Tuesday 29 March 2011

Day 8: In Flanders Fields

It was an early start on Tuesday morning with a tour around the Salient, the first stop was to the site where John Macrae wrote the poem 'In Flanders Fields'.

by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short day ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch' be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, through poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.

What once was the battle ground.



Langemark, the German cemetery

The Canadian Monument, built in honour of those who endured the first German chlorine gas attacks in April 1915.



Tyne Cot Cemetry: The largest British Commonwealth war cemetery in the world containing 11,956 graces and the Memorial to the Missing, a semicircular wall inscribed with the names of a further 34,000 men whose bodies were never recovered.



Memorial Museum Passchendaele, this had a lot of information about the battles and also a reconstructed trench.

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