Ypres Salient Continued

20 March: The Tyne Cot Cemetery also contains a small but interesting museum. The names of the fallen are read quietly but continuously. We saw poetry, the language of the heart, relating feelings toward the horror, the love of home, the resignation to death. The soldier's letters all contain some reassurance for their families and thanks for small favors: cookies sent from home, tooth paste, soap etc.. There are 12,000 in this cemetery, and 34,000 names of those never found. We went to Hill 62, a small private museum. It's filled with artifacts, but most interesting because of the preserved shell holes and trenches. The trenches, a device developed out of the stalemate on the Western Front, were dug to shoulder height. In the rain and snow, these things filled with mud making the duck boards useless. Sheltered places, if you can call them that, were covered with arched galvanized corrugated steel. Farmers today use it to cover firewood. It's hard to believe people lived in these places. A soldier was given about 6ft of space for which he was responsible. He ate, slept, and sometimes defecated here though ideally there was a designated area for this. A soldier was promised one hot meal per day and .125 liters of rum, but under the pressure of war this was not always possible. If a part of battlement, the sandbag protection in front of the trench were destroyed, it was quickly rebuilt with anything at hand sometimes with the bodies of their fallen comrades. The British soldier typically spent a week at the front before being sent rearward for a rest and laundry unless, of course he was needed at the front. Lice were constant companions. Even a delousing and boiled clothing were not enough to rid soldiers of the infestation. After a month at the front, a soldier was sent farther back. Battle fatigue was seen as cowardice and was sometimes punished with execution. A French regiment mutinied in 1917. One in ten were shoot as punishment. After a brief lunch, we were joined by three Brits. We drove to Hill 60 to see the site of the Battle of Mesin Ridge. The allies tunneled under the German position. They dug 21 tunnels sometimes 1000 meters long. They packed these mines with thousands of pounds of explosives. They were detonated simultaneously. Nineteen exploded sending pillars of fire and earth into the air and creating a concussion that was felt in London. Ten thousand Germans were killed outright. Those nearby not killed by the blast were buried alive including 300 Irish. The explosions created craters visible today as deep as 70 feet and 400 meters around. We went to the battle field at Mesin where an artillery barrage 12.5 miles long pounded the Germans with literally millions of shells as the Germans huddled in their reinforced bunkers.(Hitler fought and was wounded here.) The allies, convinced no one could withstand that bombardment, attacked. The Germans were prepared for this. From 7:30a until about noon, the Germans fired 500 rounds a minute per machine gun changing barrels on their weapons when necessary. Over 60,000 soldiers were slaughtered in about 5 hours nearly as many as 3 days of Gettysburg and more than 9 years of Viet Nam. Next, we went to the site of the Christmas Truce. On Christmas Eve of 1914, the allies heard the Germans singing carols. The lines were so close they could hear each other. Soon the allies joined the singing. The Germans invited the allies over. The officers ordered the men not to go thinking it was a trap, the men went anyway. The Brits took their rum, the French their wine, and the Germans shared their beer, and they all celebrated the birth of the Prince of Peace. This spread along the lines, and it lasted for days. The "enemies" sang, swapped stories, played football, and exchanged gifts of buttons and badges. In one story, a Brit, who'd spent some time living in Munich, recognized his former barber. Now, the difficulty for the officers: how to get the men to resume the war against newly found friends. Finally, the officers threatened the troops with execution if they did not fire on the Germans. Something like that I'm sure happened on the German side, and the killing resumed. We stopped for a beer. Then Andre took us to the American Memorial to troops who died in the area. It's humorously small. This memorial to the American service dead who gave the "last full measure" is a joke. So I told our companions, who'd remained respectfully silent, "It's nice to see that at least the Americans have a sense of humor." We said our good byes, and Sheila and I went to dinner. I'll never forget this day. World War I broke out in Belgium, trenches were first used here as was lethal poison gas. The Great War as it's called is so significant. It leads directly to the rise of National Socialism and the outbreak of WWII. It is the real end to the old regime in Europe. It leads to the Bolshivek Revolution in Russia and much more. But , to me most importantly, it destroyed a generation of young men. Even if they survived the war, their lives were short circuited physically, mentally and emotionally. How, witnessing such madness, could they not be irrevocably altered? How, if 5000 years of human history could not generate the wisdom to prevent the carnage, could anything make any sense? More later. Love to all.