith
month in 1918 more than 500,000 lay dead
around the ruins of Ypres, which the
Tommies called Wipers. The dead, the
flower of their generation, had not ques-
tioned being there in the awful trenches and
mud, where a young officer’s life expectancy
in the field was less than 30 seconds. It was
a just cause, the decent thing to do.

This November 11, many of us will buy a
poppy for much the same reason. We will
put them in our lapels, give a few coins or
perhaps some dollars, and forget about it for
another year.

Forgetting is going to be harder after secing the crosses,
row on row, in those graveyards. They are everywhere. Some
huge like Tyne Cot which has almost 12,000 buried, others
relatively small like the resting place for fallen Seaforths.

All are immaculately tended with weatherproof places for
documentation and visitors’ books. Yet although I went to
perhaps a dozen graveyards, I don’t think I saw more than a
handful of visitors like myself. I found myself thinking back
to the previous day when the gift shop at the Waterloo bat-

David Wishart photo

CANADIAN graves, row on row, at Tyne Cot cemetery near Ypres. The dead, writes
David Wishart, the flower of their generation, had not questioned being there in
the awful! trenches and mud, where a young officer's life expectancy in the field
was less than 30 seconds. It was a just cause, the decent thing to do.

tlefield had been thronged with people, and before that the
Bruges canal boats had been doing a brisk business. Brussels
was busy, requiring patience to secure a table at Jacques’
restaurant for his famous moules and frites.

On April 22, 1915, the Germans released chlorine gas
between St Juliaan and Passchendaele causing the elderly
French soldiers of reserve regiments to run from their posi-
tions and exposing the left flank of the newly-arrived
Canadians.

Ypres looked doomed, but the Canadians extended their

line to cover the gap, then counter-attacked
with British support.

German generals, who had equipped both
men and horses with gas masks, launched
another chlorine attack,

They were prepared now, not like at the
start when they went to war with voluateer
reserve students who marched against
British regulars, their arms linked and
singing songs in praise of the Kaiser. The
British rifle fire was so swift it sounded like
machine-guns, and 1,500 young Germans
perished in an afternoon,

By now the Germans had trained troops,
well-equipped and eager for a decisive blow,
But when the gas drifted over in a deadly
cloud the Canadians wet their handkerchiefs
and fought on. In three days 2,000
Canadians died out of 18,000, and their line
did not break. The fighting was savage,
often with grenade and bayonet, although it
was the shelling that killed more soldiers
than anything else.

A historian writing about Verdun calculated
that more than 1,000 shells fell for every
metre of land, and it must have been similar
around Ypres, for the casualties were beyond
the scope of the most efficient machine-gun-
ners or snipers. Entire regiments were wiped
out in hours, some with young men who
joined the “Pals’ Brigades” so they could
serve together.

They died with their friends in the trenches
or were shot to pieces as they struggled in
the barbed wire ringing no-man’s land. The
injured were loaded on to wagons which
were pulled through shellfire and mud by
terrified horses to advanced dressing stations
like that of Essex Farm, where Col. McCrae
toiled in a simple earthen dugout in the
bank of the canal.

On May 3, 1915, after two fierce battles
including the German gas attacks, McCrae
took the opportunity ofa lull to write his
now-famous poem in a diary as he sat over-
looking the cemetery next to his station,
where the poppies were blowing amid the
ever-increasing number of crosses.

McCrae died of pneumonia and meningitis
in 1918 in France.

Other men disappeared by the thousand in
the trenches and on the battlefields, blown
to bits by shells or buried in the mud that
stank of rotting flesh from humans and hors-
es, :

Nothing could have prepared me for the
memorial arch in Ypres, the Menin Gate,
which contains the names of 54,896 soldiers
whose bodies have no grave.
At Tyne Cot on the outskirts of town, the
names of another 34,984 missing troops are
engraved on the curving walls behind the
crosses where 11,908 men lie buried — 997
Canadians among them.

I went on a narrow, winding road, quite a
short distance really, to the Canadian memo-

rial erected at the place where those 2,000 men died hold-
ing the line against German fire and gas. There is a monu-
ment, big and stark, of a soldier with his head bowed,
brooding, as if wondering if ir was worth the effort, the sac-
tifice, to die a young man in a foreign field.

Buy a poppy this Remembrance Day, but better still make
a visit to Ypres, and take your sons and daughters.

To be sure the young men there, who have not grown
old, would like you to visit, because if you do go you will
never forget them. :

Have we forgotten those who fell for us?

I wrote this poem
for a poster fast
November.

The poem was encircled
by a wreath of blood red
poppies, a constant
reminder of the men who
were lost in World War T
and World War II.

This poster was submit-
ted to the Legion fora
contest and it won. I went
to the Legion during their
monthly meeting in order
to claim my prize, and in
the end came out with
more than a cheque. I
found that the few remain-
ing soldiers at the meeting,

“Kimberley Versteag :

were growing older. Since
that last meeting, several
members had passed away

as well.

It had never occurred
to me, a 17-year-old
teenager who's grandfather
had been spared from the
bloodshed, that some day
there would be no more
proud soldiers to walk in
the November parades and
collect donations for pop-
pies.

As teenagers, the wars
mean little to us. We were
not there. But to those
soldiers who fought in the
two big wars of this centu-
ry it does, They laid down
their lives for us.

Tt saddens me to think
that a great number of of
us don’t understand the

sacrifice that many of our
soldiers made.

As the years go by, and
the remaining number of
soldiers dwindle, have we
forgotten the meaning of
the word “remember,” or
the significance of the date
November ] 1th?

We wear our poppies
and bow our heads, but
the signifiganee has
escaped us.

I would like to take this
opportunity to renew the
respect due “our boys.”
They fought for our tree-
dom, and lashed out
against oppression.

They are heros.

To those who fell in

batele, and to those lhicky
enough to survive, we all
owe thanks. We should
keep the memory of their
struggle and triumph with
us always, not just in
November.

They shall not grow old
As we that are left grow
old

Age shall not weary
them

Nor the years condemn
At the going down of
the sun

And in the morning
We shall remember
them.

— The Act of
Rememberance