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[11 Nov 2004|09:56am] |
Still with me?
Stopped at a big booze store, chortling titled "Cheers!". A desolate ugly rectangular building, with a bloody giant barrel providing the entrance. Inside were bottles and cans of many types of liquer, all kinds, all cheap. I got some Rose', and joined the others back on the coach. Out into
The countryside of France became the countryside of Belgium, and it is countryside of rural serenity. If you know Belgium, you'll know it's green and it's full of fields and trees and many piles of what I think are potatoes.
Into the country further, and our guide began to tell us about the various battles fought there, amongst these now eerily calm lands, and about some of the stories, about people and places, events and sacrifices. I couldn't remember much about it, simply gazing through the window and thinking, trying to paint this picture in my head. The land was so flat and peaceful, clashing against it's past.
We stopped at a chocolate factory. Check.....a chocolate shop with stacks of cigarrettes being sold cheaply at the back. Being rather naughty, I went half on a packet of Golden Virginia, which has save me about fifty quid. Excellent. Got some chocolate there, and piled back onto the coach again. Another head bang.
The rain began to soak the world with atmosphere, fitting grey skies hurling handfuls of droplets all over the lands, seeming to increase as we drew closer to the town of Ypres, after a long journey.
Passing by the town, it occurs how new it looks. More later on that, as we passed for a while to travel partly into the Menin road, and visit various cemetaries.
One was the Hooge Crater. This if I remember rightly was a place hit by an explosion and thrown up into the air, now lined with some few thousand graves...Australians, British, New Zealanders...some graves with names..young men of twenty seven; twenty four; thirty one; all cut down, some graves had no names, simply carved with "four solders from the first world war" sitting side by side with all the rest.
More thoughts. Had ones to describe. Sobriety? Sombriety? I don't know...but as I stood there...reading names of young men, I could imagine what all their lives and faces and characters would have been like...what they would have talked about to their friends...who their loves were.
That's when I stopped thinking, and just became a muted shell. Father told me some things but I simply responded with "mm"'s and "yeah"'s......
Hard to know how to feel when you're there really. No adjective or string of words really describes it. The war museum over the road had some rusted ammunition carriers and thick pieces of metal curled and cut by mortar shells. A huge one sat near the door, one which would have taken six men at least to lift, presumably in the rainy, muddy madness too.
There was a Canadian monument nearby, which we passed....a much different beautiful set of steps with flat polished concrete between...like a shallow pyramid...
Then one of the biggest. Tyncot. A huge cemetary with 12,000 dead, as well as 30,000 names further stretching on beautiful white semi cicular walls.
A reinforced bunker sits amongst the graves here, with wires sticking through raked holes where shells have battered against it. We looked at it and the rains fell heavier, skies now so weighty they were about to burst all over everything.
They did, as we walked around this panorama of white stone, it's lines of rectangular stones forming patterns in the green. Poppies lay all around, on graves, on the huge central monument, and next to names on the wall.
And now...back to the coach, and to the final cemetery we were to visit. One featuring German graves. It was now darkening considerably, as we drew near and were told that this one was not a welcoming place, due to it's dark tree covered black stones, and four statues that in the dark looked real enough for me to actually mistake them for people.
It was as my dad said, not actually unwelcoming....it was different....dark and deathly cold certainly....but the graves were gently laid out on ground, black and oblong, in rigid lines. I can only think that the "unwelcoming feeling" most get is one of a sub-concious dislike of those that were in the opposing army, and the darkness and creeping trees exacerbate it, though they don't say.....
I've been writing for near two hours, and still haven't finished. I should be going to work soon, may finish off and come back to it later.
We boarded coach again and drove to Ypres....into the town, full of post modern neon clashes with buildings rebuilt in their original image before the bombs razed them to the ground.
Initially, we were to go to the restaurant before the ceremony, at Menin Gate. We drove through this, and it yawned over us with it's gigantic arches and concave roof, and along the sides, more names...never buried, covering each and every carvable surface.
The coach was parked, and we went for a meal in Vivaldi's....a sparsely desgined cafe' with big pictures of guitars and advertisments for concerts of classical music. I think you'd call it an "art deco" style, but as I know NOTHING about art, i'll not say anything. Although I did. Just then.
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