Flanders Fields and Ieper

This morning we took off a few miles to the West for the town of Waregem where there is one of the smaller of World War I American military cemetaries on foreign soil. It only covers 6 acres but is beautiful and immaculately cared for.

A small memorial chapel sits in the center with a beautiful altar and mosaic ceiling.

We walked around the gravesites and found the names of soldiers that were close to home from Idaho, Montana and Utah.

Each time I read a name I wondered how many children were left fatherless by this war. The care taker played the carillon for us and I wondered about how people in the houses around may feel about all the bells chiming. We next drove further West to the city of Ieper and had ice cream in a waffle cone just off the city market in the city center typical of nearly all European cities. The ice cream was delicious.

We decided to go to the In Flanders Fields museum. It is all about the many difficulties and horors of World War I which centered largely in this immediate area of Belgium from 1914 through 1918. Now war is not my thing and I don't like to see or hear about it. They started by giving us a tag with the name of a soldier to put in machines to find out about what part that person played in the war. I don't remember the name only that she was a nurse on the front lines caring for the wounded. My heart hurt for her. It must have been a hard job to see such things. One display was a horse pulling a cannon. The horse was covered in mud and it looked over-worked and cold. We also went into another church. As with all the churches here it was beautiful.

We then took a walk along a tree-lined trail around the top of a high wall surrounded by a moat that was built in mideval times which surrounded part of the old city.

Along the walk was very green and beautiful but it was quite a long walk. I think we were all very tired by the time we got to the Stedelijk Museum. Here they had a film about the history of the area. What excited me was that they had rooms full of paintings of the period.

There were some old pewter dishes and you could even see the cut marks on them. At this point we still had a half of our walk to finish. It was a good break though. At the end of the hike near the Menin Gate it was time to find a place to have dinner. We found a small restaurant and the food was good. After dinner we watched the laying of the wreaths at the Menin Gate along with buglers and bagpipers in a ceremony called the Last Post that has taken place every eveing at 8:00 PM since 1928 to honor thousands of British soldiers who died in World War I in the Iepers area.

It was a great treat to end the evening.