FLANDERS FIELDS

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In the decade of commemorations, we are still within the centenary of WWI. It is also the 50th anniversary of my visit to Flanders Fields from the College of Europe in 1968.

I remember the visit as being a very emotional one, though at that time I did not know the story of my uncle's death on the Somme in 1916.

Despite having posted the photo above many times since, I hadn't remembered, until researching it today, that it was taken in the German cemetery at Langemark near Ieper (Ypres/Wipers).

Typical of the College to have taken us to a German cemetery, fully in keeping with the ethos of reconciliation on which the College itself was founded.

I don't remember if we visited any other cemeteries that day. I have only the photos above from Langemark. But it's possible we did. I have a very strong memory of leaving a cemetery and seeing the visitors' book scrawled over with slogans. I found that very upsetting in the presence of the remains of soldiers who most likely had been conscripted and had their lives taken from them under the most appalling conditions.

This war was killing on an industrial scale and nobody seems to have been listening or learned anything from it. I do not subscribe to the motto De Mortuis Nihil Nisi Bonum but I don't see why the folly of their betters should be taken out on the ordinary footsoldiers.

If the world had learned I would have been saved a later emotional experience in relation to WWII, a visit to the concentration camp at Dachau.

It appears we also visited the nearby town of Ieper (Ypres) on that day. This, our entrance to the town, turns out to be the Menin Gate. A massive memorial to those allied forces killed on the Ypres salient.

I wonder if the names of those Irish soldiers from Dúnlaoghaire (Kingstown) who were billeted in nearby Poperinghe are inscribed here. You can read their story and its amazing sequel here.

Siegfried Sassoon, one of the war poets I studied in school, described the Menin Gate in his poem 'On Passing the New Menin Gate', saying that the dead of the Ypres Salient would "deride this sepulchre of crime".

This is the main square (Grote Markt) in Ieper.

Susan Cahill has done a great episode on Newstalk's Talking History show dealing with Flander Fields and Remembrance. She visits the Langemark cemetery and also passes Delville Wood next to High Wood where my uncle died.